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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.
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