Two weeks ago I attended a conference and I found myself listening to a paper which dealt exactly with the topic of one of my publications (a chapter in a collective volume, four years old). I’d rather not mention which topic as part of the self-censorship that I must apply here, or risk losing the effect of what I’m going to narrate. I spent the twenty minutes of the communication waiting for the gentleman author to refer to my work, without success. Um, I told myself: do I raise a stink and embarrass everyone? Should I do nothing at all? Two other colleagues from my research group were quite vocal in their criticism of the paper presented, and I decided to keep quiet.
Mind you, in other occasions I have indeed behaved in a totally obnoxious way –the most spectacular time was after listening to a paper on Alex Garland’s The Beach. I had just written an article about it (the one in the volume on the New Puritans I wrote about a few weeks ago), and to my surprise this woman scholar gave a paper ignoring not my article (as it was not published) but all the bibliography on Garland. She showed instead in her PowerPoint pictures of scenes in the film adaptation – ‘here you can see that…’, ‘here you can see this….’ I told her as straightforwardly as I could that she should be ashamed of presenting that trash. In more polite but still extremely rude terms (English is quite helpful to do this). I’m not sure whether I lost it or did the right thing. (Others, yes, have been rude to me, but not because I hadn’t done my homework).
So, going back to my anecdote: when I got home I decided to email the gentleman in question and tell him, this time nicely and politely, about my article, which I attached to my message. Oh, my, I thought –this is awkward but, then, what is the point of not telling a fellow scholar about one’s own bibliography? As it turned out, I got a very friendly reply and discovered, to boot, that the gentleman had even reviewed a book in which I have another article (and had quoted one of my books in his PhD dissertation). The exact circumstances regarding which he had missed my article about his own topic of interest sounded plausible enough. So, yes, another linked formed, networking accomplished, despite what could have been quite a misencounter. Buff, what a relief!!
To be honest, my main concern as I listened to him deliver his paper was not that he wasn’t quoting me but that, generally speaking, we, Spanish scholars, don’t quote each other. We do produce a mass of work every year but, I don’t know why, we tend to ignore it. Instead, our ‘work cited’ lists are dominated by the publications of Anglo-American university presses and journals. Perhaps I should say that we do not quote each other, nor anyone else outside these Anglo-American domain (an Italian journal, a Swedish university press book…?). Talk about academic hierarchy.
So, yes, it can well be that someone in the room in a Spanish conference has published something that overlaps 100% with your topic and you don’t know it. I did check the MLA for my own book chapter and it is not there –whether this is Peter Lang’s fault, I cannot say. What seems to be true is that not all we publish reaches the places where researchers look for secondary sources, which leads me back to one of my pet obsessions: we need to make ourselves visible. It an endless task: maintain a personal web, register in the main research portals, send MLA what is missing in your profile and… wait to be found in that bottomless ocean where so many other voices are drowned. I must be my own publicist on top of being teacher, admin worker and researcher. And it’s very tiring work.
So: thank you, my new colleague, for your friendly reply. Next time we meet, we’ll have much to discuss and enjoy together.
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