Yes, there's nothing more alarming than seeing someone is writing on (has written on!) what seems to be the same topic. But in the humanities, honestly, the standard of obscurity we'd have to adopt to be sure we're the only person working on it is impossible to achieve.
Yes, there's nothing more alarming than seeing someone is writing on (has written on!) what seems to be the same topic. But in the humanities, honestly, the standard of obscurity we'd have to adopt to be sure we're the only person working on it is impossible to achieve.
Regarding an impossible-to-achieve level of obscurity, when writing about a topic in the humanities, this recalls a key character in Ursula Le Guin's first paid short story, "April in Paris" (1962) ;) :
"And he was sick of his work. Who cared about his theory, the Pennywither Theory, concerning the mysterious disappearance of the poet François Villon in 1463? Nobody. For after all his Theory about poor Villon, the greatest juvenile delinquent of all time, was only a theory and could never be proved, not across the gulf of five hundred years. Nothing could be proved. And besides, what did it matter if Villon died on Montfaucon gallows or (as Pennywither thought) in a Lyons brothel on the way to Italy? Nobody cared. Nobody else loved Villon enough. Nobody loved Dr. Pennywither, either; not even Dr. Pennywither. Why should he? An unsocial, unmarried, underpaid pedant, sitting here alone in an unheated attic in an unrestored tenement trying to write another unreadable book. “I’m unrealistic,” he said aloud with another sigh and another shiver."
Yes, there's nothing more alarming than seeing someone is writing on (has written on!) what seems to be the same topic. But in the humanities, honestly, the standard of obscurity we'd have to adopt to be sure we're the only person working on it is impossible to achieve.
Regarding an impossible-to-achieve level of obscurity, when writing about a topic in the humanities, this recalls a key character in Ursula Le Guin's first paid short story, "April in Paris" (1962) ;) :
"And he was sick of his work. Who cared about his theory, the Pennywither Theory, concerning the mysterious disappearance of the poet François Villon in 1463? Nobody. For after all his Theory about poor Villon, the greatest juvenile delinquent of all time, was only a theory and could never be proved, not across the gulf of five hundred years. Nothing could be proved. And besides, what did it matter if Villon died on Montfaucon gallows or (as Pennywither thought) in a Lyons brothel on the way to Italy? Nobody cared. Nobody else loved Villon enough. Nobody loved Dr. Pennywither, either; not even Dr. Pennywither. Why should he? An unsocial, unmarried, underpaid pedant, sitting here alone in an unheated attic in an unrestored tenement trying to write another unreadable book. “I’m unrealistic,” he said aloud with another sigh and another shiver."