Essaying the active object: thing-power, object itinerary and essay-as-object

A blend of memoir and scholarly review, this book explores the kinds of thinking creative writing as a distinctly practical subject makes possible within post-secondary education.Taking the idea that creative writing should be grounded in practice, Lisa Martin explores how the nature of the subject gives permission to think specifically, locally, from one’s own position, and in a necessarily limited way – without having one’s thinking discounted as lacking rigour as a result. Modelling the deep and essential connection between practice and research in the field, this book considers post-secondary creative writing in its three key aspects – artistic practice, pedagogical practice, and practice-led research – in order to articulate the distinctive contributions creative writing makes to what “thinking” means (and whose thinking gets included). Drawing on Martin’s own artistic practice as well as more than a decade of pedagogical experience in creative writing, this book braids together disciplinary history, research-informed autobiographical analysis of artistic practice and pedagogy, and scholarly research in adjacent fields such as creativity studies and educational psychology. Connecting creative writing’s central commitment to artistic practice and local, material, embodied thinking with the development of learner-centred pedagogies,Creative Writing in Post-Secondary Educationis timely, important and will spark spirited discussion within a debate that has been simmering since the inception of creative writing.

This article explores ways in which current practice of conducting multipractitioner practiceled research projects in the creative disciplines (Graphic Design, History of Art and Creative Writing) at the North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, may benefit from the application of a specific managerial theory which focuses on knowledge creation. To this end, the concepts propounded in the theory of organisational knowledge creation, as conceptualised by Nonaka and colleagues, are investigated and a number of compatible and complementary aspects shared by this theory and practice-led research are highlighted. Guiding this article was the argument that the conceptualisation of knowledge as a subjective and socially constructed phenomenon is central to both this theory and research mode. Furthermore, I argue that an integration of tacit and explicit knowledge provides for a holistic view of knowledge that would not be possible if one were to view knowledge in reductively scientific terms. Consequently, the transdisciplinary practice-based research project, Transgressions and boundaries of the page is analysed in terms of the socialisation, externalisation, combination and internalisation(SECI) knowledge conversion modes, which are the driving force, facilitating the move from tacit to explicit knowledge by means of social interaction. The aim of the Transgressions and boundaries of the page project was to create an exhibition of artists’ books, which would form the beginning of a knowledge creation cycle. Forty artists were invited to create artists’ books for exhibitions held in Stellenbosch, Potchefstroom and Johannesburg in 2010. Those artists involved were selected from various fields of arts as well as related fields. It is concluded that the utilisation of knowledge management in multipractitioner practice-led research projects such as this one, within the creative disciplines at the North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, will facilitate a better understanding of knowledge management and will yield more effective knowledge creation in that both tacit and explicit knowledge is utilised optimally.

Intuition occupies a privileged position in the practices of western creative writers that often conceals and perpetuates hegemonic power relations. We argue that these relations are the product of a powerful rhetoric linking intuition to an external and transcendental origin. While the language used to describe intuition is historically and culturally contingent, it is frequently associated with terms like unknown, mysterious, divine and darkness. To set the scene for our focus on the emergence of Practice-Led Research (PLR), we briefly survey earlier theories of intuition. Reviving the connection between intuition and transcendentalism, Graeme Sullivan (2009) proposes that PLR creates new knowledge through writing that moves from the unknown – configured as “an open landscape of free-range possibility” (p. 48) – into the known. Alongside other PLR scholars, Sullivan merges intuition with the project of connecting the creative arts to the knowledge-production imperatives of academia. This article focuses on how the introduction of a largely uninterrogated version of intuition into PLR threatens its social justice value. Countering this, Hélène Cixous’ reading of the writer’s relationship with darkness inspires an alternative approach to intuition, which actively disrupts the hegemonic power relations and associated oppressive discourses sustained by transcendentalism.

