Why Editing?
This special issue emerged from a workshop that Maria M. Delgado and Joanne Tompkins held at the University of Queensland during the former’s residency as the 2013 George Watson Visiting Fellow. Each of us had longstanding interests and experiences in editing theatre journals and books, although mostly from different national contexts. We wanted to bring together a series of researchers working across the multiple disciplines that comprised what was then the Faculty of Arts (now the much larger Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences), including Music, Gender Studies, Literature, Cultural Studies, Film and Television, Theatre and Drama, Professional Writing, Creative Writing, German, French, Communication as well as academic staff working in disciplines further afield, such as Architecture and staff from the Library. We felt that this would be a productive way to probe how colleagues in our disciplines as well as in neighbouring areas were grappling with a series of changes facing editors in an era of electronic publishing and open access. The changes in the print and digital worlds are affecting how we record performance and the past, while Internet resources are also significantly altering the process of editing. What might this mean for our practices as editors and how might this shape the ways in which we negotiate the politics of editing both in the present and in the future?
The discussions that took place that day have fed into this issue in a range of constructive ways. The interdisciplinarity of the event established some of the standard problems and issues across the humanities, but it led to us deciding to investigate these matters much more closely through a focus on theatre and performance. While the Australian event brought together different practices, this special issue focuses more on the discipline of theatre and performance. We have not, however, been exclusive: necessarily, researching and publishing in our disciplines require an understanding of the challenges and opportunities that face adjacent fields. This issue, then, includes contributions from scholars working in music, film, and textual studies as well as the perspective of a leading publisher working across both theatre and music. The account of theatre and performance further includes play editing, moving from the rehearsal room to the printed text, and the place of images. In fact, as Peter Eckersall advocates in his contribution to this issue, editing even enacts a ‘vital role’ in developing ‘more interdisciplinarity in our own field by creating more publications that include wider discursive parameters’ (p. 100). What both the initial workshop and this issue clarify is that editing is anything but a static practice – while there are common elements, there are significant differences across journals and contexts, as the contributions by Marvin Carlson and W. B. Worthen explore further (see pp. 17–19, 90–93).
Our contributors inevitably introduce divergent approaches to their discussions of editing as well: for instance, some authors, such as Jill Dolan, Caridad Svich, and Bonnie Marranca (see pp. 57–60, 108–11, 133–34), advocate for the reflective art of writing in theatre and performance, whereas Christopher Balme and Joseph Roach explore the opportunities to be gained from the ‘writing up of the results’ approach that is more familiar in the sciences (see pp. 49–53, 29–31).
The larger place of editing practice, rather than the detail of and variations in its processes, serves as a way of reflecting on how editing is constructed and managed in our sector, although those matters of detail also inevitably emerge. The politics of editing figures strongly through discussions of the often unpaid – and sometimes unacknowledged – labour that editing necessarily requires. Editing is often conducted and completed against the clock of publishing deadlines. There is seldom an opportunity to discuss the politics or to compare notes on differences across journals or disciplines. Discussions between editors and researchers are usually limited to sessions at conferences geared for early career researchers on ‘how to get published’. Certainly these conversations are useful for their immediate purposes, but there is clearly more to the endeavour than an exhortation to read the submission guidelines before submitting would suggest.
Yet the practice of editing remains one of the essentials of the academic process: academics need to publish their research, and journals are the most likely place to publish. Journals need to fill their pages, and the standing of a journal is in many cases determined by the quality of the papers it publishes and the effort to enhance submissions so that they reach its required standard. Books and book series present their own editing practices (and challenges), as Maggie B. Gale and Brian Singleton address in these pages (see pp. 80–83, 26–29). The place of editing in the context of research quality and impact exercises is, we believe, essential for us to define (and re-define) today. It takes shape through quality that can ostensibly be measured in journal rankings, journal citations and impact, as well as through the improvements in writing that can be witnessed when an editor takes the time to clarify, extend, challenge, and illuminate an argument.
