Space and place: writing encounters self
ORR, Susan and HIND, Claire
Available from Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at:
http://shura.shu.ac.uk/4457/
This document is the author deposited version. You are advised to consult the
publisher's version if you wish to cite from it.
Published version
ORR, Susan and HIND, Claire (2009). Space and place: writing encounters self.
Journal of writing in creative practice, 2 (2), 133-138.
Copyright and re-use policy
See http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html
Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive
http://shura.shu.ac.uk
Space and place: writing encounters self
Professor Susan Orr
Deputy Dean: Faculty of Arts
Faculty Of Arts
York St John University
Lord Mayor’s Walk
York
YO31 7EX
s.orr@yorksj.ac.uk
Claire Hind
Senior Lecturer in Performance
Faculty Of Arts
York St John University
Lord Mayor’s Walk
York
YO31 7EX
c.hind@yorksj.ac.uk
‘The author and the text write each other’ (St Pierre 2002: 65)
In this edition writing encounters self. How do we write ourselves in (and out) of our writing
and performance practice? The articles by Rea Dennis, Alissa Clarke, Emma Cocker, Emily
Orley, Cathy Turner and Fiona Graham present different approaches to the writing and
performance of self. Collectively these articles explore the ways that self (and its obverse
other) is fashioned into being in text and in performance. In this edition authors share with us
the diverse ways that text can become a means to construct different understandings of
subjectivity (Richardson and St Pierre 2005: 961).
As stated above self assumes the existence of other. Authors may actively construct a
range of identities but they are also constructed by their writing contexts: geographically,
historically, politically, socially and culturally. The qualitative researchers Fine and Weiss
(2002) have written extensively on their roles as researchers in relation to those they research.
Their work is relevant to the articles included in this edition. They argue that it is impossible
to construct a concept of self without doing so in relation to certain constructions of other. In
the interests of reflexivity Fine and Weiss urge us to consider the nature of the gap between
self and other. They refer to the hyphen between self:other and they discuss the implications
of ‘working the hyphen’ (Fine and Weiss 2002: 270) whilst making sure that we recognize
that self and other are knottily entangled. In their view ‘our obligation is to come clean “at
the hyphen”’ (Fine and Weiss 2002: 284).
The nexus of self and other is presented in Fiona Graham’s case study where she sets
out an argument for understanding the role of dramaturge as midwife. In this article Graham
presents a construction of self that appears to be simultaneously pivotal and incidental. The
metaphor of midwife encapsulates the tensions in the role of dramaturge. Graham’s point is
that once the baby is born the midwife is forgotten. Within this metaphor the dramaturge’s
identity may become invisible at the end of the creative process. In Graham’s words the
dramaturge’s ‘contribution can be contested or invisibilized. Like the role of the midwife it is
a humble position, which may carry little status’. In this article the author charts the moves
from centrality and control to peripheral invisibility. The reader must decide the extent to
which the metaphor of midwife helps us understand the role of the dramaturge. Graham is
keen not to other the community groups she works with but her work raises important issues
about the extent to which the dramaturge can work with communities other than their own.
bell hook’s work is relevant here. hooks challenges those who aim to ‘give voice’ to
disadvantaged communities. She argues that the idea of giving voice to others represents a
very powerful view of self (hooks 1990). In a scathing critique of white researchers
colonizing the voices of black communities she writes:
No need to heed your voice when I can talk about you better than you can
speak about yourself. No need to hear your voice. Only tell me about your
pain. I want to know your story. And then I will tell it back to you in a new
way. Tell it back to you in such a way that it has become my own. Rewriting
you I rewrite myself anew. […] I am still coloniser, the speaking subject, and
you are now the centre of my tale. (hooks 1990: 345)
One of the key tenets of the national Writing PAD project is that writing is meaning-making
and exploratory – as in the oft quoted and variously attributed saying: ‘How do I know what I
think until I see what I say?’ Richardson (1994, 2002) theorizes this conceptualization of
writing. Richardson creates the term ‘textwork’ to describe writing as a method of enquiry. In
Richardson’s words: ‘I write because I want to find out something in order to learn something
that I didn’t know before I wrote it’ (Richardson 1994: 517).
