I think often about finding the shape of a project, the form it needs to inhabit.
In academic science, it is possible to avoid searching for the shape of a project altogether. The system hands us an acceptable, legible form—the scientific paper in a peer-reviewed journal with a particular subject-matter scope. Of course, predetermined shapes constrain. If we only had bundt tins, we would only make one shape of cake.
These days, most of the ideas that move me are not just wildly cross-disciplinary but are also built from threads of connection between the academic, the personal, and the political. Many luminous writers before me have worked with some of the same ideas as me. Many of them have placed these ideas into the form of scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals. I could do the same, but I’ve realized that if I did, I’d largely be replicating their work.
I’d rather work in concert with them—I can see what they wrote, the impact their work had, and then ask myself, “how do I move us further towards our shared goal, from my particular vantage point, at an angle that plays to my strengths, in the direction of the audience that I think I can reach, want to reach, needs reaching?”
Asking myself this question has taken me far from the form of the scientific paper into a land of few, new, and confusing constraints. Exploring this land of possibility has been weird. I’ve learnt that the only way to navigate it, in the absence of a prescribed path, is to tune into the inner voice telling me which ways to go and the outer voices showing me the consequences of choosing those directions. More on listening to these voices another time 🙂
Ambika Kamath 