On not knowing what the readings are talking about

The single best piece of advice I received upon entering graduate studies was from an advanced student in my program: don't do all the reading.  In undergrad, I read everything.  Looking back, I'm not really sure how, but I definitely know I did it with a hardy sense of academic ethos and righteous integrity.  I know this because when the advanced grad student informed me that the best thing I could do for myself would be to not do what I had always been doing, I immediate recoiled.  What?!  But won't they know?!  I envisioned the professor's red laser beam eyes boring into mine cyborg-style, the statistics generated from my lying pupils revealing that I was a delinquent student.

As I started my graduate studies, however, I quickly realized I wouldn't be able to keep it up.  Very often we are responsible for hundreds of pages (if not more) a week - it would be impossible to thoroughly read it all on top of outside research expectations, work duties, family and household obligations, and, you know, the necessary stuff like sleeping and eating and bathing once in a while.  So I started to...well...not read all of it.  And once I absolved myself of a sense of guilt and shame about that, my life began to be much more manageable.

You must be careful, of course.  The advice is not to not read anything important, or to give up reading entirely.  That would be the antithesis of good graduate work.  You have to read.  You simply must read something.  If you don't love reading endlessly and writing endlessly about what read, you will not like graduate school, my friend; no, you will not like it at all.  We are intent on being scholars, after all, so it's pretty much obligatory that you like the weight of book in your hand and the way your campus library smells (mmm!  reading!!).

No, the point is that you must read strategically.  You must learn to read as little as you need in order to have a thoughtful, reputable, coherent opinion on the matter, while also having a few moments to spare for grocery shopping.  (Preparation for comprehensive exams is especially good for this.  Your definition of 'reading' is increasingly liberal when you have an eight page, single-spaced list to knock out in a few weeks.)

And yet, there are times when you cannot get away with not reading everything.  Classes that test you on points from the reading, for example (oh, the tricky way of getting undergrads to read!).  Or classes that ask for intensive, reflective class discussions on the readings (oh, the tricky way of getting graduate students to read!).  When you are expected to publicly blog about the readings, you certainly can't skim them.

But sometimes actually doing all of the readings means you trip up on issues that would have slipped seamlessly by you had you been blissfully avoiding them.  If anything, doing all of the reading illuminates what you don't know.  And I am not afraid to acquiesce when I am wrong or to admit I don't know what I am saying, as recently noted.  I am not afraid to admit when I don't know what someone else is saying, either.

This week's readings dealt a double whammy in that respect.  I was pretty excited by Wilson's (2004) title, "Gut Feminism."  I had visions of a reappropriation of Bush's 'gut leadership,' where we could conceptualize a feminism that was instinctive and heartfelt.  Shazam!  Feminism from the gut!  That sort of thing.  It could probably make feminism a lot more approachable to people who are cooler than academics (which is most people, sorry), and might incline us to get out of our heads once in a while.

Turns out Wilson was actually being literal.  As in, talking about the gut.  "Gut Feminism," it seems, is about how we shouldn't overestimate how the body and the mind (psyche) work together, or underestimate the role of the bodily/biological in our theorizing.  I think.  Right?  I really don't know.  Maybe.  I am also clueless as to what it has to do with standpoint theory, which is the topic of our other two readings.

But Michaelian's (2008) "Privileged Standpoints/Reliable Processes," is even worse.  As I wormed my way through it, I kept stopping and asking myself, "wait, what did I just read?"  I mean, let's start with the abstract of the corn.  "Meta-epistomology"...okay, maybe.  (Alright, I'll admit it - that's actually kinda cool.  Standpoint theory is definitely meta.)  But "process reliabilist first-order epistemology?"  What the hell?!  I realize Michaelian is trying to bridge theoretical strategies, but there has got to be a simpler way to say this. Can anyone offer a clarification?

I welcome any input from my classmates on what these readings are talking about.  (That is, of course, if you do all the readings).