Abstract
This chapter offers a brief outlook on the postwar history of writing pedagogy in order to show that writing instruction always has links to societal needs, and ideologies. In this book, creative writing is positioned from an earlier, somewhat romantic view, creative writing isplaced in a sociocritical framework for critical purposes, informed by Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s theories about learning as social. Critical thinking is framed as the writer’s capacity to encompass prototypical representations in language and in narrative texts. It is based on the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s definition of critical thinking as including critical self-reflection through the narrative imagination, but exceeding it to include a capacity for metareflection about writing.
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Notes
- 1.
Here I do not discuss the creative writing tradition within literature. Neither do I discuss the creative writing tradition within gender studies, where a feminist tradition puts into question traditional, academic genre writing and advocates extensive reflexivity in academic texts (cf. Lykke 2010). Nor do I draw on a reflective writing tradition found within the field of practical knowledge, a way of writing that is in part inspired by Schön’s (1983) theories about the reflective practitioner.
- 2.
Nussbaum argues that by learning empathy , we can acquire a deep understanding of the other, regardless of their gender , culture, religion, or sexual preferences. The literary novel shows in detail how customs and ways to attend to basic needs vary between cultures but how human needs remain the same. By reading about other people, we can learn about similarities between people and peoples, in spite of differences in living conditions and cultures. There is a common human nature, but cultural patterns can cause people to draw borders and separate us from the other, which may result in exclusion and segregation of certain groups, for example.
- 3.
Unlike the Stoics, Nussbaum does not claim that we should endure and stand all trials. Instead, we should try to understand conflicts and tensions caused by cultural differences and allow them to affect us in order for us to develop (cf. Nussbaum 2001).
- 4.
There are different ways of presenting traditions of teaching and learning writing. (See, e.g., Hyland 2004 for an overview emphasizing the social context .)
- 5.
Also see Bruner’s introduction to the English edition (2004) for Vygotsky’s theories about the functions of language.
- 6.
Vygotsky’s powerful emphasis of historical and social conditions as the basis of human thinking is clearly influenced by Marxism and is juxtaposed against a bourgeois, individualistic ideal celebrating personal talent . Perhaps it also opposes a purely racist, biological view of intelligence and learning. (See Wertsch 1993: 50ff.)
- 7.
The American anthropologist James V. Wertsch (1998) links prototypicalizations to learning, and defines learning as appropriation , to “appropriate” (53). According to Wertsch (53) , the term originates from Bakhtin and means “taking something that belongs to others and making it one’s own.” But appropriation is complex. It is a process of embodiment, in the sense that we internalize new knowledge and learn to master culturally situated, mediating tools , what Wertsch (50) refers to as “mastering”; however, it is not without resistance of different kinds. What Bakhtin has described as resistance or apprehension against appropriation of new linguistic expressions, Wertsch widens to encompass all new mediating means (54). Even if someone manages to demonstrate “mastery,” there may still be resistance (56), which is clearly manifested through stereotypical use of tools. It is quite possible to use stereotypicalization as a mediating tool without the process of appropriation (i.e., to master how to use a cultural tool without making it one’s own, without appropriating it [174]). However, Wertsch also remarks that embedded in the term “appropriation ” is “some kind of conscious reflection […]” and, in addition, “that agents use cultural tools voluntarily or willingly.” Inherent in the nature of learning lies a desire to want to appropriate culturally shaped mediating means and to make them “our own.”
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Edberg, H. (2018). Creative Writing and Critical Thinking: From a Romantic to a Sociocritical View on Creative Writing. In: Creative Writing for Critical Thinking. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65491-1_2
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