On June 1 I finally completed my doctoral dissertation defense. At last I’ve set down one major burden, and can gradually begin rebuilding this blog, which has long lain barren. Let me start with a couple of post-defense reflections.
My dissertation did not include a “postscript” or “acknowledgments”; instead, in the final paragraph of the conclusion, I embedded a note of gratitude to my teachers and friends in the Wu circle in the form of a reflexive examination. On the one hand, this was part of my dissertation’s design of “self-entanglement”; on the other hand, I also did not really want to stage a deliberately sentimental expression of feeling at the very end of the dissertation.
In my view, the reason a dissertation needs an acknowledgment section is mainly to express confirmation of, and respect for, the oral environment. For anything in a dissertation that benefits from written materials can be represented in the main text through proper citation, but the parts that benefit from an oral environment are hard to cite. For example, the help I received from Professor Wu and the students in the discussion seminars was probably far more important than the effect of any single piece of literature, yet I can hardly cite their specific published arguments, because most of these influences took place within the oral environment of the seminars. Out of respect, a dissertation like a degree thesis, which must necessarily benefit from oral traditions, really does need an acknowledgment section.
But the main function of a degree thesis is still to secure the degree; in terms of an academic career, it is at most a starting point, far from mature, let alone an achievement of any kind. At such a time, lavish thanks somehow feels inappropriate. This is especially true with regard to one’s advisor: after all, the advisor is supposed to bear at least half the responsibility for the dissertation, and readers will naturally assign both credit and blame to the advisor’s head. There is really no need to emphasize that any further.
If one continues on the academic path after graduation, the best way to thank one’s advisor is none other than to surpass him. In fact, in philosophy, it is inherently very difficult to speak of one scholar surpassing another, because it is hard to find a common standard of measurement across different schools of thought. Yet students alone may indeed surpass their advisors, because they can share the same academic tradition and have similar scholarly aspirations; if they can then enter fields that the advisor pointed out but has not yet stepped into, or accomplish work that the advisor hoped to do but has not yet completed, then one can properly speak of surpassing.
Graduate graduation is undoubtedly also a symbolic dividing line: after graduation, no matter how much one continues to be influenced by one’s advisor, one must set up one’s own banner. But setting up one’s own banner is no easy matter. It is not something you can achieve merely by shutting yourself in and gnawing over books and writing a few articles; otherwise the “folk scientists” and “folk philosophers” would all count as having established themselves. The broader academic climate and the smaller one are both necessary conditions; in particular, the smaller environment, more concretely the oral environment formed by colleagues and students, is actually quite important. This is why, in the contemporary age of advanced communications, even though scholars anywhere can easily access literature from around the globe, when it comes to academic schools, they still often revolve around certain geographic centers.
That is why, when I was looking for work, I gave priority to universities with a more distinct teaching atmosphere rather than institutes like the Chinese Academy of Sciences or the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; I gave priority to comprehensive universities with a background in philosophy and the humanities rather than technical universities. Of course, if one can be given a great deal of free space, then going anywhere and building one’s own micro-environment is also fine, but clearly I could not expect to enjoy any particularly generous treatment from the very beginning.
After I begin working, besides working for a new boss, I will also continue the work I have already been doing, but I should be able to loosen up somewhat, break away from these scholars of media ecology, and do more research that emphasizes themes rather than personalities. As for specialist terms such as “ontology” and “transcendental philosophy,” I also hope to gradually downplay them.
As for this dissertation, because of various reasons, it was subject to many constraints. First, it was constrained by these figures, because when doing philosophy, if one speaks entirely in one’s own voice, it can feel very unsafe; doing research on thinkers and figures is a relatively steady choice. Of course, a master with deep skill can also build his own thought by borrowing others’ words in the form of “the Six Classics comment on me,” but if one’s skill is not sufficient, and one cannot command other people’s thought, then one will often be constrained by it instead. My doctoral dissertation is a typical case of this. On the one hand I had great ambition and wanted to use the Six Classics to comment on me; on the other hand I did not have that kind of command, nor the skill of editing the Spring and Autumn Annals with a brush, so when dealing with each figure I often found it hard to make subtle choices and exclusions. The result was that the whole thing appeared rather scattered, and my own main line of thought was instead buried.
Second, the whole process of writing the dissertation was not accomplished in one continuous sweep, but was gradually accumulated and linked together from several shorter papers written in different periods. Yet when I wrote those parts at the time, I did not yet have an overall goal to guide me; and when I later organized them into one large dissertation, although I made many revisions and additions, at times this only made the scattering worse. In particular, when I write ordinary papers, I often tend to prepare the materials and then wait until the last one or two days before the deadline to write everything in one breath, and after finishing I am very unwilling to revise them for some time. Yet in any case, writing a dissertation of over one hundred thousand characters in one sitting is truly difficult. Though not impossible, I would not dare use a doctoral dissertation as an experiment.
So the whole dissertation looks very disordered in terms of structure and rhythm. This style is not entirely without its advantages: this self-entangled, fragmented structure actually allows for greater room for interpretation and maneuver, but for the examiners of a degree thesis it is a source of pain. It was also thanks to the kindness of the teachers, or their reluctance to waste talent, that they did not make things too difficult for me. In fact I know full well that, as a degree thesis, this article was written with a bit too much swagger.
At the defense I also mentioned that, regarding the ideas in this article, I may separately rewrite them into another book to develop them further, perhaps more smoothly. I have already thought of the title: Technics and Memory. Starting from personal, experiential self-reflection and writing all the way to the history of technology, from the technics of memory to the memory of technics.
Of course, even if I say so, this book probably will not appear in the next few years. Before that, I still have to endure two more years of postdoctoral work, and then strive for a faculty position; only then might I be able to brew up a monograph written in one continuous flow. As for the postdoctoral period, I’ll first follow Teacher Tian and do some work on the history of rubbish and quantum philosophy.
Finally, regarding Bitcoin, I will also begin writing a series of more in-depth articles. The plan for now is not to discuss Bitcoin directly, but instead to focus on the general issue of money and try writing a few pieces on the history of money and the phenomenology of money. Tentative titles include: Value and Time, Market and Nature, Network and Freedom, The Source of All Evil—Money and Value, as well as notes on the Austrian School of economics (very likely from a critical angle).
By the way: because graduation is not yet fully complete, I will not post my dissertation for now, but when the time comes I will make the electronic version of the thesis public on the blog.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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