{"id":14185,"date":"2025-08-19T10:05:02","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T15:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=14185"},"modified":"2025-09-02T15:29:59","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T20:29:59","slug":"should-immanence-move-to-substack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2025\/08\/19\/should-immanence-move-to-substack\/","title":{"rendered":"Should Immanence move to Substack?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Should this blog move to <a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/home\">Substack<\/a>? Here are some reasons to do it:  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Substack is where things are happening these days (see <a href=\"https:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/2020\/08\/a-guide-to-the-substack-newsletter-economy.html\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cjr.org\/special_report\/substackerati.php\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/falonfatemi\/2021\/01\/20\/the-rise-of-substack-and-whats-behind-it\/\">here<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/Substack\/comments\/1iex3tw\/can_someone_explain_to_me_why_substack\/\">here<\/a>). Some of the most popular blogs and newsletters are increasingly found there, and traditional media increasingly focus and rely on them. Substack&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/escapethecubicle.substack.com\/p\/how-i-grew-by-800-substack-subscribers\">growth<\/a> has been relatively unrelenting.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Substack provides multiple options for building one&#8217;s readership and support base that other venues (like the university-based WordPress one that this blog is built on) do not. Most of these include interlinking with other blogs, which creates a more coherent network of readership and conversation &#8212; exactly the kind of thing that attracted me to blogging in the first place (back in 2009), but which has faded everywhere <em>except<\/em> in Substack. It seems to be the only remaining place where the old, highly interactive &#8220;blogosphere&#8221; is not just surviving, but visibly thriving.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>(A third reason might be that Substack is easily monetizable, but as long as I&#8217;m on a reasonable university salary, that&#8217;s not a consideration for me. My university keeps me busy enough. That said, if things were to go extremely well here, I could retire earlier and devote even more energy to writing. ;-))<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>And here are two good reasons not to do it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>In a rapidly changing digital world, &#8220;these days&#8221; never last. This blog has been here, located on a university server using a highly flexible form of traditional WordPress architecture, for 16 years. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/University_of_Vermont\">That university<\/a>, a public land-grant university that&#8217;s been around for 234 years, isn&#8217;t going anywhere. As a medium-sized and medium-profile university, it&#8217;s not likely to suffer any dramatic reorganization under the currently governing federal regime. (And my non-salaried emeritus status with it is guaranteed, so I am not going anywhere either.) Substack, on the other hand, <a href=\"https:\/\/schatzkin.substack.com\/p\/who-owns-substack\">is a private company<\/a> working in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/opinion\/articles\/2025-03-27\/substack-is-doing-what-podcasts-did-what-could-possibly-go-wrong\">competitive<\/a> corporate environment. It&#8217;s a &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/edbott.substack.com\/p\/happy-new-year-to-everyone-except\">walled garden<\/a>,&#8221; and there&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/technology\/2024\/01\/11\/substack-platformer-nazis\/\">nothing<\/a> to guarantee that it won&#8217;t <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/04\/13\/business\/media\/substack-growth-newsletters.html\">turn out<\/a> to be a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/recode\/22338802\/substack-pro-newsletter-controversy-jude-doyle\">temporary<\/a> &#8220;bubble.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>More importantly: everything about Immanence is here, including a long history of posts organized according to categories, cross-references, etc. None of that would move to Substack. &#8220;Moving&#8221; would mean starting from scratch, encouraging old readers to move with me, and linking back to this site for historical references.   <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>For a bit more context, we should consider Immanence&#8217;s goals: it&#8217;s an unusual blog that caters to a fairly specific readership, one that&#8217;s interested both in the culture and politics of the environment and in philosophical and theoretical issues connected to those things. (<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/about\/\">See more on the &#8220;About&#8221; page<\/a>.) Readership and engagement are not as great as they were back in the early 2010s (arguably the heyday of the blogosphere), and while Immanence still gets a few thousand views a month, it&#8217;s down siginificantly from a few years ago and has not substantially grown its readership in some time. There are no guarantees, but Substack should predictably improve that and enable new connections with readers of other newsletters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I welcome your thoughts on this, here or <a href=\"mailto:aivakhiv@uvm.edu\">by e-mail<\/a>. (For more on Substack, click on the links within this post and find many more at <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Substack\">Wikipedia<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Should this blog move to Substack? Here are some reasons to do it: And here are two good reasons not to do it:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688385],"tags":[401,107,201,711258],"class_list":["post-14185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog_stuff","tag-blogging","tag-blogosphere","tag-immanence","tag-substack"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-3GN","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":14347,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2025\/12\/08\/announcing-terrestriealism\/","url_meta":{"origin":14185,"position":0},"title":"Announcing Terrestri(e)alism","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 8, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"So I've started a Substack newsletter. It's called \"Terrestri(e)alism.