Acknowledgments

Graham Harman has an interesting post explaining his reservations on the use of acknowledgments. He cites two reasons: fear of boring the reader and fear of excluding the reader, by erecting an impressive list of distinguished names. Preferring to give gifts by way of acknowledgment, for Harman, all that matters is the relationship between the author and the reader. The same is true for dedications, which, in large, establishes a level of intimacy into which the reader is excluded.

It’s an interesting perspective on an important matter, but I have my doubts. Certainly it could be the case that dedications are employed as status beacons, asserting an authority by proxy. My The Aesthetics of Decay is dedicated to Giya Kancheli, with an accompanying line from Rene Char. Although this sentiment was and is entirely heartfelt (the opening bars of Vom Winde Beweint were the catalyst for the book, however conceited that sounds), three years on (to the day!), the audacity of the dedication is quite outlandish. Now that I am writing the acknowledgments for the second book, I cannot imagine a dedication to a parallel inspiration, David Cronenberg being the immediate comparison. The reason being, I would not assume that the sentiment of the dedication would be reciprocated, and a dedication made in vanity to a distant subject reeks too much of one-sided adoration (Incidentally, I know of a recently published book on Heidegger, the dedication of which was to the author’s then girlfriend. By the time the author had to submit the book to the publisher, the couple had split up. By this time, however, the dedication was in print, leaving the published book with an especially intimate dedication to an irreconcilable moment. And I point this out by way of interest, not facetious amusement, as it points to the singularity of the book's writing as being wholly different to its production). Nonetheless, The Aesthetics of Decay was written when I was 26, totally alienated from my academic studies and surroundings, and harbouring a fathomless reserve of existential melancholia. Those conditions were empowering, and the success of that book was confirmed by Kancheli’s warm response to me, both in person and in letter.

But this is a discursive way of saying the following: it is not enough to impart gifts and thank friends and colleagues in private. Not because it is a question of courtesy, but because a book, being a spatial and temporal thing, must bear the physical imprints of those who shine and shed an influence on it. Otherwise, the implication, I think, is far greater than the risk of boring the reader: namely, the book is presented as an autonomous thing, written in a cocoon. True, this is a much broader claim about memory and writing, which in the climate of open source publishing might merit re-examination. Is a book really analogous to a monument? Does it merit bearing witness to those who were instrumental in its development? After all, getting a book published in the traditional academic way is not an easy task, especially for a first-time author, and the process is rarely unscathed by external aspects. There is perhaps an imperative here to inscribe a presence of those who lived alongside the writing. The tribulation involved in this might well be different with other modes of publishing, however, possibly involving a more fluid process between writing and publishing.

At any rate, Harman’s reservations appear prima facie at odds with his commitment to the philosopher’s biography, which I would agree with. A book, wherever it is published, is invariably a messy affair, a sticky hybrid of the “personal” and the “professional,” and more or less an ambiguous chunk of space between these poles. Seldom is a list of names an indulgence and that alone. No, it seems to me that an extend list of names, unless it involves cryptic allusions and insular remarks, does not exclude the reader, but invites them into an already established world in which they themselves are now contributing.