This way of understanding writing foregrounds its possibilities for use as a
methodological tool. All the articles in this edition address issues of methodology. For
example, Emma Cocker’s article ‘Pay Attention to the Footnotes’ explores the critical shift in
writing from what she describes as ‘a mode of writing about to one of writing in dialogue
with or alongside performance’ and offers the reader a ‘close encounter’ with practice. For
Cocker the writing itself is ‘performed’ and she highlights this by responding to the
collaborative project Open City led by artists Andrew Brown and Katie Doubleday. Cocker
introduces us to the idea that art writing as a concept is a question of how to write practice
through the enactment of performative writing and ‘ethical responsibility’. Cocker parallels
the spatial territories of performance with that of the page and by doing so she draws our
attention to the act of reading. Cocker’s interest in the ‘performances that happened at the
level of the page’ highlight the ideas of Michel de Certeau’s expressed in The Practice of
Everyday Life (1984). Cocker maps the idea of ‘wandering’ in relation to page and place and
the ‘deployment of rhythm and spacing, pauses and hesitations, omissions and notations’.
Cocker explains that footnotes interrupt the text in a way that constructs particular readings.
This evokes the work of Lather who calls for texts that ‘interrupt themselves and foreground
their own constructedness’ (Lather 1991: 123).
Extending the parallel with Lather’s research Cocker’s article echoes Lather’s
comment that she is ‘paradoxically attracted to wandering and getting lost as methodological
stances’ (Lather 1997: 64). Like Lather, Cocker proposes that ‘physical and textual
wanderings’ are methodological tools. Wandering becomes a means to produce a particular
construction of subjectivity. Exploring the relation ‘between page and place’ Cocker’s essay
draws us into the city and the possibilities of the footnote as an ‘intellectual journey’.
From footnotes to feet, Rea Dennis’s article ‘Structure and Improvisation in Writing
for Performance’ explores another form of losing one’s self through wandering. Dennis
writes about the ways she has used walking as a means to develop awareness of self. For
Dennis, walking is an approach to ‘loosen the sediment from my material body’ to experience
self. Dennis walks to locate ‘places within which I experience myself’. The author draws
parallels between losing one’s self and the art of improvisation. Offering a ‘autobiographical
landscape’ Dennis renders her body into text, in her words ‘my body writes my lived
experience into texts’. Her approach reminds us that ‘all research is in one way or another
autobiographical or else the avoidance of autobiography’ (Reay 1998: 2). Within the text
Dennis explores the ‘spaces in between’ the dualisms of self and other; self and object; self
and space. Dennis’s key point is that writing emerges from the spaces between.
Cocker argues that ‘texts can bridge time-zones’ thus layering past, present and
future. Sunil Manghani’s article ‘Confessions of a Virtual Scholar, Or, Writing as Worldly
Performance’ is an example of just such a text. Manghani offers what Richardson (2002: 39)
would refer to as a ‘pleated text’. For Richardson a ‘pleated text’ is one that displaces the
boundaries between academic writing, creative writing and autobiography. Manghani
experiments with the textual form by constructing a patchwork of speakers and identities.
The author asks us to consider if there is a difference between ‘writing’ and ‘performing
writing’. Taking the reader through significant key thinkers – Benjamin, Barthes, Derrida,
Cixous and more – this work offers a clear and philosophical virtual performance, moving us
through meaning, language and writing through a process of weaving. In this article
Manghani explores blogging in contemporary culture by placing it within a rich historical
context. In his words: ‘We should not simply see blogging in opposition to contemporary
mass media, but instead to consider it with respect to a much longer history of
communication.’ The territory of the blog is alluringly and playfully mapped through critical
analysis. We discover through this essay that the blog writer is performing writing through
the act of dissemination even if no one is reading, the virtual world offers a performative
writing space which offers ‘fame’. Manghani also introduce us to examples of ‘“blogging”,
before blogging began’ and whilst taking the reader through the very latest on the
blogosphere he ‘measures’ centuries of writing against this latest phenomenon. This article
underlines Sharples’s view that the ‘the writer’s dialogue with the world is shaped by other
people’s past utterances and actions and it results in a text that forms part of the continuing
dialogue’ (Sharples 1999: 161).
In ‘Advance by Error’ Alissa Clarke presents an alternative methodology for writing
within performance. Clarke argues that making mistakes and failure should be viewed as an
enabling methodology that can be used and applied to documentation. This echoes Samuel
Beckett’s words ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better’
(Beckett 1983).
Like Cocker and Dennis, Clarke proposes that travelling ‘error by error’ is akin to
wandering and can be used as a means to heighten reflexivity. As Clarke usefully observes,
when you wander you become your own signpost. Clarke invites us to consider the role of