Learning from Penelope

 

In Homer’s Odyssey, Penelope survives not by force, but by craft.

She weaves by day and unweaves by night. The weaving keeps the suitors at bay; the unweaving buys her time. It is not indecision. It is strategy. It is control over her own narrative.

I have decided to learn from Penelope.

Over the next months (or years), I will be rewriting my old papers.

Not because the mathematics is wrong.
Not because the results no longer matter.
But because I was — and perhaps still am — a lousy communicator.

Many of my early papers were written quickly, defensively, or under constraints that now feel foreign: editorial fashions,  page limits, the pressure to “fit” a venue. Many were published behind paywalls that I cannot even access anymore, given the lack of institutional support. The irony is not lost on me: I cannot easily read my own work. And cannot point others to it.

Commercial publishing has made something strange happen in mathematics. We produce knowledge collectively, mostly publicly funded, then hand it over to companies who sell it back to us. The system has normalized the idea that authors do not own access to their own intellectual labor. That should trouble us more than it does.

But this project is not primarily about protest.

It is about clarity.

If I am serious about Network Mathematics, and about mathematics as a way of life — about extracting structure from the literature while also living responsibly within it — then my own work should not be an obstacle. It should not require insider knowledge to decode. It should not assume a reader who already knows what I mean to say. So I am weaving again.

I will rewrite old papers as arXiv preprints: With clearer motivations. With expanded explanations. With better examples. With connections made explicit. With historical context where I once assumed it was obvious. With diagrams where prose struggles. With prose where diagrams obscure.

Some papers may be gently revised. Some may be substantially reorganized.
Some may need to be undone and rewoven almost entirely.

This is not repudiation. It is evolution.

Mathematics deserves expository care. Ideas deserve to be legible beyond the circle that first conceived them. And younger researchers — including my younger self — deserve texts that do not require deciphering as a rite of passage.

Penelope’s weaving was an act of resistance. Mine is an act of responsibility.

If you have ever read one of my older papers and thought, “I suspect there’s something important here, but I wish it were clearer,” this project is for you. If you have ever struggled to access your own published work, this project is for you. If you believe that clarity is not a concession but a form of rigour, then perhaps this project is for all of us.

I am unweaving.

So that I can weave again.