Open Peer Review of ‘Reverse Scholarship as Solidarity After Progress‘

Jennifer Wolgemuth (reviewer)

Roger Magazine & Gabriela Méndez Cota (co-authors)

From: Jennifer Wolgemuth
Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2024 5:02 PM
To: Magazine Nemhauser Roger; Méndez Cota Gabriela
Subject: Re: Initiating the open peer-review process for Culture Machine special issue “Publishing after Progress”: Gabriela and Roger, meet Jenni; Jenni, meet Gabriela and Roger

¡Este mensaje fue enviado por alguien ajeno a la Universidad!
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Hi Roger and Gabriela!

Wow. I loved reading your manuscript. You will see I mostly offered editorial suggestions and exclamations of joy and approval. I only had one wondering about the set-up (and implicit take-down) of liberal humanism that you may want to consider.

Beyond that – I’m so grateful for this process, reading a provocative manuscript that got me thinking and reflecting differently on modes of being ‘productively’ out of tune with academic capitalism, and being introduced to theorists and scholars I had yet to meet – like some you cite and both of you!

This was a joyous and generate experience for me and all it took was to couch peer review in those terms. I hope you feel similarly, or at least not too put off 🙂. I will be reflecting on this experience for some time and expect I will incorporate it into future peer review practices.

Here’s a link to the document with my comments:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yJf0XrwQ4hFGkhP0LVU4v9Vo5596gb6o/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=101794337387606109356&rtpof=true&sd=true

I’m happy to correspond more if you want, or just to wait patiently to see your revisions and conclusion!

Cheers,
Jenni

Jennifer R. Wolgemuth, Ph.D.
(she/her/hers/they/them/theirs) What’s this?
Professor (coming soon, Fall 2024) of Measurement and Research
Educational and Psychological Studies | College of Education
Director: Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research
Coordinator: Interdisciplinary Education PhD
Affiliate Faculty Women’s and Gender Studies
University of South Florida

From: Méndez Cota Gabriela
Sent: Friday, July 19, 2024 4:05 AM
To: Jennifer Wolgemuth
Cc: Magazine Nemhauser Roger
Subject: Thank you, second draft

Dear Jenni,

Many thanks for your questions and thoughts. I was able to read them immediately and rewrote the draft trying to clarify the issue of ‘being nicer to each other’ in connection with liberal humanism and neoliberalism (which are related, but not the same thing).

As you well point out, it did need clarifying that Roger and I are not against being nicer to each other. In the new draft we’ve tried to articulate, with more nuance, the contrast between well-meaning, liberal solidarity among individuals and a more radical kind of solidarity, which would at least try to articulate itself as collective agency, and therefore aligning ‘reverse scholarship’ with the latter as the material, collaborative and creative version of ‘being nicer to each other’.

Since, for this second draft, I focused on responding to your main questions by making this contrast clearer, and on improving the structure of the article as a whole (following your suggestion of expanding the introduction, which led me to further restructuring of the content), I haven’t yet included all of your editorial suggestions, but will do so in August when Roger and I are able to meet again back in Mexico.

I’m sharing the new draft as part of the processual open peer review, in case you, Jenni, can have a look and tell us if the introduction works better now, and if the first section on being nice to each other now responds adequately to the questions you posed. That would be helpful, and any further questions or thoughts from you will be of great help for Roger and I when we finally sit to do the final revision of the article.

All best,

Gabriela and Roger

From: Jennifer Wolgemuth
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2024 8:12 AM
To: Méndez Cota Gabriela
Cc: Magazine Nemhauser Roger
Subject: Re: Thank you, second draft

¡Este mensaje fue enviado por alguien ajeno a la Universidad!
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Hi Gabriela and Roger,

I love the revised introduction! Particularly your invitation to the reader to follow your non-instrumental conversation into something that could be a linear articulated argument or something more wandering, but poignant. Lovely!

And I think the revised section on being nice is excellent – the contrast between being nice and radical solidarity is now much clearer for me.

Again, it’s been my honor to engage your work!