Abstract
As researchers, much of our time is spent in the act of ‘writing ’. The production of research as writing is considered an essential part of our research outputs, which are measured and policed by citation metrics and ranked journal and publisher lists. For writing to be recognised and counted as research, it must appear in certain outlets, each of which makes its own certain demands of what is judged to be research. This, we fear, feeds a nonsensical academic apparatus, much like a Goldberg machine that has taken on a life of its own, existing only to perpetuate its own complicated systems of connections and cogs and wheels, arbitrary to the originary desire to write and to become-writer. And this academic publishing apparatus privileges its internal machinery, ossifying its peculiar set of connections, trapping our writing production rather than seeking out and augmenting new and different forms of connection between writer and text and reader. We fear that this arrangement of parts produces us as academic writers who are inert, dead, coded, ranked and listless numbers. And so we ask what if we were to put these nonsenses aside and instead undertake experiments and different encounters with writing , where the writing itself becomes our method of inquiry? Following in the pathway created by Laurel Richardson, we investigate what monstrous creations, full of vitality and fervour, might be made possible if we were to bypass the dead and dismembered assemblage and instead plug ourselves directly into the spark? Would such experiments with writing bring us to life or would our monsters simply offer us torment rather than succour?
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
This is the result of using Articoolo (www.articoolo.com) to generate a piece on “Monstrous Writing ”. There was a further option to pay some money to decode the text. We declined because we actually quite liked this version.
- 2.
We plugged the opening passage from the book proposal into SpinBot (www.spinbot.net) and this was the resulting ‘improved’ text.
- 3.
The opening lines from Beowulf, a piece of monstrous writing . Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43521/beowulf-old-english-version
References
Badiou, A. (2000). Of life as a name of being, or, Deleuze’s vitalist ontology. Pli, 10, 191–199.
Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and repetition (P. Patton, Trans.). London: The Athlone Press.
Deleuze, G. (1995). Negotiations: 1972-1990 (M. Joughin, Trans.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, G. (1997). Essays critical and clinical (D. Smith & M. A. Greco, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G. (2004). Desert islands and other texts 1953-1974. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e).
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1991). What is philosophy? (H. Tomlinson & G. Burchell, Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1986). Kafka: Toward a minor literature (D. Polan, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G., & Parnet, C. (2002). Dialogues II (H. Tomlinson & B. Habberjam, Trans.). London: Continuum.
Henderson, L., Honan, E., & Loch, S. (2016). The production of the academicwritingmachine. Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology, 7(2), 4–18. https://doi.org/10.7577/rerm.1838.
Honan, E., & Bright, D. (2016). Writing a thesis differently. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 29(5), 731–743. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2016.1145280.
Koro-Ljungberg, M., & Mazzei, L. A. (2012). Problematizing methodological simplicity in qualitative research: Editors’ introduction. Qualitative Inquiry, 18(9), 728–731. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800412453013.
Law, J. (2004). After method: Mess in social science research. London, England: Routledge.
Lecercle, J.-J. (2002). Deleuze and language. New York, NY: Palgrave.
Richardson, L. (1994). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. Denzin (Ed.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 516–529). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Richardson, L. (1997). Fields of play constructing an academic life. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Richardson, L., & St. Pierre, E.A. (2005). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 959–978). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Ltd.
Roberts, C. M. (2010). The dissertation journey: A practical and comprehensive guide to planning, writing, and defending your dissertation (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Shelley. M. W. (1869). Frankenstein, or, the modern Prometheus. Boston and Cambridge: Sever, Francis & Co.
St. Pierre, E. A. (2016). Deleuze and Guattari’s language for new empirical inquiry. Educational Philosophy and Theory, Advanced online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2016.1151761.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Honan, E., Bright, D., Riddle, S. (2018). Bringing Monsters to Life Through Encounters with Writing. In: Riddle, S., Bright, D., Honan, E. (eds) Writing with Deleuze in the Academy. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2065-1_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2065-1_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-2064-4
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-2065-1
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)