Analytical autoethnodrama: autobiographed and researched experiences with academic writing

In the quote from ‘ A Methodology of the Heart: Evoking Academic and Daily Life ’ Pelias, 2004b, Pelias challenges the notion that qualitative research that is rooted in the humanities

Volume 44

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Autobiographed and Researched Experiences with Academic Writing

Jess Moriarty

University of Brighton, UK

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for my Nan Work really matters to me, but nowhere near as much as the people

I love They do well to remind me of that – please don’t stop now?

Acknowledgements ix

Chapter 2 Critical, Creative and Personal Context 11

2.1 Personal and Institutional Background and the Research

Chapter 3 Needing Permission: Identifying Frameworks for Evolving

3.3 Barthes: A Challenge to Forms of Conventional Writing 27

3.5 Viewpoint of the Researcher in the Research Process 33

Chapter 4 Autoethnography: Scaffolding for Other Ways of Being

Chapter 7 Thematic Analysis: Analysing the Unpindownable? 71

7.3.2 Change in Academic Culture: Time as a Barrier 78

7.3.4 How is Academic Writing Development Supported

7.3.7 What do Journal Editors/Professors Consider

7.3.8 What do Newer Researchers and Academics Consider

7.4.1 Identifying Problems with Analysis 94

Appendix 1 Interview Questions for Less Experienced Academics 111Appendix 2 Interview Questions for Experienced Academics 113Appendix 3 Transcript of Interview with Jess Moriarty and Phil Porter

Appendix 4 Transcript of Interview with Jess Moriarty and Isabel 147Appendix 5 Transcript of Interview with Jess Moriarty and Isla 173Appendix 6 Transcript of Interview with Jess Moriarty and Mason 195

This work could not have been produced without the generosity of my interviewees who allowed me to share their rich and personal stories – thank you Thanks also to

my friend and colleague, Mike Hayler, who will tell me not to name him here and that’s another reason why I must

INTRODUCTION

There’s nothing you can say You can’t say anything You’re not allowed to say anything How can I say what I feel in my heart? …All those hours in hotel rooms working at speeches, drafting, redrafting, polishing, changing every word and all you’re doing is covering up for what’s really gone wrong What you know in your heart What really happened What really happened… (Hare,

1993, p.97)

They [academics] started to question why university life had to be that way, why they had to be removed from their work, why only certain forms of discourse counted as knowledge, why they didn't feel more connected to those they studied, why their mind should be split from their body, why they had to keep their emotions in check, why they could not speak from the heart (Pelias, 2004a, p.11)

The two quotations above resonate strongly with my own experiences with academic writing and in many ways encapsulate the intention driving this book: to

explore the story of my writing through the head and through the heart, and to use

autobiographical experiences to inform research that is framed by an analytical and theoretical framework and maintains the necessary rigour required at an academic

level The quote from David Hare is from the play ‘The Absence of War’ (Hare,

1993) in which the central character is a politician who feels unable to speak in his own voice because he is bound by public expectation and manipulated by spin doctors to express himself in a particular way: a way that does not enable him to articulate the real feelings in his heart or to express the truth about the social and

political world as he sees and experiences it In the quote from ‘ A Methodology of the Heart: Evoking Academic and Daily Life ’ (Pelias, 2004b), Pelias challenges the

notion that qualitative research that is rooted in the humanities and social sciences must remain traditional, objective, devoid of emotion or anything personal He suggests that, similarly to the politician in the play by Hare, some academics are frustrated by the traditions of conventional academic writing that make it difficult

to express what we feel in our hearts This splintering of what I thought I should

be doing, what was expected of me and how I actually wanted to be, affected my academic and personal life and I wanted to reflect and capture these experiences whilst resisting positivist-informed ‘master’ narratives, and instead offering a highly charged text that offers the personal experiences of myself and my peers as a form

