April 2006
What is now changing in this project? What can I tell you of this continual becoming?
As we know, it is challenging to notice and articulate movement that is fleeting or incremental, especially when that movement is charged with a 'newness' that can initially only be sensed or felt vaguely, prior to any intellectual naming or 'working through.' The latest developments in this project concern the task of writing.
This blog, like my daily project journal, is an open forum where I can "write my way into spaces" (St. Pierre, 2005) that can only be accessed from uncertainty and vulnerability, perhaps fitting with Laurel Richardson's idea of writing as a "field of play (1997)"... or Harlene Anderson's "not knowing"... or Deleuze & Parnet's vision of writing that carries us "across our thresholds, toward a destination which is unknown, not foreseeable, not preexistent (1977/1987, p. 25)."
Part of me shutters! This seems a precarious place from which to launch the Other writing - the Official writing in this project - and so different from the approach to writing I was taught: writing as a way of "mopping up after," (Richardson's metaphor) - safe, comfortable, past-tense reiteration well after outlines have been carefully crafted and outcomes already known.
Somehow I had not (until this past week) planned for a thoroughly dialogical writing of 'the main body' of this project. And here lies perhaps one roadblock, an old habit... In describing the writing as "thing" - a body - and not an interactive process, I set myself up, in part, for a monological writing experience, rather than a living, dialogical interchange that moves spontaneously, responsively, intentionally and unpredictably over time.
"Before I write 'the main body,'" I have said repeatedly, "I must know..." as though writing must follow after knowing. Dialogism challenges me instead, to write my way into the project... and I can see now that writing into and writing up the project - are two very different activities... one of which is retrospective.
I am learning that the choice to make dialogue central and even intrinsic in this dissertation has far-reaching implications for every move within it, big and small. All the familiar terms and practices associated with qualitative research must earn their place here, including my approach to writing. If this work is to be set in a post-Enlightenment postmodern perspective, derived in large part from the dialogism of Wittgenstein, Vygotzky, Volosinov and Bakhtin - the very philosophical roots of the postmodern, collaborative approach we embrace ....then it must be dialogical without exception in its every detail, and I must become comfortable writing, not because I am ready, but rather 'as I go,' as a relational, responsive way of becoming in this inquiry.
I had the privilege of discussing writing and reluctance with Sally St. George over the telephone this past Thursday. She suggests I write a "microcosm" of this project first, a "sketch," an "exemplar," - in knitter's terms, the highly recommended swatch before the whole sweater. And, flashing back to one of my first woolen productions - I am immediately inclined to take up her idea.
I will see many of you at the ISI in a matter of weeks, and those I will not see, I will miss. To each of you, a wonderful May...
Janice
As we know, it is challenging to notice and articulate movement that is fleeting or incremental, especially when that movement is charged with a 'newness' that can initially only be sensed or felt vaguely, prior to any intellectual naming or 'working through.' The latest developments in this project concern the task of writing.
This blog, like my daily project journal, is an open forum where I can "write my way into spaces" (St. Pierre, 2005) that can only be accessed from uncertainty and vulnerability, perhaps fitting with Laurel Richardson's idea of writing as a "field of play (1997)"... or Harlene Anderson's "not knowing"... or Deleuze & Parnet's vision of writing that carries us "across our thresholds, toward a destination which is unknown, not foreseeable, not preexistent (1977/1987, p. 25)."
Part of me shutters! This seems a precarious place from which to launch the Other writing - the Official writing in this project - and so different from the approach to writing I was taught: writing as a way of "mopping up after," (Richardson's metaphor) - safe, comfortable, past-tense reiteration well after outlines have been carefully crafted and outcomes already known.
Somehow I had not (until this past week) planned for a thoroughly dialogical writing of 'the main body' of this project. And here lies perhaps one roadblock, an old habit... In describing the writing as "thing" - a body - and not an interactive process, I set myself up, in part, for a monological writing experience, rather than a living, dialogical interchange that moves spontaneously, responsively, intentionally and unpredictably over time.
"Before I write 'the main body,'" I have said repeatedly, "I must know..." as though writing must follow after knowing. Dialogism challenges me instead, to write my way into the project... and I can see now that writing into and writing up the project - are two very different activities... one of which is retrospective.
I am learning that the choice to make dialogue central and even intrinsic in this dissertation has far-reaching implications for every move within it, big and small. All the familiar terms and practices associated with qualitative research must earn their place here, including my approach to writing. If this work is to be set in a post-Enlightenment postmodern perspective, derived in large part from the dialogism of Wittgenstein, Vygotzky, Volosinov and Bakhtin - the very philosophical roots of the postmodern, collaborative approach we embrace ....then it must be dialogical without exception in its every detail, and I must become comfortable writing, not because I am ready, but rather 'as I go,' as a relational, responsive way of becoming in this inquiry.
I had the privilege of discussing writing and reluctance with Sally St. George over the telephone this past Thursday. She suggests I write a "microcosm" of this project first, a "sketch," an "exemplar," - in knitter's terms, the highly recommended swatch before the whole sweater. And, flashing back to one of my first woolen productions - I am immediately inclined to take up her idea.
I will see many of you at the ISI in a matter of weeks, and those I will not see, I will miss. To each of you, a wonderful May...
Janice
posted by Janice DeFehr at 10:38 dop.
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