Creative writing most often focuses on an individual creative writer's own project, and is generated by that creative writer's personal desire to discover and develop knowledge that can assist their creative practice — specifically for the project at hand, but often with continuing use in future work. Creative writing research is both creative and critical in nature. The range of evidence of creative writing has been only marginally considered by ‘post-event’ arts and humanities subjects, most particularly literature study, and, until recently, creative writing has often been relegated to the role of a satellite to such post-event research. There is now a strongly developing body of understanding about the nature of creative writing, and considerable articulation of the nature of creative writing research, its knowledge base and understanding. This is aided, not least, by the circa 400 students per annum that are undertaking Creative Writing doctoral research degrees in the United Kingdom alone, by the circa 10,000 creative writers in academe that attend subject association conferences every year, and by a deepening subject knowledge supported by contemporary academic and governmental interest in creative practice.

This book offers insights into the supervisory practices of academics at RMIT University, in Melbourne, Australia, whose postgraduate candidates are undertaking research by project in art, creative writing, architecture and design. Over the past two decades there has been a decisive shift internationally in the focus of these disciplines towards an emphasis on applied practice-led research undertaken through project-based investigations. This model offers an effective means to conduct research on knowledge both embodied in, and discovered through discipline-specific art, architecture and design practices.

Writers often can’t explain where their ideas come from and, when asked, they reply with nebulous answers suggesting they ‘seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky’ (King 2020). For many writers, the intangible nature of inspiration is the result of serendipity. Serendipity is recognised as a valid and established research process and method across a multitude of disciplines including science, business management, information technology, the natural and social sciences, and design. However, there is little documented evidence of the use of serendipity as research for creative writing, or how serendipity as a practice-led research (PLR) method can be harnessed to progress fiction narratives. The authors examine existing research models that explain the process of serendipity, and propose strategies to demonstrate how creative writers can foster and harness serendipity as a PLR method to enhance their writing. Reflections of these strategies in practice provide working examples of serendipity as a viable creative writing research method.

The writing discipline in the 21st century is a territory with contested boundaries. This paper focuses on creative writing for simplicity and considers how we might write across and beyond boundaries between genres, between disciplines and between audiences. It postulates that exploiting a concept of writing research as fluid and multifaceted enriches the discipline’s study and practice at all levels. Research is about understanding what established pathways have been followed or what new methods, tools and entry points researchers have discovered to negotiate their way through unexplored terrain. Using Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of rhizomes as well as principles from action research and practice-led research as jumping off points, it suggests that rather than making absolute statements, writing research can also be about ‘surveying, mapping, even realms that are yet to come’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 4-5). This paper goes on to examine WH Auden’s poem ‘Musée desBeaux Arts’ (composed 1938) to demonstrate this approach. Then it introduces Heinz Insu Fenkl’s theory of ‘interstitial’ works (Fenkl 2003: 1) and considers how it relates to fluid conceptions of research in the 21st century that can reinvigorate writing as well as teaching. It concludes that writer-teachers do not need to offer students rigid templates; they can encourage them to see research methodologies as if they were travel guides, enabling them to explore new frontiers themselves.

Dodd explores the challenge facing students transitioning from the role of creative practitioner to practice-led researcher of creative practice. This chapter sets out to resolve the dichotomy between the creative writing style, based on the premise of ‘Show, don’t tell’, and the conflicting academic writing style, where the main purpose is to ‘tell’. Through a case study of strategic risk taking in the journey as creative practitioner/researcher, Dodd maneuvers between the two methods to cultivate creative engagement between the two components of the thesis. The aim of this approach is to offer a methodology which will produce synergized research outcomes for practice-led researchers that satisfy the accepted conventions of scholarship and the creative practitioner’s desire to produce enhanced work not mitigated by the exegetical component.

