Exploded Views: Speculative Form and the Labor of Inquiry—A Conversation with Jonathan P. Eburne

Podcast: New Books Network: New Books in Film
Host: Alex Beeston
Guest: Jonathan P. Eburne
Episode Date: December 9, 2025

Episode Overview

In this episode, host Alex Beeston interviews Jonathan P. Eburne about his latest book, "Exploded Views: Speculative Form and the Labor of Inquiry" (University of Minnesota Press, 2025). The conversation orbits around the nature of unfinished scholarly work, the complex and often opaque scholarly process, and the generative power of incompletion. Eburne discusses the book as an experiment in revisiting, renovating, and reimagining incomplete projects, and reflects on the labor, affect, and community that underpin scholarly inquiry—especially during the pandemic.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The ‘Exploded View’ Concept (03:24–08:48)

• Origin of the Title and Its Metaphor:

  • Eburne explains the visual metaphor behind "exploded view diagrams"—the schematic illustrations found in instruction manuals (like IKEA furniture guides), which show all parts of an object separately while revealing their relationships.
    • “By having it be blown apart, you actually gain purchase conceptually on how it all fits together.” (05:13, Eburne)
  • This diagram becomes a model both for the book's form—returning to unfinished scholarly projects—and for thinking about the unseen, partial, or discarded elements in scholarly labor.

• Why It Suits His Method:

  • The book originated during COVID, a period of enforced pausing and incompletion.
  • Revisiting half-finished work compelled Eburne to narrate his thought process, intentions, and the challenges encountered—laying bare the “labor functions” of academic work that are often invisible.
    • References to Sara Ahmed’s work on “orientations” and how the actual environments and conditions (care responsibilities, health, privilege) shape what gets completed and who gets to “breezily” work. (08:06)

2. The Richness of Unfinished Projects (09:51–14:03)

• The ‘Weird and Wonderful’ Content:
  • The host summarizes the book’s varied unfinished projects: from insect galls, to the speculative science of orgone energy, Leonora Carrington’s surrealism, and methamphetamine addiction in late capitalism.
  • Eburne identifies the ongoing pull of the process and community involved, more than any single topic: “The thing that's still like, nagging at me… is what you just described and summed up as the instruction manual part…” (11:18)
  • He emphasizes the communal ethos: “You can’t go it alone. And so thinking about that, thinking about how to fight alienation, how to work with others, to stave off isolation...” (13:04)

3. The Unfinished as Relational Matrix (14:17–17:26)

• Personal and Collective Markings:

  • Both Beeston and Eburne discuss how unfinished work contains traces of relationships, collective settings, and temporality.
    • “Unfinished is this sort of relational matrix… moments where we return to past iterations of ourselves and the communities that made the work possible…” (15:47, Beeston)
  • They note the heightened sense of these dynamics during COVID and the importance of collaborative work as a lifeline during isolation: “Zoom conversations… became such important tethers for us.” (16:55, Beeston)

• Power Dynamics of Incompletion:

  • Eburne reflects on how unfinished work results from multiple factors—some repressive (market forces, censorship) and some generative (open-ended process).
    • “The nature of process is just to create stuff. And not everything has a telos… There’s a really interesting spectrum...” (17:26)

4. Registering and Exposing Scholarly Process (19:26–26:33)

• Temporal Playfulness and Process:
  • Eburne describes how his book dramatizes the process of revision, temporal lags, and ongoingness—notably in the chapter about founding a nonprofit bookstore.
    • Real temporal uncertainty in writing about a bookstore mid-formation—“a little bit of a hedge because it's like, I really hope it does [exist]. It's still ongoing. And now it's like, yeah, actually it does exist and you can go look at it.” (25:12)
  • The “stomach tension” and “sunken labor” behind real-world projects become part of the book’s drama.

5. Vulnerability, Privilege, and Affective Labor (28:15–37:46)

• On Vulnerability Versus Safety:

  • Eburne, citing Tamantha Sylvester, distinguishes vulnerability from a mere absence of safety—it's easier to be vulnerable from a position of security, but we should also reflect on who can afford that risk in academia.
    • “It’s more easy to be vulnerable when it is not a transactional operation like a grant.” (32:16)
  • He acknowledges his own privileges, but sees value in foregrounding the structures (privilege, institutional support, rejection) that shape all scholarly work.

• Habit and the Myths of Mastery:

  • Beeston discusses the performative tension between celebrating completed projects (as required by grant applications) and valorizing the reality of incompletion in scholarship—“highly ironic…to be like, guys, I’m so good and I’m going to finish so many things. But also the project I’m going to do is saying we’re not…” (29:14)
  • Both agree that new models (like Eburne’s book) “explode the view” of what scholarly labor entails and can serve as a new pathway for changing scholarly habits.

6. Affect, Loss, and Social Tethers in Scholarship (37:39–41:32)

• Personal Stakes of Returning to Unfinished Work:

  • The act of returning is likened to opening time capsules or looking through old photographs—intensely affective, sometimes melancholic (especially given COVID losses).
    • “This was a COVID book…It also sort of bears some of the sadness and… powerlessness of those moments.” (38:20)
  • Yet, online writing groups and collaborations provided essential connection.

• Foregrounding Intellectual and Social Communities:

  • The book’s ambition: to blur the line between acknowledgment and main text, embedding the collective labor (editorial teams, colleagues, friends) at the heart of scholarship.

