Dialogues with a body called the research journal

Abstract

Recording the mystery that accompanies the process of writing is almost impossible. What can be seen are traces - the collected patterns, images, and motifs from an unconscious research, souvenirs of the semiotic world, which are collected in the process called the research journal. As such, the journal’s facility to hold onto primitive transactions, of rhythmic and imaginary language, the unconscious exchanges between the novelist and herself, can be reminiscent of the imaginary exchanges within the maternal world, and in object relations. This paper will describe the enactment of abody dialogue, in the journal’s holding onto, and ‘projective identification’ of, traces of unconscious fantasy, imaginary language and emotion, left behind in the daily pages of the novel. The paper will document this intimate and poetic language, of a body called the research journal, as it contrasts with the more abstract, public and (phal)logocentric order of the academic thesis. In the course of the paper I hope to express something about my developing realisation that the most valuable contribution I might make to the fields of writing and creative arts are possibly contained in this unofficial document, and its particularly intimate, critical engagement with my research. I will posit that because journal writing theorises from practice - and in my discipline, from the practise of writing - the research journal should be considered a most valuable and rigorous resource.