Reading Notes
The work here does not develop in isolation.
I read scholarship, reports, books, archival material, public arguments, and other serious analysis to test what I think I know, find better language, trace existing ideas, and discover where an argument needs to change.
Reading Notes are a record of that process.
They are not endorsements, summaries of everything a source contains, or a list of things I agree with.
A useful source may support part of the work, complicate it, expose a gap, provide a better predecessor, or show that something I thought was distinctive already has a stronger history elsewhere.
What a Reading Note asks
Each note should answer some version of these questions:
What is this?
What kind of source is it, and what problem is it addressing?
What does it actually argue or establish?
What should be attributed to the source itself rather than to my interpretation of it?
Why does it matter here?
What part of the work does it illuminate, test, or bear against?
Does it support, extend, complicate, or challenge the work?
Agreement is not the only useful result.
Does anything need to change?
Does this source require a correction, a narrower claim, different terminology, a new comparison, or no change at all?
A note is not the source
Reading Notes are secondary records of my encounter with a source.
They should not substitute for reading the underlying work where the underlying work matters.
Quotations, page references, links, citations, and enough bibliographic information to recover the source should be included where possible.
Where I am uncertain about what a source means or how far it supports a claim, the note should say so.
Better terms are welcome
I am not trying to create new terminology where established language already does the work better.
If an existing concept, field, or author provides a clearer or more established account of something I have been trying to describe, the right response is usually to learn from it, use it accurately, and give credit.
Novelty is not the goal.
Usefulness, precision, and intellectual honesty matter more.
When reading changes the work
Some notes will have consequences beyond the note itself.
A source may:
- strengthen an existing argument;
- provide an important predecessor;
- expose an unsupported inference;
- require a citation or attribution change;
- show that two projects should be separated or connected differently;
- replace an internal term with established language;
- reopen something previously treated as settled;
- or show that a claim should be abandoned.
When that happens, the change should be carried into the relevant work rather than remaining isolated in a reading note.
What you will find here
Reading Notes may range across the same subjects as the wider publication:
Indigenous governance and sovereignty;
harm, evidence, property, and repair;
agency, freedom, and ethics;
knowledge, media, archives, and AI;
political economy;
art and aesthetics;
and other fields that become relevant to the questions being pursued.
The organizing question is not whether a source belongs neatly to one discipline.
It is:
What does this help us understand better, and what should change because we encountered it?