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This book seeks to disrupt the narrative about the process of academic writing and the written products which are currently valued in the university by juxtaposing the messiness and deletions of the writing process with the hegemonic imaginary of what research writing should look like. The author uses writing as both a subject and a method of enquiry in an ethnographic deep dive into her long-term engagement with a postgraduate writers' circle in an elite South African university. The book engages with growing global interest in the geopolitics of research writing and its relationship to patterns of epistemic privilege, drawing on current work on decolonising knowledge production. It opens a space to widen and deepen how we imagine the relationship between writing and knowledge-making.
In this beautifully crafted text Lucia Thesen offers deep insights into those unseen aspects of knowledge-making, the ‘back stuff’ of postgraduate writing. She immerses the reader in the ‘extra-textual’ life surrounding writing, through a visceral journey into the ‘swampy space’ of a postgraduate writers' circle. With its deep ethnography and interwoven theoretical resources, this book provides a fresh way of reimagining research writing.
Knowledge that makes it to the formal archive (as publication or accepted thesis) is a sanitized myth. The archive’s occlusion of the twists and turns of knowledge-making as well as its premises have deleterious effects, as Lucia Thesen demonstrates. This book interprets two decades of her experience facilitating a writers' circle for postgraduate students. Serious research that is a sheer delight to read.
This book celebrates epistemic messiness, the serendipity of ideas and insights, and the leftover traces of pedagogic practice. It lends credibility to emotional experience of both writing student and writing teacher, which is mirrored stylistically in the intermingling flow of thoughts and feelings, often lyrical in texture. The book is rich in theoretical perspective, with insights from influential authors from both the global North and South. A stimulating read for practitioners and researchers in academic literacies.
This book offers conceptual insights about understanding the interplay between academic literacy growth and its ecological complexity within tension-filled social dynamics. It also shows how to integrate the narrative presentation of such complexity in academic writing as a form of knowledge-making dialogue. These accounts can serve as a resource for researchers of doctoral literacy education and academic discourse socialisation. They may also inform EAP writing instructors about hands-on activities which can be adopted to cultivate students’ self-awareness in research conceptualisation and written communication.
...the novelty of this book lies in Thesen’s unorthodox and refreshing portrayal of such writing interventions as knowledge-making practices. Throughout the book, Thesen skillfully weaves together narratives from her eight years of facilitating a weekly “Thursday writer’s circle” at UCT [...] Notably, students and even former students
across disciplinary backgrounds and degrees of expertise (sometimes across institutions) participate in these activities (p. 24). Although much of the story is told from her perspective, Thesen also allows these students and other facilitators from the writing circle to speak for themselves—in fact, the book begins and ends with contributions from a former and current facilitator of the writing group. This combination of diverse perspectives throughout the book allows Thesen to examine how the group functions and intersects with the multiple needs and aspirations of its participants.
This is a remarkable, but also a gentle text, whose proposition appeals rather than forces, but it also contains some razor-sharp critique of the power of normativity to shape academics’ own writing as well as their work with student writers [...] In keeping with its ethnographic nature, this is a deeply situated and unique enquiry whose generalisability lies in its methodological reflexivity: it is an exemplar of how to carry out a rigorous and theoretically rich enquiry into one’s own practice [...] The book speaks to teachers of academic writing, offering insights into how to reframe or subtly work within, against and around dominant positions, helping postgraduate writers to see and even embrace different ways of doing research writing. The book will also appeal to academics, doctoral writers and publishing gatekeepers who are interested in the possibilities offered by writing—or reading—differently. The depth of description, coherence-in-complexity and the refusal to insist that what is offered is unitary or complete, combine to offer a compelling example of how different ways of knowing can be brought to bear persuasively in an academic text.
Lucia Thesen’s book is a breath of fresh air amidst the suffocating atmosphere of academic demands and conventions.
Lucia Thesen is Associate Professor Emerita at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She is the co-editor (with Linda Cooper) of Risk in Academic Writing: Postgraduate Students, their Teachers and the Making of Knowledge (Multilingual Matters, 2014).
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Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Writers’ Circle as a Portal to Knowledge-Making
Chapter 1. A Threshold Space of Difference: Introducing the Thursday Circle
Chapter 2. The Yellow Folders Draw Me In: Looking for the Trace
Chapter 3. Surface Tension: Writing in the Shadow of the God View
Chapter 4. HA HA HA: Shaking the Tree of Language
Chapter 5. One Word at a Time: Finding Rhythm in Writing
Chapter 6. Punctuating the Flow: Reflections from Beyond the Circle
Chapter 7. ‘I remember a few rogue popcorns’: Teaching for the Trace (with Clement Chihota and Aditi Hunma)
Conclusion: Knowledge-Making at the Water Point
References
Index