7. Intellectual Labor: Gift Economy, Friendship, and Collectivity (42:59–54:43)

• The Dismantling of Academia’s Gift Economy:

  • Eburne reflects on the unpaid, unacknowledged labor (peer review, editorial work) that upholds academic communities—labor increasingly difficult as more scholars lack job security.
  • Editorial startup work at the journal ASAP was “community building as well…” but also “like pulling teeth” as labor conditions erode. (45:07)
  • The friendship between Eburne and collaborators (e.g., Amy Elias, Dara Walker) animated these projects: “We became, you know, like it was almost like a kind of spiritual marriage, we would joke.” (46:22)

• Friendship as Scholarly Ethos:

  • Host and guest reflect on friendship as the alternative to transactionalism in academic work: “Friendship is reciprocal. Not transactional…The trickiest part is working out the spaces and possibilities of reciprocity on the order of friendship rather than a transactional relationship.” (51:25)
  • Volunteer work instills a sense of responsibility and “connectedness” that forges community (53:06).

8. Community Work and Nonprofit Bookstore (54:43–59:41)

• Collectivity and Embodied Intellectualism:
  • Eburne discusses the wrenching loss he felt after moving jobs and leaving daily involvement with the bookstore — highlighting, again, the centrality of collaborative environments to intellectual work.
    • “A single person cannot create an environment… it requires a multiplicity of people.” (57:14)
  • The core learning is about how intellectual work is embedded in networks, environments, and ongoing negotiation of difference and shared responsibility.

9. Future Directions and Writing as Ongoing Process (59:41–68:06)

• Ongoing Projects and Scholarly Practice:
  • Eburne hints at a forthcoming surrealist project (“The Great Surrealist Bargain Basement”), focused on ideas of reuse, value, and the “inventive” nature of criticism.
  • He argues for matching scholarly form to content and being reflexive about motivation: “Every project has a new creative imperative behind it. Finding one’s voice is great, but the voice is not monotone.” (67:04)
  • The ongoingness of scholarly process is not just inevitable, but valuable and generative in itself.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “By having [the project] be blown apart, you actually gain purchase conceptually on how it all fits together.”
  — Jonathan Eburne (05:13)

• “You can’t go it alone… How to fight alienation, how to work with others, to stave off isolation—not just physically being alone, but the sense of hollowness that often people carry with us…”
  — Jonathan Eburne (13:04)

• “Unfinished is this sort of relational matrix. Moments where we can return to past iterations of ourselves and the communities that made the work possible, even if it didn’t eventuate as you imagined.”
  — Alex Beeston (15:47)

• “The nature of process is just to create stuff. And not everything has a telos.”
  — Eburne (17:26)

• “There’s something honest… about writing in a non-celebratory way about a project that was very different than what I was trained to do or habituated to doing as a scholar.”
  — Eburne (27:15)

• “It’s more easy to be vulnerable when it is not a transactional operation like a grant… Writing a book or producing a work of art or engaging in a relationship of any kind, one hopes they’re not transactional.”
  — Eburne (32:16)

• “The book’s greatest ambition may be to blur altogether the distinction between acknowledgment and text.”
  — Beeston referencing Eburne (41:32)

• “We became, you know, like it was almost like a kind of spiritual marriage, we would joke. And yet the work, it didn’t stop.”
  — Eburne on his editorial partnership with Amy Elias at ASAP (46:22)

• “Friendships can emerge from work… From the environment and from the proximity and habituation of collaborating… There’s a kind of intimacy and understanding… It’s trickier to do that the other way around, but it’s not impossible, it just requires much more negotiation.”
  — Eburne (53:52)

• “A single person cannot create an environment… it requires a multiplicity of people. Even in a classroom, when there’s one instructor, it’s the class that makes the environment, not just the professor.”
  — Eburne (57:14)

• “Every project has a new creative imperative behind it. Finding one’s voice is great, but also the voice is not monotone. And finding new vocalizations… is the beauty of writing more than one thing.”
  — Eburne (67:04)

Key Timestamps

• 03:24 — Meaning and metaphor of the “exploded view” in scholarship
• 08:00 — Discussing the conditions of scholarly labor and privilege
• 09:51 — Examples of unfinished projects in the book
• 13:04 — The role of community and fighting isolation in scholarship
• 17:26 — The spectrum and causes of “the unfinished”
• 25:12 — Real-time drama and “sunken labor” of founding a nonprofit bookstore
• 27:15 — The honesty and uncertainty of speculative projects
• 32:16 — Vulnerability, safety, and transactional vs. relational work
• 38:20 — The affective stakes of writing during COVID
• 41:32 — The ambition to integrate acknowledgment and text
• 45:07 — The strain on academia’s “gift economy”
• 51:25 — Friendship, reciprocity, and the challenge of non-transactional relationships
• 57:14 — Collectivity and the impossibility of solitary intellectual environments
• 67:04 — Reinventing scholarly voice and creative imperative

Closing Remarks

This wide-ranging episode is as much a meditation on the form and labor of scholarship as it is about Eburne’s individual book. Through candid personal reflection, theoretical insight, and practical examples, Eburne and Beeston illuminate the unfinished, communal, and processual character of intellectual work. The episode itself—marked by warmth, humor, and openness—models the ethos of friendship and collectivity that “Exploded Views” advocates.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in the nature of creative labor, the realities (and possibilities) of scholarly community, and the generative potential of incompletion.