of social and cultural critique

This book offers a triangulation of autobiographical experiences and the research data from open-ended interviews with academics at a Higher Education Institute (HEI) in the UK to inform an autoethnodrama This creative text seeks to explore the effect of the ‘publish or perish’ culture that the Research Excellence Framework (REF) (the system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions (HEIs)) has arguably intensified It examines the potential impact

on individual life and institutional culture The autoethnodrama is a critique of academic writing culture, specifically in one HEI, and scenes from the script will

be offered at the beginning of each chapter This process of merging of traditional (but personal) academic writing and script is identified as part of the resistance to conventional authoritative discourse I use the autoethnodrama to suggest that the perceived ‘publish or perish’ culture, which some academics believe the Research Excellence Framework (REF) has contributed to/increased, is potentially damaging

to confident writing conditions and that some academics, early career researchers in particular, might benefit from improved institutional support with academic research and writing processes

I propose that the sharing of lived experiences provides an opportunity for co-creation on the part of the reader and writer and that producing necessarily vulnerable and evocative texts, which offer insight into how life is (or was) for the writer, can foster empathy, understanding and meaning-making for both the writer and the reader This utopian process makes it possible to begin to re-imagine, recover and reinvent the world as we know/knew it (Denzin, 2003) and this is potentially transformative for the reader and also the writer Kant (1794) suggests that an enlightened reading can take place when the text empowers the reader to evolve past a self-/imposed immaturity and have confidence in their own understanding, appreciation and/or criticism without explicit guidance from another (in this case, the author) The qualitative research methodology known as autoethnography is part

of the postmodern research movement that critiques conventional writing practices

in qualitative research (Richardson, 2000) in which an author draws on personal experiences to extend an understanding of discipline or culture These highly personalised accounts can encourage an enlightened reading and are potentially more democratic and inclusive, promoting civil and spiritual freedom and a resistance to dominant oppressive structures that are sometimes seen as synonymous with traditional academic work (Canagarajah, 2002) Autoethnographers strive to

“draw people into evocative texts rather than making them feel distanced from what they read” (Grant, 2010b, p 4) By employing techniques such as drama and auto/

biography I aim to encourage the reader to think with rather than about the story

presented (Rambo, 2005) The story in the autoethnodrama presented contains real and researched experiences with academic writing and documents the crisis and recovery I experienced as an early career academic in an emotional and evocative text The context for this enquiry is further stated and explored in Chapter 2

In Chapter 3, I offer a re-reading of Barthes as a rationale for resisting authoritative discourses in qualitative research Despite being located in the humanities and

social sciences, qualitative research is still predominantly traditional and objective and privileges the researcher over the researched Barthes’ argument that texts are fractured and messy is also useful here, as a significant function of autoethnography

is to challenge and expose as socially-constructed, rather than foundational or essential, binaries such as: self/other, inner/outer, public/private, individual/society (Sparkes, 2002) “[L]iterature itself is never anything but a single text: the one text is not an access to a Model, but an entrance into a network with a thousand entrances” (Barthes, 1974, p 12) I seek to offer the reader more than a single entrance into this text and to engage them on personal, emotional and intellectual levels, building on the work of Perselli (2004) and using Barthes as a rationale for self-study in personal and inclusive research

A re-reading of Barthes is useful when employing autoethnography, the methodology that Ellis (2004 xix) describes as:

…research, writing, story, and method that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social, and political Autoethnographic forms feature concrete action, emotion, embodiment, self-consciousness, and introspection portrayed in dialogue, scenes, characterization, and plot Thus, autoethnography claims the conventions of literary writing (Ellis, 2004, p.xix)

Autoethnographers produce emotional and evocative first person accounts that use autobiographical experiences, located in the group under study, as a form of social/cultural critique The emergence of autoethnography signifies a challenge

to conventional scholarly work in the social sciences and humanities by offering one, and paving the way for other, qualitative approaches that connect analysis, cultural critique and creative texts By challenging socially-constructed binaries, autoethnography offers a social critique and also provides a voice for vulnerable and/or hidden voices The book is therefore a two-pronged critique of a specific academic writing culture in one HEI, offering an emotional and evocative text that seeks to resonate on a personal level with the reader and resist traditional forms of qualitative research and writing, whilst simultaneously arguing that the ‘publish or perish’ culture that has been maintained and perhaps heightened by the REF is not always conducive to confident academic writing conditions I do not argue that one methodology is better or more effective than traditional approaches I have found it useful and inspiring to identify a methodology which permits personal and emotional writing that offers an insight into historical and cultural situations and I reflect on and evaluate the process and production I do not seek to suggest, however, that autoethnography should replace or usurp existing methodological approaches, rather

