Writing Through: The Poetics of Transfiguration

Abstract

The poetic moment in social science brings up questions of poetics, such as what makes writing poetic, and what are the critical shifts introduced by poetic writing? In the present article, the idea of poetics is explored through the notion of transfiguration. Transfiguration is a combination of trans and figuration. It holds both an idea of closure, namely, the figurative, the bring ing into form, and an idea of opening, namely, the sense of passage that comes with and through trans/trance. It is argued that the writing of culture, and the idea of poetization, requires a shift from writing that describes, explains, or even expresses to a writing that transfigures.