Skriva för intrigen? : några tankar om forskaren som författare

• Writing for the plot? Some thoughts on academics as writers In one of her books, bell hooks concludes: ”All academics write, but not all see themselves as writers.” This paradoxical dilemma is the starting point for this article, which wants to explore and challenge the notion of academic writing and knowledge production as rational, ungendered and disembodied intellectual activity. Against the backdrop of neoliberal research policies, with its accelerating demands for marketable and measurable results, it is perhaps more import than ever to claim, with Martha C. Nussbaums words, ”faculties of thought and imagination” as a crucial but non-measurable core of humanistic education and research.   It is argued in the article that the very naming of the practices and skills required for scholarly work affects our understanding of them in terms of professional competence and scientific authority. Furthermore, these normative thought patterns on what academic writing is; who performs it and how it is done often also reveals a hierarchized dichotomy between scientific and literary writing. What would happen if scholars in literary studies instead would ask themselves not only how, for instance, poetry can be theorized, but also how theory can be poetizised? Would it possible for the scholar to adopt narrative techniques such as travesty, metaphors and plot? Is it, in short, possible to not only read but also write for the plot? Thus, trying to locate the “in-betweens” and margins between genres as a possible site of dialogue, the article promotes a plea for a genre-transgressive, embodied and emotional view on the methodologies and epistemologies of academic writing.

Nyckelord

creative academic writing

emotions

feminist theory

excellens

new-utilitarism

kreativt akademiskt skrivande

emotioner

feministisk teori

excellens

ny-utilitarism

Literature

litteraturvetenskap

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)