Exploded Views: Speculative Form and the Labor of Inquiry

Idiosyncratic essays use their “exploded” forms to examine how inquiry functions Insect galls, time, memory systems, orgone energy, and a bookstore that doesn’t yet exist. These disparate topics have persistently fascinated scholar Jonathan P. Eburne, yet each defied his previous efforts at classification through scholarly writing, resulting in five essays suspended in process. In Exploded Views, Eburne returns to these essays with the metaphorical tool of the exploded-view diagram, expanding them into entirely new, hybrid forms that unpack their inspirations and trace the wayward paths they followed. An experiment into the nature of inquiry that spelunks, rather than shies from, the rabbit holes of scholarly curiosity, each essay gives way to sidelights and dilations to reveal the palimpsest of knowledge hiding beneath the surface of the academic form. A book about process-the process of turning ideas into things, and vice versa, as well as the particular tendency for research, scholarly inquiry, and critical writing to come apart and go awry-Exploded Views is a refreshing exploration of how the tools of creative critical thinking work at their most basic level. Reflecting on the methods of scholarly knowledge production and the contextual factors that shape new ideas, Eburne boldly replaces the seamlessness of the finished manuscript with the friction and even messiness of the incomplete, inviting readers to think in new and invigorating ways.

Table of Contents:
Contents Preface 1. Entomological Islands, or Why Not Live in a Tree? 2. The Orgone Box 3. The Memory Tower: On Leonora Carrington 4. Meth Time: Facing the Present 5. What Will You Make? Conclusion: Pleine Marge / Full Margin Acknowledgments Notes Index

About the Author :
Jonathan P. Eburne is professor of comparative literature, English, and French and Francophone studies at The Pennsylvania State University. He is author of the award-winning Outsider Theory: Intellectual Histories of Unorthodox Ideas (Minnesota, 2018). He is also on the team launching a new nonprofit bookstore and culture space in central Pennsylvania, The Print Factory (www.printfactorybellefonte.org).

Review :
"This book is explosive! Taking failed writing experiments as their own invitation to thought, Jonathan Eburne explodes writing (and the written) to pieces. Pulling those pieces close, he reveals the riot of accidents, promiscuities, and infelicities that make writing as possible as it is impossible. What a weird and welcome journey."-Perry Zurn, author of Curiosity and Power: The Politics of Inquiry "Following intricate nodes of curiosity-from insect galls to CPAP machines, from desire, death, and drugs to bookstores-Exploded Views re-members, works through, and renders palpable the messy and contradictory process of scholarly–creative labor. This book is a funny, smart, and incisive invitation to change our shapes within and without the academy, with care and vulnerability at the heart of every laboring gesture."-Natalie Loveless, author of How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation