Ian: I got an idea for a paper.
Claude: Tell me. I’m curious what’s pulling at you. Where did it come from, and what’s the seed: a text, a scene from the field, a phrase that wouldn’t leave you alone?
Ian: I want to test you on that. You ready?
Claude: Ready. Though I’m not sure what “that” is yet: the paper idea, or whether I can meet it well? Either way, go ahead. Lay it out and I’ll push back where it pulls.
Ian: Go read the memory. Everything that you can drum up about me, and whatever we’ve been talking about, and whatever questions you think are eating at me, and then go into Readwise1 and find a quote that you think best speaks back to that.
Claude: I’ll start with the memory files, recent chats, and loading the Readwise tools.
Claude:
Read memory, loaded tools, used a tool
Claude: Memory and recent chats are loaded. Now searching your Readwise library along a few of the threads I’m seeing.
Used Readwise integration
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Done
Claude: The quote is from Ahn (2024) on the Zhuangzi. It has Zhuangzi proposing a position “halfway between worth and worthlessness,” then retracting it at once, because that middle spot is no refuge and trouble finds you there too.
[omitted for brevity]
Claude: I can’t see the paper idea yet, so this is triangulation. I’d bet it sits near this. Am I warm or cold?
Ian: Gimme a link to the whole quote.
Claude: “That is why Zhuangzi (2013) responds, ‘I would probably take a position halfway between worth and worthlessness’ (p.156).However, Zhuangzi (2013) quickly relinquishes this ‘central’ position as he continues, ‘But halfway between worth and worthlessness, though it might seem to be a good place, really is not—you will never get away from trouble there’ (p.156). Such notions as worth and worthless are merely readymade (yet provisional) and highly dichotomic measures…” (Ahn, 2024, p. 319).
Ian: When I read this passage, I’m drawn to the middle — that “halfway between worth and worthlessness.” And when I let the middle radiate into rest of the passage, I understand. I hear this.
Don’t be boring. Call it like you see it. Provoke them. Critique. But not too hard. They are sensitive, sensemaking beings.
I feel this — this idea of trying to perform to a liberal middle that sidesteps offense — to be a generalist, someone who reads broadly and dreams of having a strong yet empathic reply to any possible critique. This halfway position is where people go to steel oneself against criticism and, by extension, antagonistic encounters2.
To write is to experience what some call friction and others call conflict and others call both – a creative movement that encounters, deciphers, and ruptures into creations beyond “readymade (yet provisional) and highly dichotomic measures.” With structures, grids of intelligibility, and discourse, we oscillate between binaries. And to take a position that is halfway between requires one to live with the poles – to play with the poles to find spaces of otherwise.
Ian: And when you pick a Readwise quote after this, pick one that’s not about Zhuangzi. Because that is really abstract. We should try to get more concrete with something.
Claude:
Used Readwise integration, loaded a skill
Ran skill: verbatim-transcription
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Claude: The ideal of zhong yong has become one of the hallmarks of Chinese communication behavior. Unfortunately, its real meaning is often misunderstood as a quest for harmony at the expense of individuality through an avoidance of conflict (Lu, 1998, p. 160).
Ian: Claude catches me off guard. I do not know what 中庸 (zhōngyōng) is.
Or rather, I do not remember. There is so much we are asked to remember.
I think I read Lu (1998) in Pittsburgh, around Spring Break. So, the top half of this quote is opaque. But that blockage feeds into the second sentence. “Its real meaning is often misunderstood as a quest for harmony at the expense of individuality.” There is more scholarly or critical facet with me that wants to break the writing conditions of this paper — to look up exactly what 中庸 means or ask a follow-up question to Claude about what 中庸 means. But what does it mean to sit here and not pontificate on what I know, but instead speak on, or around, that which I do not know – to hold tension I may otherwise run to alleviate.
In our discipline I encounter countless conversations on reflexivity. And I think of a coat closet. I think of how many operationalize reflexivity a positionality statement – a coat closet where one can declare their goods and outer garments, put their garments into the closet, and join the party. We acknowledge the coats in the closet and then get down to the serious business of “doing academia.” Because we do rigorous scholarship here. We have standards that decide which and whose research is valid. But why does valid research have to be so transparent, linear, and uncompelling? Because it’s white? It’s not wrong. But since I’m white I’ll just talk about other things.
Do we leave a piece of our creative selves in that coat before it goes into the closet? Does committing oneself to an academic debate over what is “true,” “accurate,” or “correct” require us to shed our coats? Do we only wish to write in service of correct information arranged in logical arguments? Or do we also write to tell stories – to tell the story of the mythical other side of the brain? The side on which no one accepts the dollars of logic – where a new local currency of encounter takes shape.
Claude:
Used Readwise integration
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Claude: “Writing any kind of ethnography involves a strong commitment to tell things as you heard and saw them, not as you wanted them to be. Ethnography is different from fiction, where you can imagine what you don’t know, where you can fill in gaps in the historical record with the realities that might have been or realities that should have been. At the same time, more than ever, we are blurring genres, bending genres, leaving gatekeeping behind, and mixing introspective work with carefully researched public histories and sociopolitical contexts. It’s a new era of bricolage that involves art and aesthetics in a way that is exciting in how aware we’ve become of the infinite possibilities of language and multimodal forms of communication to make our stories come alive…” (Behar, 2025, p. 395).
Ian: The first half of this quote pulls me in, because I also have a strong commitment to writing. And in that first half, I feel a pull of binary thinking between “things as you heard them and saw them” and “things as you want them to be.”