\" It isn't meant to replace Immanence, though there will be overlaps and we'll see how things develop. The reasons to go to Substack are multiple. It's a thriving media ecosystem that's both reader- and writer-friendly. Some of my favorite writers commenting\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2025\/12\/08\/announcing-terrestriealism\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/12\/Furnas-1-copy.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/12\/Furnas-1-copy.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/12\/Furnas-1-copy.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/12\/Furnas-1-copy.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/12\/Furnas-1-copy.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/12\/Furnas-1-copy.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":14039,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2025\/04\/06\/the-globality-of-hands-off\/","url_meta":{"origin":14185,"position":1},"title":"The globality of &#8220;Hands Off!&#8221;","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 6, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"The best context for thinking of yesterday's \"Hands Off!\" protests, held across the United States and in cities around the world, is the one Rebecca Solnit gets at in her post of this morning on Meditations in an Emergency. It is the global context described here: \"Right now Ukrainians are\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/04\/image.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/04\/image.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/04\/image.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/04\/image.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1024,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/01\/24\/atheism-and-immanence\/","url_meta":{"origin":14185,"position":2},"title":"atheism and immanence","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 24, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's an interesting conversation developing on nature and immanence on an atheist blog. Incidentally, I liked Obama's nod to non-Christians and \"non-believers\" in his inauguration speech. It felt like a refreshing breath of fresh air in the constricted atmosphere of American public religious discourse. With the recent growth of religious\/spiritual\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Spirit matter&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Spirit matter","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/religion-spirituality\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6415,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/01\/07\/immanence-goes-to-scoop-it\/","url_meta":{"origin":14185,"position":3},"title":"Immanence goes to Scoop.it","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 7, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The Immanence Shadow Blog -- that space where I scoop up little things of interest found on the internet -- has been reinvented and reloaded as scoop.it\/t\/immanence. You can subscribe to it here. The latest piece I've added is the following bit of prescient (or perhaps eternally relevant) American humor:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Blog stuff&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Blog stuff","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/blog_stuff\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/CLjNJI54GMM\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2100,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/01\/03\/planes-of-immanence\/","url_meta":{"origin":14185,"position":4},"title":"Planes of immanence","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 3, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Concepts are like multiple waves, rising and falling, but the plane of immanence is the single wave that rolls them up and unrolls them. ... Concepts are the archipelago or skeletal frame, a spinal column rather than a skull, whereas the plane is the breath that suffuses the separate parts.\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Philosophy&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2011\/01\/blb31-400x266.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1008,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2008\/12\/01\/immanence\/","url_meta":{"origin":14185,"position":5},"title":"Immanence","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 1, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Immanence suggests co-implication, the implication of one thing in another (spirit in matter, mind in body, movement in repose, humans in nature), nonduality, the vitality of becoming rather than the stasis of being, the sufficiency of life in its generative relational flux, its vessels of light scattered for our gathering\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Philosophy&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14185"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14250,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14185\/revisions\/14250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}