I argue that inclusive and emotional writing should be valued in terms of relevance and resonance in qualitative research within the social sciences and also beyond Autoethnodramas exist on the borderlands of conventional qualitative research and offer spaces where rhetoric, politics, parody, pastiche, performance, ethnography and critical cultural studies come together (Conquergood, 1998) Autoethnodrama is

a potentially rigorous methodology, capable of fulfilling the criteria for academic

research (including doctoral study) and can provide a space to document experiences

of trauma and processes of recovery This is an evolving methodology and my process differs from the established practice of using monologues based on the author’s personal experiences to create a dramatic text (Saldana, 2003) Instead,

‘ Impact ’ is located in my own autobiographical experiences and in the HEI where

the research took place, but themes, characters and dialogue have been developed as

a result of my analysis of interview data from academics in a variety of subject areas

at the same HEI Autoethnographic work identifies the experiences of the writer/researcher as relevant to discourse on a known, or more usually lived, experience and this can be framed via an evocative text to engender meaning-making on the part

of an enlightened reader and/or audience

To capture the autobiographical experiences of my interviewees, I held open interviews with academics from different disciplines and at various stages of their careers at a university on the south coast of England, adopting an emotional stance in order to build rapport and access their lived stories with academic writing processes This triangulation of research-autobiography-analysis presented as autoethnodrama seeks to fulfil Anderson’s criteria for analytical autoethnography (Anderson, 2006), which I identify as a rigorous framework in qualitative research I recognize Anderson’s model as an effective response to criticisms of autoethnography and suggestions that

it is narcissistic and navel-gazing (Coffey, 1999; Sparkes, 2002) This is despite arguments from evocative autoethnographers who consider sociological analysis to

be a violation of their practice that undermines and devalues the rich and valuable stories being presented in autoethnographic work (Ellis and Bochner, 2000) Denzin (2006) argues that ethnography that employs Creative Analytical Practices (CAP) has little in common with analytical autoethnography and that it is unhelpful for ethnographers to work in the framework established by Anderson (2006) I employ features of analytic autoethnography to make it explicit that I am adopting a stance that is rigorous, analytical, critical and also creative The coding and framing of data including autobiographical experience is problematic for researchers working

to further legitimise autoethnography Equally, ethnography that employs CAP should be held to high and rigorous standards and it is wrong to assume that because

a story is novel, it is automatically relevant or useful in terms of academic work (Richardson, 2005; Eisner, 2001) Creative writing in autoethnographic work must therefore fulfil a literary aesthetic, portray a coherent story and that story must be of some interest or relevance to the intended reader (Sparkes, 2009) My intention is to avoid the danger of producing autoethnographic work that is vulnerable to criticisms

of it being narcissistic and self-serving, instead offering a text that will enable the reader to access a social reality (Sparkes, 2009)

Autoethnographic drama or autoethnodrama creates a text that is “an entertainingly informative experience for an audience” (Saldana, 2003, p.220) and my intention in

producing ‘ Impact ’ was to use the insights of the researcher and the researched to

generate dramatic material that would engage and entertain but also help the reader and the writer to better understand one perspective on the academic writing culture

in one HEI and that this might resonate elsewhere in Higher Education (HE) I shall further explore autoethnography, and specifically autoethnodrama, as a methodology

in Chapter 4

In Chapter 5, I discuss the methods used to obtain data and produce the

autoethnodrama ‘ Impact ’ and address objections to autoethnography that Delamont