Editing presents an opportunity to understand our disciplines from a different perspective: when our research is edited, we learn much more about the critical response to our work, about the clarity (or otherwise) of the argument, about the depth of the engagement in the topic. Editing is about the encounter with another, about other opinions coming into play as we reshape our thoughts in writing. Editors also learn about an incredibly broad range of topics and approaches, vicariously absorbing many more texts and tropes than we could through our own research. And this is aside from the minutiae of grammar, structure, style, formatting, and referencing that are all part of the relationship between editor and author.
The Value of Editing/The Editing of Value
Editing is too often seen as something somehow separate from our writing practices. Editing is often perceived to be more about our civic responsibilities and service to the discipline than our creative and intellectual ideas. And yet editors, whether of book series or journals, play a key role in forging new subdisciplinary fields. The shaping of a special issue of a journal or an edited book can enhance – and even form and transform – the ways we think about a sub-discipline and, as Victoria Cooper and W.B. Worthen both note (pp. 129, 92), about the formation of the field. Editors are thus both reactive and proactive. They respond to emerging trends and initiatives but also commission publications in areas of debate or disquiet. They explore the faultlines and fissures and try to find ways of considering how certain motifs, practices, and critiques operate. Editing is a constant process of negotiation and conceptualization; about the transplanting of ideas, the re-situation of concerns – a way of thinking about what we publish and why, a way of really shaping how our discipline develops and what matters to us as scholars and practitioners. Crucially it also relies on teamwork. Editors are collaborators who offer detailed reading both of particular pieces of writing and of the wider field into which they position those pieces.
Barthes and Foucault may have tried to probe more expanded understandings of authorship,Footnote1 but the ‘originality’ of the author still dominates how we think about our contribution to the discipline. The invisibility of the editor comes in part from the need that our institutional contexts still place on the pursuit of individual excellence. Collaboration is valued in the competitive field of major grant awards but seen as less desirable in the field of authorship which still functions within the paradigms of distinct endeavour and achievement. The peer-reviewed monograph, book chapter, and article still function as the key measure of academic scholarship in North America and Australasia. The importance of Practice as Research as a key mode of inquiry and dissemination for research findings lies also in the fact that editorial practices are built into its very DNA – from the engagement with feedback from its audience to the editorial shaping that often happens in the rehearsal room, as Gay McAuley’s piece in the subsequent pages articulates (pp. 35–38). Caridad Svich and Janet Harbord’s contributions to this issue demonstrate the centrality of editing practices to the making of work in ways that make visible this most invisible of labours (pp. 108–11, 68–72).
Indeed the invisibility of editorial work is a key trope running through this volume – from Catherine Silverstone’s coverage of the collaborative work involved in textual editing (p. 64–65) to Peter Eckersall’s listing of the ‘spectrum of activities’, from copy-editing to the development of book series or themed journal issues (p. 98) – that underpins editorial production. ‘Editing is work’, W.B. Worthen reminds us (p. 91). It is ‘contextual’, writes Claire MacDonald; ‘[i]t frames, it fosters, it alerts’ (p. 95). ‘Editing is production, not postproduction’, Janet Harbord notes (p. 72). It is, according to Nicholas Cook, a ‘performative’ act (p. 123). Editorial labour effectively underpins our academic publishing culture. We all publish in places where there are editors and editing. From the commissioning editors of our major publishers who bring their own commercial and artistic priorities to their conversations with potential authors to the copy editors who work to shape (or in some cases mis-shape) our prose, as Penny Farfan notes in her essay (p. 112).
Taste functions as the one unarticulated topic in this discussion. Many of us will have had the experience of sending a paper to a journal that rejected it, when a comparable journal, catering to a different taste, readily accepted it. Yet it is not easy to articulate issues of divergent taste (and aesthetics) to a disappointed author whose piece has just been turned down. While our own editorial practices at Modern Drama, Contemporary Theatre Review, and Theatre Journal have been driven by a desire to publish a range of scholarship in areas that go beyond our personal taste, interests or priorities, we recognise the ways in which our experiences and our desires to address particular disciplinary issues or offer a space to emerging debates has shaped our editorial vision.
