which you can disseminate the messages from your doctoral
research to a wider audience. It is the principal mechanism by
which your ideas can shape and become part of the traditions
in your discipline (the other way being teaching). The goal of
all publishing is in part an acknowledgement of your creative
contribution, your value-added, to the discipline’s mission. To
then be cited by others, to shape their further work (whether
positively or in opposition to your own propositions) is to
acquire a kind of ‘immortality’. Milan Kundera’s novel of this
title makes a powerful case to have us recognize this motive as
a basic human drive.^10 Perhaps, though, reflecting on such
goals and motives is too heady stuff, best tempered by a degree
of cynicism. A famous cartoon of Garfield the cat starts with
his owner, John, confessing in a moment of introspection:
‘Garfield, I’m depressed. When I’m gone, no one will care that
I ever existed.’^11 The normally unsupportive Garfield seems for
a moment to be acting out of character: ‘Cheer up John’, the cat
thinks in the middle frame. ‘They don’t care now’, it concludes.
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