(2006) suggests is “literally and also intellectually lazy” (Delamont, 2006, p.1) I problematise my decision to work within the analytical autoethnographic paradigm

as a compromise but argue that it explicitly prevents the autoethnographic work from being merely experiential (Delamont, 2006, p.1)

In Chapter 7 I use an analysis of the interview data and the process of producing the autoethnodrama to argue that the ‘publish or perish’ culture is not always conducive to a culture of confident writing and that this has potential consequences for academics’ professional and personal lives – specifically my own I argue that for some academics (early career lecturers and researchers in particular), explicit institutional support with academic writing may help to increase confidence and motivation to write My autoethnodrama offers a window on a specific academic culture that is emotional and/or personal and/or intellectual, which will resist authoritative discourse as identified by Barthes (1974) and Bakhtin (1981), engage the reader on an emotional level and help them to develop an understanding of, or empathy with, the pressure to write and publish in REF-able publications

My own experiences with academic writing and culture have been integrated within the research in order to provide the necessary self-observation (Hayano, 1979) that increases the emphasis on the researcher in autoethnographic work It

is my sincere hope that the storied lives of academics at the HEI under study will provide the reader with a form of critique of existing academic life which will go some way to shaping a kinder, more inclusive academic environment that resists the potentially and actively oppressive culture academic life can engender and which I certainly experienced as an early career academic Although the research focuses on one HEI in particular, the implications are intended to have resonance further afield and across the Higher Education Academy (HEA) in the UK but also internationally where a shift to a neo-liberal agenda has impacted on working (and specifically writing) conditions

1.1 WHO AM I?

When I joined the University of Brighton in 2004 as a part-time lecturer in Creative Writing, I felt like a fraud I kept waiting for a colleague or a student to stop, point and declare me unfit as a lecturer, as an academic, as a researcher, and as a writer This anxiety increased and as time went on I found myself stifled by (academic) writer’s block I had a desire to write for academic publication, but when I read academic writing it seemed so alien, so unlike me and my existing style of writing,

I was sure that anything I wrote would be deemed unworthy by journal editors and peers The problem was that while I enjoyed my work, I still had no clear sense

of who I was as a lecturer I felt as if I had to ‘become’ an academic and that this would involve a rigorous apprenticeship I was waiting for the tools to begin my metamorphosis; perhaps they would be handed to me by an experienced lecturer, or perhaps I would be advised during a staff appraisal? I just kept waiting and waiting and floundering with my writing, only producing papers for internal publication and not for peer review, making such work virtually meaningless in terms of REF (the process by where academic funding bodies based in the United Kingdom (UK) assess the research outputs of academics and use this to measure the impact

of specific individuals and institutions) It was evident that there was no induction programme or explicit institutional support for the academic writing process and, with so much emphasis placed on the need to publish, I was surprised at the lack of input and advice at institutional level Eventually, I was invited to co-write a paper with a more experienced colleague which was accepted by a peer reviewed journal and we produced several spin-off papers that were also successful

This collaborative experience helped me to better understand what was required

in terms of style, content and structure and also developed my confidence when writing for academic publication What is clear to me is that had I not been approached, the floundering and procrastinating would almost certainly persisted

My subsequent research into experiences with academic writing has been driven by

an autobiographical knowing of how the pressure to publish impacts on individuals and also the wider culture in an HEI (Heikkinen, et al.) Simultaneously, the pressure

of academic life and my determination to convince colleagues that I was coping with it effortlessly caused me to experience extreme anxiety that almost resulted in the collapse of my relationship with my long-time partner and was also detrimental

to my health The combination of an ailing personal life, acute back pain and a cancer scare, with the ongoing juggling act in my professional role, pushed me to the brink; as someone who has used various unhealthy strategies for dealing with stress,

