magical voluntarism: pinched!

Music: The House of Love: self-titled (1990)

I'm relieved to report my and Dana's essay on magical voluntarism was published today (here it is in pdf). Some of y'all will recall that Dana and I take Sonja Foss and her co-authors to task for advancing an untenable conception of agency. This same conception of agency has been circulating under the aegis of "power feminism" in essays by the Foss sisters in communication journals. I want to make it very clear that I respect and admire the Sonja and Karen; I have worked with them both and am especially appreciative of Sonja's mentoring. They're fantastic as people and colleagues. But, this does not mean I cannot disagree with some of their arguments, and I think it is important to critique any recovery of the transcendental subject when thinking about rhetoric.

I'm blogging about the event of publication, however, because this was another one of those essays that seemed doomed. Some readers may recall we started drafting the thing in May of 2007. We continued drafting through the spring of 2008 (see this and this post), and finally completed a draft on May 16th, 2008. Sometimes an essay can take a very long time to write!

We submitted the essay for review at Communication Theory on May 22, 2008. It was rejected on August 27th. Although two prominent scholars in the field recommended publication with little revision (these reviewers outed themselves to me at NCA---they are prominent folks!), one reviewer was insistent that the piece be rejected. Dana and I were baffled, frankly, but I respect the right of editors to reject essays regardless of what the reviewers say; editors deserve and require this power. (Here's a copy of the rejection).

Now, what was troublesome to me was that the editor rejected our essay on the basis of one reviewer's comments, and I am told that reviewer had a serious conflict of interest. As an aside, I confess I do not understand the decision of editors to send essays critical of a scholar's arguments to that very scholar (or in our case, someone very close to that scholar); on many occasions this has happened to me on both ends. On two occasions editors sent me work that was critical of my own scholarship. On both occasions the writing was good and I decided to accept the work on principle, because I knew I could not be objective. It has more often happened to me, however. Another example: some years ago I sent a piece critical of Ed Schiappa's essay on "big rhetoric" to Philosophy & Rhetoric. The editor sent it out to one reviewer, who rejected the essay. Guess who the reviewer was?

Nevertheless, Dana and I were confused by the editor's rejection. We could tell he was not firm in his decision, and so we decided to write a response letter urging him to reconsider the rejection. Because the essay was so tailored for the Communication Theory audience---because it was so specialized---we figured a quick revision of the essay's tone and a carefully argued letter was worth a shot. Eight pages. Single spaced. Here it is.

The editor, thankfully, changed his mind as a consequence of the letter. The reviewer who rejected the piece also requested to see the "appeal letter," as I call it. He accepted the manuscript.

That was the first (and probably last) time I have ever appealed an editor's decision. I don't share this with the budding scholars out there to suggest it's yet another tool. This was a very unusual circumstance, and I do not recommend folks appeal an editor's rejection. I share this information only to illustrate how much unseen labor can go into the publication process. And we're not done with this story yet! Just wait, there's more!

So after acceptance the essay goes into some sort of publishing purgatory. We don't hear a peep from CT for months. We then learn at the turn of 2009 that the editor we worked with was replaced by a new one, and obviously with an editor with no investment in the essay or the topic. Months fly by. Finally, a year after the essay was accepted we get the proofs, and as I detailed last August, it was an errata bonanza. Never had I seen so many gaffs in a publication proof.

After submitting five, single-spaced pages of corrections, the new editor responded with what seemed to us a hostile tone. She seemed to blame the mistakes on our misuse of APA style, among other things, and suggested that if we wanted to make the corrections she would be pushing back the publication date (as if to punish us or something, LOL). A month later we received a note of corrections back from the publisher, to which we responded.

A couple of weeks ago Dana and I were offered a final look-over the proof from the hired proofer, which was very much appreciated. Only seven errors (four of them were ours). The hired proofer at Wiley was incredibly professional and nice, which goes a long way when one is frustrated. Hats off to you, Michelle! You rock!

So, yeah: the doomed damned essay was published today, almost four years from conception. I normally don't announce my publications on my blog, but after the process of getting this one squeezed out there, I just gotta. here it is in pdf. Download it. Use it as kitty litter. Whatever!