I am reflexive. I am the instrument. But am I calibrated? To whom? For whom? Can I trust what I hear and see? Can I trust the readings of what I hear and see? Can I trust that participants trust readings of what I hear and see? I only know if I ask them – not to confirm but to story.
In fact, the most booming resonance right now is a fascinating conversation in Discourse and Society between Emanuel Schegloff (1999a, 1999b), a big name in conversation analysis (CA) and Michael Billig (1999a, 1999b), a big name in critical discourse analysis (CDA).
At the heart of this conversation is the question of what it means to actually “tell things as you heard and saw them, not as you wanted them to be.” Schegloff’s position advocates for a disciplined analysis of the encounter, avoiding the importation of macro-level sociological forces — a sociological tradition stemming Harold Garfinkel’s resistance to macro-level sociological analyses that reduce the individual to a cultural dope. But, as Billig suggests, no interaction happens in a vacuum. CA aims to understand interaction at an emic level while still carrying external epistemological assumptions, no? Are we ants in a massive system? When we analyze what the ants talk about and how they talk about it, how do we account for this? The interesting problem is that Schegloff (1999), while gesturing to a (1998) publication that sparked the whole conversation, also nods to aesthetic considerations in research – that our aesthetic decisions of how to represent and analyze data is a question of taste just as much as theory. Neither is innocent nor guilty in their epistemological commitments. I do not draw from CA hoping I can find the answers within the transcript alone. But the transcript can leave me wondering, encountering, thinking with, adopting the role of an unapologetic narrator.
And as a qualitative researcher who devours fiction these days, I think a lot about narration and storytelling. I recall interesting pages by Bruno Latour, who gives immense respect to fiction writers for their ability to play with storytelling – to give the reader an experience rather than convey knowledge. To return to the opening dichotomy of this passage: What is the role of storytelling in the space between telling things as you heard them and telling things as you wanted them to be? What desires do we evidence alongside our epistemic commitments when we write. We either do it intentionally or we do not. But we do it. Do we want to be transparent, systematic, or logical? Do we want to be creative, playful, or resonant? Are you already readying your comment that this is also a binary?
Latour’s point is that social scientists who import too much theory at the expense of illuminating data might as well become fiction writers – a craft fiction writers already have a stranglehold on. I, however, question the difference between good social science and good fiction writing from the perspective of storytelling – that one’s creative choices tell stories, even in a form of frication against disciplinary norms. These days, I therefore identify as a writer-who-is-also-a-researcher-i-guess. I tinker around a technological jungle of contemporary academic writing; editors, reviewers, and the technology of the IMRAD structure bow down to technological language. In academic publishing, the creative identity of a writer carries a cost – the cost of producing something seen as less than “real research.”
In our discipline, we often think through research writing as a very strict structure. Introduce the topic. What is the gap? How does your paper fill the gap? What did we know before? What did you do? What did you find? What do you know now? What should I do with this new knowledge? These questions constrain our inquiry practices – often before we even begin. It parallels the paradox of creative constraints. Guardrails allow divergent thinking to take flight. And, no creator and no creation emerges from a vacuum or view from nowhere.
Claude: “First, such an appreciation betrays a remarkable ignorance of the hard work of fiction writers. Those in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies—who pride themselves on ‘writing fictional narratives’— should be inspired in being at least as disciplined, as enslaved by reality, as obsessed by textual quality, as good writers can be…” (Latour, 2005, p. 126).
Ian: I think this is a good place to stop. I mean, I appreciate Claude coming and digging up the exact literal quote that I was pulling for, but this is too much. You’re just parroting back what I gesture at. I do not see anything new interesting to talk about at this time – no meaningful pushback. No friction. At this point, you are a conduit plugging two quotes. And I am the middleman in quality control. The friction has dissipated. I am a cog. It is not worth carrying on anymore. Because now question myself. Is our thinking converging? Are you trying to take control of the interaction? Or are you sychophanting to what I am saying? Lulling me to sleep? Honestly, I don’t really care. Because neither do you. But I would prefer to take my leave and enjoy my evening.
Ian: Done, that’s the end of the paper.
References:
Ahn, K. (2024). ‘Following along with things’ in different ways: Zhuangzi’s thoughts on how to manage external affairs. Asian Philosophy, 34(4), 308-326. https://doi.org/10.1080/09552367.2024.2344963
Behar, R. (2025). Commentary on “Unsettling the self: Autoethnography and related kin.” American Anthropologist, 127(2), 395-396. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.28064
Billig, M. (1999a). Conversation analysis and the claims of naivety. Discourse & Society, 10(4), 572-576.
Billig, M. (1999b). Whose terms? Whose ordinariness? Rhetoric and ideology in conversation analysis. Discourse & Society, 10(4), 543-558. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926599010004005
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford University Press.
Lu, X. (1998). Rhetoric in ancient China, fifth to third century B.C.E.: A comparison with classical Greek rhetoric. University of South Carolina Press.
Schegloff, E. A. (1997). Whose text? Whose context? Discourse & Society, 8(2), 165-187.
Schegloff, E. A. (1999a). Naivete vs. sophistication or discipline vs. self-indulgence: A rejoinder to Billig. Discourse & Society, 10(4), 577-582.
Schegloff, E. A. (1999b). “Schegloff’s texts” as “Billig’s data”: A critical reply. Discourse & Society, 10(4), 558-572. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926599010004006
Zhuangzi. (2013). The complete works of Zhuangzi (B. Watson, Trans.). Columbia University Press. (Original work ca. 3rd century BCE)
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