I decided I had to take positive action before I imploded I engaged in a course of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) which helped me confront issues around work/

life balance and readjust Slowly I began to see work as a support system for my real

life and stopped attributing my personal value and self-belief solely to my vocational role: a role I still lacked confidence in Feeling less consumed by and more engaged with my work ironically, and perhaps obviously, helped me perform more effectively and feel passionate about the work I was involved with These events coincided with

my work on my doctorate and several years later my perspective and my life have changed Perhaps I do still want to be perceived in a certain way by my peers, but the reality is: I can only be me I have started to think that this might be okay There are still moments of crippling self-doubt, but my research into experiences with academic writing and my own parallel experiences have situated me as a complete

member of the social world I’m studying, with something personal and analytical to

say about the pressures of academic culture and the real and potential repercussions for this social group This process has been developmental and I will reflect on how the production and content of the book have enhanced my understanding of the

specific social world I am exploring and empowered me – personally, vocationally and academically

My previous research (Antoniou & Moriarty, 2008 Moriarty, 2007; Moriarty, 2008) enabled me to hear about the lived stories of my colleagues with their writing processes This work, together with my own experiences, motivated this study and inspired me to devise an autoethnodrama that offers a window on real and imagined events Grant (2010, p.5) argues that “a prism rather than a mirror

is a more appropriate metaphor in capturing the cultural refraction of individuals involved in day-to-day identity work” and this is useful when contextualising my own refractions of academic life – real, researched and imagined

My approach seeks to resist the dominant academic writing and publishing structure in a creative and constructive way and suggest an alternative structure that

is “more inclusive, ethical and democratic” (Canagarajah, 2002, p.30) My research into the field of autoethnography has drawn on challenging and informative work that also moved me emotionally and personally, causing me to feel frustrated and unfulfilled both by some of the other academic writing I was reading and also

in my own writing I acknowledge that my professional work and personal life became inextricably entwined, both in my day-to-day life and on the page While researching for the study, more and more I wanted to somehow articulate what

it had been like for me, and for my experience to offer meaningful insight into academic culture, specifically at my own institution, but also with the intention that it would resonate further afield By detailing my own experiences, I provide

a critique of academic culture in one HEI that does not claim the objectivity or authority of ‘grand’ narratives in conventional research, but seeks an emotional connection with the reader This is in order to suggest and facilitate changes in HE culture to align with aspirational and utopian ideals of well-being, holism, mutual respect and support This is with the aspirational aim of engendering a future where academics who experience work-related anxiety and stress which impacts on their personal lives and well-being will not feel as vulnerable or as isolated as I did This work is located in my experiences; it draws on my understandings and insights It is personal It makes no claim on absolute truth or knowledge – this is how it was for

me, that is all I can be sure of

Although personal, my approach is rooted in established theories on experiential learning which differ from empirical epistemologies and instead value experience as integral to the learning and meaning-making processes (Kolb, 1984) In experiential learning knowledge is not just taught, it is achieved through our connections with and reflections on everyday experience (Houle, 1980) Experiential learning theory defines learning as "the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience Knowledge results from the combination of grasping and transforming experience" (Kolb 1984, p.41) This process relies on reflections

on experience which are then assimilated and distilled into abstract concepts from which new ideas and experiences can be drawn by the writer and also the reader/audience An early advocate of experiential learning was Jerome Bruner

who identified learning as a process rather than a product and believed that the dissemination of all meaning was dependent on the perspectives from which it was interpreted (1986) Therefore the voice of the writer/researcher should be privileged and this ‘narrative knowing’ (Bruner, 1986) could help the reader and researcher make sense of the ambiguity and complexity of human lives Bruner recognised that storytelling was part of how humans translate their individual private experience of understanding into a public, culturally- negotiated form and this narrative mode is potentially useful in research in the social sciences

There is, with increasing frequency, evidence of academic writing becoming

‘academically creative’ or ‘creatively academic’ (Antoniou, 2004; Antoniou and Moriarty, 2008; Clough, 2002; Ellis and Berger, 2002; Grant, 2010a; Lather, 1997; Short, Grant, and Clarke, 2007; Sparkes, 2002; Sparkes, 2007; Sparkes, 1992)

‘Creatively academic’ involves writing creative work with an academic underpinning

