Pulling Down The Rankings

In this paper I begin in the middle where I grapple with the strictures of the Goldberg machine of academic publishing and the molar order that I must choose wisely where I publish so as not to ‘pull down the rankings’. I illustrate ways in which I had strapped myself to the ligatures of the ERA operating table as I set about becoming conversant with the final object – a publication that counts. I draw attention to ways in which I had become the diligent academic subject – a competent user of SCImago (http://www.scimagojr.com) to determine what journals were worthy of publishing in so I too could be counted. I then engage with a series of emails/voices/conversations/dreams that pry open the illusion that it is only the Goldberg Machine that counts. I define these emails/voices/conversation/dreams as a series of forces producing an open system of tensions and contradictions, and therefore, permitting an infinite number of connections that refused to be organised or compartmentalized. In effect, what was happening was the releasing of desire from the stricture of Oedipus, permitting desire to enter into new relationships and new connections. Through these new relationships and connections I no longer was the compliant academic subject seeking a publication that counted and instead I cried out; STUFF THEM! I was tired and exhausted. I needed to experiment. I needed to find a place to be something other. A space in which I could:
lodge [myself] on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers, find advantageous place on it, find potential movements of deterritorialisation, possible lines of flight, experience them, produce flow conjunctions here and there, try out continuums of intensities segment by segment, have a small plot of new land at all times. (Delueze and Guattari, 2004, p.161)