Editors rely on both instinct and experience. They draw on the wider context of what they read to prioritise new areas for development, to think through thorny practices and concerns, to probe that which may lie unarticulated or unspoken. The editorial – the foreword to a book series, the introduction to a journal or edited collection – serves as the most conspicuous mode of making visible that which too often lies hidden beneath the prose of the ‘finished’ piece. Critical editions offer a further indication of this selective process of curation. The politics of editing is, in many ways, about making visible – in its multifaceted way – the many practices of editing. The publisher should make clear what the processes are (methodologies of selection, the modes in which material is filtered, how the publication process operates) while the editor(s) oversee and orchestrate this process. In this activity, editors function as mediators trying to wade through the differing opinions in search of overriding comments and observations to distil through the author in compressed form. Kent Anderson writes of the ‘distrust’ of ‘human failings’ that often ‘accompany any involvement in the process’ and how this might, when combined with ‘an unwavering belief that technology can solve any problem’ result in a situation where the lead editor is viewed with a degree of scepticism. But science, as he goes on to note, ‘is a human endeavor at its base, one that is implicitly a meritocracy. Meritocracies need judges. Editors are, to some degree, important judges in the process.’Footnote2
This view of the editor as judge is evidenced in a number of the contributions to this volume. Jean Graham-Jones and Freddie Rokem both highlight the particular issues involved in the dominance of the English-language as a first language as the lingua franca of ‘excellent’ scholarship and the problematic colonialist assumptions of such a position. Their practice as editors of Theatre Journal and Theatre Research International was articulated in particular decisions about the scope of what was published with a proactive policy of firstly seeking out work about non-Anglophone theatre practice and secondly supporting articles produced by scholars not working in English as a first language. Such issues are further picked up by Christopher Balme, Paul Rae and Miguel Escobar in their contributions which make visible the sensitive issues involved in rethinking the practices that have dominated English-language scholarship in theatre studies over the past 50 years.
And yet too often the markers of excellence are framed not by editors, but rather through peer review. Peer review signals validation, a process of scrutiny, endorsed quality. Peer review, however, often throws up conflicting reviews, contested messages, and a focus on how the reviewer might have written the piece rather than trying to articulate the particular line of an author’s argument. Perhaps most concerning of all is that, at a time when academics are facing more and more demands on their time, it is proving harder and harder to convince colleagues to act as peer reviewers. Or that peer review itself is being refashioned in the age where the World Wide Web offers a different kind of forum for the dissemination of research.
There is, as Joshua Abrams notes in his contribution, little training for editing: one acquires it on the job, so to speak. Some journals, like Modern Drama, Western European Stages (now European Stages), and Contemporary Theatre Review, offer graduate students the opportunity to work as an editorial assistant. A significant number of journals and book series are run by lead editors or an editor and associate rather than a single editor. As such discussions are built into the fabric of the editorial labour; discussions continued across the practice of curating and preparing the contributions for publication.
Mapping Writing from ‘Call for Papers’ to ‘Dissemination’
In putting together this special issue, we refined our lengthy list of potential topics following the session at UQ, and then considered who might be best placed to discuss the ones that we had selected. We aimed for a broad, international list of editors to address the topics.Footnote3 A surprising number of potential contributors to whom we wrote accepted the offer, which, we believe, reinforces the need to address the practice of editing – and the absence of opportunities to do so. In some cases, the authors we approached proposed refinements or alternatives to our topics. Other authors accepted their terms, sometimes somewhat uncertain initially about how to unpick and unpack them. We were pleased with the innovative ways in which they responded to the topics, frequently raising points for discussion that extended well beyond what we anticipated.