Recent government intervention in research in both literacy and higher degree policy across the globe has sharpened universities’ focus on the quality of their students’ productivity, research experience and timely completion rates (Kamler, 2001; Manathunga, 2005). Researchers have sought to highlight the factors that predict students’ timely completion of their studies and students’ participation in the workforce is one such measure of outcome which leaves the discipline of Creative Writing outside the main discourse. This paper addresses the disciplinary and methodological specificity of the PhD in practice-led research and advocates an interactive narrative pedagogy inspired by the psychoanalytic teachings of Lacan (2007[1968-69]) and the ‘radical pedagogy’ developed by Mark Bracher (1999; 2006). It sets into motion an innovative engagement between the fields of Psychoanalysis, Writing and Pedagogy in order to consider the problem transference poses for psychoanalysis and creative writing in an increasingly market driven academia.

In most arts and communication courses, the students' main vehicle for expression of their research findings is the critical essay, the dissertation or thesis. But in Creative Writing and other practice-based disciplines, the student's main mode of expression is what Lincoln and Denzin call a ‘performance based’ creative artefact resulting from practice-led research. In this paper I will give examples of performance based research in four fictional pieces, ‘The Lives of Animals’ and Diary of a Bad Year, narratives in which J.M. Coetzee uses fictional devices in order to explore issues that are traditionally articulated by conventional forms of critical analysis; ‘Just a Story’, a student narrative assignment on meta-fiction which itself uses meta-fictional devices to make its point; and ‘The Absence of Theory’, a paper I wrote in the form of a short story, which explores theories of creativity that underpin creative writing workshops. In these stories, I aim to show how the creative language of the short story can be employed as an alternative form of academic discourse to the conventional essay.

This article examines how search engines and social‐networking sites enable and constrain the identity‐related information practices of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) millennials in the United States. I employ affordances as a process concept to understand the recursive relationship between individuals and technologies and envision information practices as an outcome of this relationship. Guided by this conceptual framework, I conducted 30 semistructured interviews with LGBTQ+ individuals between the ages of 18 and 38. Data analysis identified 3 key affordances that enable and constrain participants' information practices: visibility, anonymity, and association. The findings indicate that participants are highly skilled in appropriating technological features to engage in desired information practices, such as seeking and creating. However, they also must contend with significant sociocultural barriers encoded into these features, which reinforce hetero‐ and cisnormative identity discourses. Library practitioners and systems designers can use these findings to offer services and systems inclusive of LGBTQ+ populations.

A well-known Malay pop composer, musician, and singer, P. Ramlee, has a significant impact on the Malay music and film industries as well as Asian cultures. P. Ramlee has composed and produced more than 300 songs during his musical journey. The purpose of this research is to explore the possibilities of a modern popular Malay music performed by a duo group, which consists of a flute and a guitar. Secondly, it examines the two closely related musical instruments: flute and guitar, in performing a new arrangement of music of “Bekorban Apa Saja” (To Sacrifice Everything) and “Menceceh Bujang Lapok” (Chatter of the Old Bachelor). The music was originally composed by P. Ramlee for solo vocal, a band consisting of guitar, bass, and drum. It will specify the techniques and methods to depict the melodies and accompaniment for both instruments. By using practice-led research as a conceptual framework, this study generates detectable output from the creative work. Most commonly, a practice-led research project consists of two components: a creative output and a text component, commonly referred to as an “exegesis”. The work itself provides the outcome of the research flow and answers all the research questions (Candy in Practice based research: a guide. Creativity and cognition studios report 1, 2006). The deliberations for musical arrangement incorporate the following research questions: i) what are the specific music elements and methods of the flute and guitar that can be portrayed for the selected song? ii) what are the structures of the new arrangement for the songs? The primary source of “lead-sheet” of the selected repertoires was gathered from a music score published by Perkamus in Singapore. The new arrangement of music for flute and guitar then had been reproduced and recorded. The selection of these two instruments features significant impact of P. Ramlee’s music on instrumental performances.

