AustLit

'Over the last two decades, practice-led research (PLR) has rapidly expanded in the Australian university system. This paper lays out the potential exegetical benefits of one methodology, the case study, for one disciplinary area, Performance as Research (PAR). The epistemological issues currently besetting PAR are identified and a brief account of the debate in the 1990s given. The values and concepts of case study methodology as these relate to the Chicago School of sociology are then described. The point is made that identifying an artwork as a ‘case’ means viewing it not (only) as a unique experience, but as representative of a certain kind of problem. This allows it to be placed in a comparative vista, either diachronic or synchronic. Case study methodology’s ‘emic’ sensitivities are mentioned in relation to evidentiary procedures ie. how subjective experiences can validate general claims. The paper concludes with a brief example of how the approach can be applied to one potential project, As We Forgive by Tom Holloway, a play I directed for the 10 Days on the Island Festival in 2013.' (Publication abstract)

'Freud’s sometimes startlingly acute and complex descriptions of the two realms of waking and sleeping, and his emerging method of analysing dreams in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) foreshadowed and dramatised some later findings in neuroscience. Neuroscience in turn presents us now with an opportunity to modify and extend our understanding of the kind of thinking that produced Freud’s pioneering turn-of-the-century version of the mind, and perhaps revivify our understanding of creativity. If there is validity in the lateralised description of the brain in neuroscience, does this throw light on the process Freud followed as he grappled with the question of establishing the discipline of psychoanalysis through defining a new method of understanding dreams? This essay surveys research findings on brain lateralisation with the aim of identifying a model of the human self composed of two wills never quite in partnership with each other, distinct in their modes of thinking, and potentially disruptive of each other’s way of being, requiring a third position (a between-ness) if we are to function to our potential as human beings. This model is then applied to an understanding of Freud’s early unresolved conflict between his then model of dreams (in his 1900 book on dreams) as disguised wish fulfillment and his method of dream interpretation that required the empathic practice of listening with a responsive passivity. The essay surveys briefly the history of difficulty the psychoanalytic profession has manifested in recognising the centrality of dreams and the art of dream interpretation with a view to showing that the kind of knowledge important to the arts, knowledge based in the subtleties of intuition, learned skills and proliferating complexity, have been historically undervalued. Finally this essay will propose that rather than considering the self in terms of conscious, preconscious and unconscious realms, or even according to a neurological model of left brain and right brain thinking, it is more useful, as Freud came to understand, to allow for a creative consciousness to emerge as a constantly negotiated state of between-ness, where poet and scientist might meld, where the linguistic and the chthonic recognise and accommodate each other, as they did eventually for Freud. This amounts to an argument for the centrality of poetry to thinking.' (Publication abstract)

'While Romanticism, psychoanalysis and postmodern theory have provided the dominant paradigms for understanding creativity in the humanities in the past century, this paper argues that interdisciplinary engagement with sociobiology and the cognitive sciences might provide ground-breaking perspectives. Against the ‘supra-rational’, masculinist and solipsistic visions of creativity that have prevailed, the work of the sociobiologist Ellen Dissanayake and of the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio invite new ways of thinking about the role of the feeling body, femininity and mutuality in creative practice. This paper will survey Dissanayake’s and Damasio’s research to explore the possibility and desirability of a paradigm shift when it comes to understanding creativity, with poetry as a strategic focus for its argument. This paper is not interested in putting forward a new methodology for writing poetry but in recognising the embodied condition from which all poetry fundamentally arises.' (Publication abstract)

'In A Creative Writing Research Methodology: New Directions, Strange Loops and Tornados (2009), Nicola Boyd takes the conceptual movement of Douglas Hofstadter’s Strange Loop as a model for creative research, and a plausible creative methodology. She describes the movement of a Strange Loop as a self-repeating spiral and, as a familiar sensation in creative writing, one useful as an effective metaphor for the emergence of focus in the writing process. But Boyd’s model overlooks Hofstadter’s original use of the Strange Loop as a neurological explanation for consciousness that is linked to narrative theories of selfhood. Arguably, taking an interdisciplinary focus in reading creative writing through Hofstadter could potentially serve to augment discussions of selfhood in the Creative Writing discipline. I contend that Boyd has inadvertently opened the way for a potentially rich discourse examining the involvement of self within the creative process. I question the manner in which a Strange Loop constructs self, and just how this might relate to the act of writing.' (Publication abstract)

'This paper elucidates Maurice Blanchot’s (1989; 1995a; 1995b) analysis of the role of inspiration when writing literature, and applies it to PhD thesis writing. It utilises a mixed method qualitative approach weaving interviews with PhD students, doctoral research, auto-ethnography and Blanchot’s analysis. Blanchot (1989) has re-crafted Hegel’s story of the modern subject into the story of the writing subject. He contends that in order to achieve the mastery of a finished ‘work’, a writer must firstly make a leap into the unknown. This can result in the experience of loss and anxiety. Such feelings are indeed common to the PhD experience. However in Blanchot’s account, inspiration is tenacious and ubiquitous. If the writer persists with their writing, they will find a way out of their confusion. Blanchot’s analysis provides encouragement to the PhD student to persist, even during the difficult and arid times of thesis writing. Moreover, because inspiration is tenacious, finishing a ‘work’ or thesis will inevitably result in a new form of beginning.' (Publication abstract)

'Despite the relatively recent debate that unfolds in Special Issue 14 of TEXT, practice-led research remains a reasonably vexed topic. Writer and academic Scott Brook shares in his introduction of that special issue how, at a session on practice-led research, he noticed ‘a clear distinction was established between discussions aimed at establishing the legitimacy of creative works as research, and discussions on how artists in the university can establish a “research practice”’ (Brook 2012). Biggs and Büchler continue this debate with examples of similar development overseas, where even conformism to the conventions of academic research may not have impactful outcomes for the artists (Biggs & Büchler 2012). This is because, as Biggs and Büchler suggest, research outputs inclined to follow academia may not be relevant or important to the wider community. Exegesis in practice-led research positions itself between the creative work and the audience in that it frames practice. But where is the practitioner who is both an artist and academic positioned? Exegesis helps answer this question by encouraging the practitioner to establish their own research practice, where creative practice continues to play its dynamic role. When practice-led research outputs comprise a creative artefact and an exegesis, it is crucial for the practitioner to adopt journaling to capture evidence of a self that evolves with practice and the research. ' (Publication abstract)