(such as Joan Didion’s ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’ (Didion, 2005), whereas

‘academically creative’ writing is analytical with a creative underpinning (such as Antoniou, 2004; Grant, 2010; Sparkes, 2002) In these instances (and numerous others), researchers have recognised the important role that imaginative and creative writing can play in reconstructing reflective and evaluative experiences and personal feelings about the world (Webster and Mertova, 2007) Canagarajah, (2002, p.100) suggests that “Knowledge is writing Knowledge is conventional Knowledge

is contingent” and that unless academics resist convention, they are in danger of excluding certain individuals and communities who have not and do not seek to construct knowledge in the traditional and conventional style To promote inclusivity and democratic approaches to research and writing, I suggest that offering the reader a potential point of access into a text that is emotional and/or personal and/or intellectual may extend and enhance the reader’s engagement with the text and offer

a viewfinder through which the reader can closely examine “positive and negative spaces” (Rambo, 2005, p.571), helping them to develop a clearer understanding both

of the social world they are studying and also the author of the text

The argument that genres of creative writing can potentially enhance the research project has been identified as having cross-discipline relevance (Behar, 1996; Bolton, 1994a, 1994b; Clough, 2002; Denzin, 2003; Ellis, 1995, 1997, 2004; Grant, 2010a, 2010b; Lather, 1997; Pelias, 2005; Richardson, 2003, 2000; Sparkes, 2002; Sparkes, 2007; Sparkes, 1992; Sparkes, Nilges, Swan, and Dowling, 2003; Sparkes and Templin, 1992) These arguments and examples of creative and personal writing that have fulfilled the criteria of academic publications are useful

as I am seeking to resist traditional academic discourse and further legitimise personal and messy accounts as being potentially meaningful and relevant within qualitative research, specifically in the humanities and social sciences This book is concerned with building on existing work in the field of autoethnography and using autoethnodrama to “encourage (s) readers’ own experience of the text by decentring the authority of the scientific voice and avoiding privileging one true meaning or reading” (Grant, 2010b, p.2):

The use of fiction, which should not be regarded as synonymous with falsehood, arguably facilitates telling tales in a dramatic and enjoyable way

It is also a useful way of ‘writing the self’, so that the researcher and the researched become one and the same Writing the self means using fiction and other literary tools to both construct and clarify the person being written about…the researcher and the researched (Grant, 2010b, p.1)

Resisting authoritative discourse by exploring alternative strategies for presenting qualitative research is a potentially empowering tool, which may give a valid point

of access to individuals and communities who wish to contribute to knowledge in the social and human sciences without using the conventions of academic writing (Canagarajah, 2002) I seek to use both academic and creative approaches to depict

a three-dimensional story of my writing processes and appeal to a curious and empathetic reader The rationale behind this approach stems from the notion that our research writes us (Stronach and Maclure, 1997) and is in keeping with Barthes’ theorization of literature where the writer approaches the craft of writing steeped in

a multiple of codes and that these must be given an explicit voice within the text: Alongside each utterance, one might say that off-stage voices can be heard: they are codes: in their interweaving, these voices de-originate the utterance: the convergence of voices becomes writing, a stereographic space where the five codes, five voices, intersect (Barthes, 1974, p.21)

I have tried to give voice – both my own and that of my interviewees – to academic and personal experiences in this research project, using these auto/biographical experiences both as data and as the inspiration for an autoethnodrama (Saldana,