In 2023, I completed my Creative Writing PhD, which included a collection of personal essays that explored the relationship between autobiographical memory and objects, but also depicted some of my own experiences of grief, mental illness and other challenges. While writing these essays, I became attuned to the ways such self-representation can be psychologically and emotionally challenging, particularly when it involves drawing on adverse or traumatic lived experience—traditionally a somewhat neglected topic in studies of life writing ethics, but one whose relevance is increasingly being recognised in scholarly and wider publishing circles. In this essay, I delineate some of these challenges, suggesting they can be grouped into two distinct types: anxieties or issues relating to the production of the work, and those relating to its reception, post-publication. Accordingly, I identify two categories of potential responses to these risks: those extrinsic to the writing itself (such as consultation with a psychologist), and those intrinsic to it. In doing so, I draw on my practice-led research, and the work of essayist Brenda Miller, to propose that writing autobiographically with or through objects may be one way to help life writers to manage and mitigate some of the risks of self-representation.

Creative Practice through Teleconferencing in the Era of COVID-19

PurposeThis study explores the key platform affordances that online social platform providers need to offer digital creators to strengthen the creator ecosystem, one of the leading accelerators for platform growth. Specifically, it aims to investigate how these affordances make the dynamic combinations for high platform quality across diverse platform types and demographic characteristics of digital creators.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts a multi-method approach. Drawing upon the affordance theory, Study 1 aims to identify the key affordances of online social platforms based on relevant literature and the qualitative interview data collected from 22 digital creators, thereby constructing a conceptual framework of key platform affordances for digital creators. Building on the findings of Study 1, Study 2 explores the dynamic combinations of these platform affordances that contribute to platform quality using a configurational approach. Data from online surveys of 185 digital creators were analyzed using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).FindingsThe results of Study 1 identified key online social platform affordances for digital creators, including Storytelling, Socialization, Design, Development, Promotion, and Protection affordance. Study 2 showed that the combinations of these platform affordances for digital creators are diverse according to the types of platforms, creators’ gender, and their professionality.Research limitations/implicationsLike many studies, this research also has several limitations. One limitation of the research is the potential constraint of the extent of how well the data samples represent the group of creators who are actively producing digital content. Despite the addition of screening questions and meticulous data filtering, it is possible that we did not secure sufficient data from creators who are actively engaged in creative activities. In future research, it is worth contemplating the acquisition of data from actual groups of creators, such as creator communities. Future researchers anticipate obtaining more in-depth and accurate data by directly involving and collaborating with creators.Practical implicationsThis study highlights the need for online social platforms to enhance features for storytelling, socializing, design, development, promotion, and protection, fostering a robust digital creator ecosystem. It emphasizes clear communication of these affordances, ensuring creators can effectively utilize them. Importantly, platforms should adapt these features to accommodate diverse creator profiles, considering differences in gender and expertise levels, especially in emerging spaces like the Metaverse. This approach ensures an equitable and enriching experience for all users and creators, underlining the importance of dynamic interaction and inclusivity in platform development and creator support strategies.Social implicationsThis study underscores the social implications of evolving digital creator ecosystems on online platforms. Identifying six key affordances essential for digital creators highlights the need for platforms to enhance storytelling, socializing, design, development, promotion, and product protection. Crucially, it emphasizes inclusivity, urging platforms to consider diverse creator profiles, including gender and expertise differences, particularly in transitioning from traditional social media to the Metaverse. This approach nurtures a more robust creator ecosystem and fosters an equitable and enriching experience for all users. It signals a shift towards more dynamic, adaptive online environments catering to diverse creators and audiences.Originality/valueFor academics, this study builds the conceptual framework of online social platform affordances for digital creators. Using the configurational approach, this study identified various interdependent relationships among the affordances, which are nuanced by specific contexts, and suggested novel insights for future studies. For practices, the findings specified by creators and platform types are expected to guide platform providers in developing strategies to support digital creators and contribute to platform growth.