The issue is shaped by the practice of editing itself so all contributors are editors with experience working across different fora – from blogging to the digital humanities, book series to journals, reference encyclopaedias to pedagogical materials. It maps the journey of a piece of writing from call for papers to dissemination; and from call for peer review for books to the index. The topics move from the stage of commissioning work to the process of authoring – across multiple platforms – and then to submission, to curation, to production, and finally to dissemination. But to reflect the process of producing research that will appear in an edited journal or book – never a straight line – we intercut this path with other interpretations of editing. The issue is structured by seven such interpretations of editing: editing in journals, editing in the rehearsal room, editing in film/montage/moving image, editing critical editions, editing and playwriting, editing in music, and what we call the ‘remains’, or what hasn’t been able to be contained into an issue or even in the rare conversations about editing that do sometimes occur. What is left when the edited article, chapter or volume is out in the public domain? These perspectives include pieces that focus on editing in other disciplines but that also speak to the interdisciplinary links of our field. Even the book review section takes into account the practice and outcomes of editing, as does Interventions, the online forum of Contemporary Theatre Review.
While we sought a broad range of topics, we also aimed to preserve overlaps in practice, and several of the contributions intersect, speaking to each other in useful ways. Helen Nicholson writes of the importance of a editor trying to ‘understand the circumstances in which the research was undertaken’ (p. 22), a point echoed in Simon Williams’s comment on the task of an editor to ensure the writer’s voice is heard and not replaced (p. 25). The need to support and assist, enrich and enlighten similarly runs through Penny Farfan and Richard Fortheringham’s contributions on copy-editing and indexing. Joseph Roach’s observation that in posing the question ‘What’s new?’, editors examine the relationship between primary and secondary sources (pp. 30–31), is probed also by D. J. Hopkins, Ric Knowles, Gay McAuley, and Caridad Svich in their consideration of the dramaturgical function of editing (pp. 83–86, 53–56, 35–38, 108–11), Gordon McMullan in his reflections on editing Shakespeare’s Complete Works and Paul Allain and Jennifer Parker-Starbuck in their explorations of archives and editing. Claire MacDonald and Gordon McMullan root their editorial practice in the fundamental question of who they are editing for (pp. 94–97, 76–79). This sense of overlapping practice accounts for the commonalities in editing, while leaving room for readers to explore the distinctive approaches, varying philosophies, and divergent practices that different journals seek. The intersections (and clashes) between print and the digital circulate through and among these essays. They also speak to the particular issues and dilemmas faced by editors in their day-to-day work.
A number of our contributors speak to the ‘craft’ of editing (not least Simon Williams who writes on this specific term through his own experience editing The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Stage Actors and Acting), but the assemblage of voices in this issue establishes the need for editing to become more recognised as an academic skill, an activity that is essential for the articulation of the individual voice and for the greater development of the field. Focusing on terms such as craft (see p. 23) or self-editing, which Jill Dolan explores so eloquently (pp. 57–60), makes visible the invisible, putting on the record the stages of encounter with words and ideas and images that comprise both writing and editing. Editing is indeed shown, as Patrick Lonergan and Karen Fricker’s essays also observe (pp. 72–76, 39–45), not to be something that only ‘editors’ do but rather a mode of writing, a form of reflection, a way of refashioning our ideas and thoughts. Editing is the unarticulated methodology that shapes all our scholarly practice to a lesser or greater degree.
Exploring the editing process has put us in the position of editing very experienced editors, a situation that itself has given us pause, as D. J. Hopkins explores in his contribution on, appropriately enough, collaboration (pp. 83–86). This kind of direct dialogue about how one edits and what the effects of editing are is rarely available to editors or authors. It has engendered yet more discussion for us about what it is that an editor does, how that work is best achieved, and how such efforts are never the purview of a single person: the collaboration and teamwork required for editing do, like theatre itself, return to a shared past to (re-)generate the future. In addition, it reminds us of the effect of the ‘return’ in editing: rewriting, reworking, reframing, revising, resubmitting. Writing about the preponderance of ‘re’ words associated with editing, Ric Knowles notes, regarding one in particular, that the ‘“re” in reworking does a great deal of productive work’ (p. 55).