2003) The autoethnodrama ‘ Impact ’ seeks to offer a broader picture of academic

writing culture in one HEI and “trigger further meaning creation on the part of the reader” (Grant, 2010b, p.577), shedding additional light on academic culture and the potential pressures therein These experiences are not generalizable; they are specific to my interviewees and to me The combination of analysis, drama and reflection offers the reader a theoretical and personal insight into experiences with academic writing that I hope will provide them with a more complete picture than

just a research paper or just a piece of creative writing

As an autoethnographer, my research practice is ideally “performative, pedagogical, and political” (Denzin, 2006, p.422), reflecting the emotional and social world of study and enacting a way of seeing and being within that world Autoethnodrama offers a method for instructing the reader and challenging the conventional and often hegemonic ways of presenting data that are also potentially emancipatory for the writer Via my writing I hoped to understand academic writing culture, the lived experiences of my interviewees and myself, and for that process to

be necessarily messy, pedagogical and real

My desire to use a combination of self-expression and auto/biographical experience

in academic research has produced a tension between being necessarily vulnerable

in order to be creative and honest, and the self-discipline and professionalism required to ensure that the writing does not become self-indulgent (which would make it meaningless in terms of achieving doctoral status) I have identified autoethnography as a methodology that offers a voice to the researcher and the researched and potentially enhances the reader’s understanding of the social group under investigation, increasing their empathy and identifying areas, in this instance a specific HEI, where change might be needed and making recommendations for how that change might take shape

1.2 CHAPTER SUMMARY

In this chapter I have introduced my topics of enquiry and stated the research aims driving this study I have introduced analytical autoethnography as a rigorous methodology that will provide the framework for my study In the next chapter I provide a context for my process and discuss the triggers that prompted my enquiry

CRITICAL, CREATIVE AND PERSONAL CONTEXT

it together so he can stop worrying about me I suppose But dad was great, made me laugh on the way there and we got parked easy enough We had to go to the waiting room next to the STI clinic where you can have a HIV test and stuff like that which made us both laugh, ‘Hope I don’t see anyone I know,’ he said, and then we were both giggling when we walked in which made the other women look at us like we were mental

The chairs in the waiting area were like the ones you find in an old people’s home and dad was pretending to be a geriatric, dribbling on himself and acting like he was

going to call one of the nurses for help (Pause) And then this young woman came out

of one of the little rooms, and she must have been younger than me, and she came out and saw her friend sitting next to us and she just burst into tears Just sat there holding her mate and sobbing And that shut me and dad up

And they called my name, ‘Debbie Neston?’ and dad gave me a kiss and squeezed

my arm very tight, ‘It’ll be fine,’ he promised and off I went They told me to strip off below the waist and lay down in that chair with the stirrups; the one that looks like it should be in one of those horror films where they just torture people for two hours Fancy paying to see one of those? And the first thing I noticed when I lay back is the mural on the ceiling that had this polar bear and its cub sort of nuzzling together beneath a rainbow which I thought was pretty funny as the doctor I was seeing introduced himself as Dr Panda ‘It’s a like a zoo in here!’ I remember thinking, ‘I bet loads of other women have pointed that out,’ but then I had a panic, I mean, what if I was the first and he found it raucously amusing and ended up making a mistake with the laser, burnt off the wrong bloody bit So I left it and went back to watching his handiwork on the TV beside me I could see everything magnified which was weird because I didn’t actually feel that it was my body on the screen; it just didn’t seem possible that this was actually happening to me It was like someone was playing a big joke, maybe an ex or someone I’d really pissed off at work, and the idea that someone somewhere was laughing at me made me start to tense up and my left leg started twitching so Dr Panda couldn’t see properly

‘Don’t worry Mrs Neston, it won’t take long.’ He said, he was really nice, ‘It’s Ms Neston,’ I said, ‘I’m not married.’ It was silent then for a bit, which I thought was a good thing, I wanted him to concentrate But then the nurse on my left asked, "Do you smoke?"

"I don't now but I did, I used to smoke a lot." And I suddenly catch sight of the 18 year old me, and I remember how much I used to love smoking and I felt really guilty,

as if it’s something I needed to confess Like I wanted to repent and be saved “Well that’s it then.” she says happily, as if we have come up with the answer to the universe between us “Now just you try and relax.”