Provocations and Conversations
This issue does not attempt to be exhaustive but rather to send out some provocations and question some assumptions about how scholarship in our discipline is constructed and engaged with. We hope it will have value for postgraduates in thinking how they place their own scholarly interventions within the wider discipline as well as wider issues around authorship and collaboration. Scholars with experience in the actual processes of editing diverse academic texts from encyclopaedias to textual editing to book series provide their insights into the practice of editing within our field at a time when it is on the verge of major shifts. A number of contributions look back to the editing practices of the past (as with Nicholas Cook, Gordon McMullan, and Catherine Silverstone’s essays) and forward to the possibilities that digital technology offers in the future (as with Karen Fricker, Helena Grehan and Jennifer Parker-Starbuck’s pieces).Footnote4
These provocations are set within a genuinely interdisciplinary context bringing into the discussions the views of eminent scholar-editors working in music, film, and textual studies in the hope of expanding and testing ideas in the sector. Certain issues emerge from the array of contributions collected here: predominantly the sense of editing as an ongoing process of detailed reading or ways of reading the micro and the macro. In the UQ workshop, the feminist scholar Carole Ferrier spoke of editing as a ‘political act’, a way of making manifest the curatorial decisions that are made in any act of making. An ethical responsibility is always matched by an archaeological impulse. Maggie B. Gale’s contribution discusses the idea of recovery and retrieval, of thinking about how we reposition the works of the past (pp. 81–83) and how we use that to rethink our present and think through what the future might hold. Editing is our way of keeping up with what’s happening in the discipline and commenting on it.
In tracing some of the ways that we work through editorial matters while also reinforcing the shifts in how editing matters and manifests for its readership, we hope to have shown the ways in which these practices shape our disciplinary landscape. Increasingly, the nature of editing is transforming as publication and writing metamorphose with the technological and aesthetic possibilities of digital platforms. Digital humanities projects help augment publication practices, sparking not just online journals but new forms of editing. Perhaps, in the digital age, it is the reader who will increasingly function as the editor of their own virtual issue of the reading they put together for their own research. As online, open access journals proliferate and on-demand printing reshapes the market, the role of the editor is shifting. Manuscripts are increasingly posted in institutional repositories and on authors’ homepages so it may be search engines and the social network of the World Wide Web that offer the curatorial function once negotiated by editors. David Barnett, Peter Eckersall, Helena Grehan, Claire MacDonald, Bonnie Marranca, and Jennifer Parker-Starbuck all engage with the technological shifts and pragmatic challenges that editors now negotiate in the digital age (pp. 123–27, 97–100, 130–33, 94–97, 133–34, 45–48).
In bringing together this group of 34 contributors, we have created a space in which to discuss both the practices and politics of editing in ways that articulate its centrality to our discipline through points of convergence and divergence across our field, and against ancillary disciplines. The questions raised here about the development – even reconceptualization – of theatre and performance also reinforce the importance of the kind of scrutiny and enhancement that editing represents. We hope that this special issue provokes its readers to consider what we publish and why, how work transforms from ‘call for papers’ to ‘dissemination’, and how that edited research shapes our discipline and what matters to us as scholars and practitioners. We would like to extend our thanks to the contributors to this volume for their willingness to enter into a conversation with us about the politics and practices of editing, to our editorial colleagues at CTR, Aoife Monks, Dominic Johnson, and Jenny Hughes, for their provocations and ideas, and to Sarah Thomasson, our editorial assistant, for her efficiency and imagination in working with us so productively to curate this issue.
Notes
1. Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, in Image, Music, Text, trans. by Stephen Heath (London: Fontana Press, 1977, pp. 142–48; Michel Foucault, ‘What is an Author?’, trans. by Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault, ed. by Donald F. Bouchard (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 113–38.
2. Kent Anderson, ‘The Editor – A Vital Role We Barely Talk About Anymore’, The Scholarly Kitchen, 23 September 2014 <http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2014/09/23/the-editor-a-vital-role-we-barely-talk-about-anymore/> [accessed 8 January 2015].
3. All authors were encouraged to write in their own voice, with the different spellings of English across the issue reflecting the international spread of contributors.
4. Observations provided by Sarah Thomasson to Delgado and Tompkins.