I sighed a little and went back to the polar bear cub and its mother And then a

thought got into my head and it wouldn’t go, it drones on and on and on: What if I can’t have children? What if I can’t have children? And that’s it then, because the

thought of death has never really scared me, I fell off a balcony when I was seventeen and all I could think when they told me that I might have died was, ‘Poor mum and dad They must be really upset.’ Cos if you’re gone, you’re gone aren’t you? And I’m not religious or anything so…but out of nowhere, the idea that I might not have

children really frightened me And I wondered: where has that come from ?

Dr Panda lifts his head then and shakes something that looks like a black slug in a pot at me “I think I got it all!”

“That’s great,” I said “thank you so much.” Dr Panda pats my hand and tells me not

to worry, that he is fairly confident it will all be ok now So I don’t ruin the moment, I don’t tell him that it won’t be alright How can I say, ‘No Dr Panda, it won’t be alright

at all because I’ve just realised that I have to have a baby, today, right now and that I know Pete won’t agree?’

When Pete gets home that night there are no flowers, no chocolates ‘Did you cook those chops?’ he goes ‘Don’t you want to know what happened?’ But he shakes his head Says he doesn’t want to hear about it, can’t bear the idea of me being ill and just wants to forget the whole thing I ask him about the flowers he didn’t get me and

he says, “What do you want? Fireworks?” and I say “No,” I say “No Pete, I want a baby.”

And he doesn’t Well, I knew he didn’t He tells me that I am mad, that this is just an overreaction to my own mortality and that having a baby won’t fix my hypochondria

We both say really horrible, terrible things ‘You owe me Pete, I have looked after you when you were broke and had no job and I’ve put up with all your shit and it’s

my turn now, it’s my bloody turn.’ And I even pull the ‘Don’t you care that I could have died?’ card, even though I didn’t nearly die and he tells me that he doesn’t care,

‘You’re just too used to having your own way, you can’t just scream until everyone around you backs down.’ and he tells me, ‘I’m not one of your students, I’m not just gonna do what you say because its you that said it.’ and he says that I knew what I was getting into, ‘I told you I might not want any children?’ ‘I thought you’d change your mind.’ I sniff through the snot and the tears, ‘I thought you’d want to have one with me.’ ‘It isn’t like that I really love you Debbie.’ But it is like that, it’s exactly like that

I ended up going for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) because he said it was work that was making me stressed all the time, ‘It can’t just be me?’ he said, and

he was right, I was overworked and I was tired, just really, really tired I started this thing where I kept saying yes to everyone and all the work they gave me, ‘Yes, I’ll write that article; Yes, I’ll take on that support role without getting any extra hours; Yes, I’ll organise an open mic night for the students and set up a magazine and do my doctorate, yes, yes, YES!’

So I go and I loved CBT, it helps me think about all the behavioural patterns I have and the ones that are brilliant and the ones that have got me nowhere and I sift through all the crap and I work to evolve, to get better and he hated that Hated the fact that I got stronger and stronger, and in the end, I realised that I’d put all my energy into my work because, to a certain extent, I can control work – the meetings and the marking and the millions of emails, but I cannot control him, I can’t make him want what I want And I tell him that it’s over, that I would rather be on my own than pretend that what we have will ever be enough

I applied to have the house put in my name, agreed to pay him off and I felt ready and I was quite excited at the prospect of starting again and at the same time I was absolutely lost because he didn’t back down When I was with Philip and after him when I went out with Eammon, they both wanted to have a family with me and I left them, decided they weren’t good enough And it has taken such a very long time to get to this point that I am quite, quite drained and I am terrified that when I go back to

be checked out that I will have cancer induced by the stress of nearly having cancer and then everything that came next

So when the time comes for my follow up appointment, I go privately, I hope that the results will be quicker than on the NHS where, because of an administrative error they said, it took three months to find out something was wrong On the day, the nurse

is inexperienced, awkward: she asks if I can insert the septum on my own and when I can’t she gets frustrated At the end, I ask if she can ring me when they get the results and that I will be at work on the day “You won’t want to get bad news at work.” She says “I’m not expecting the news to be bad.” I can feel the tears starting but I’m lying there half naked so I’ve already lost all dignity and think that it might be a way of getting her to retract but she pretends not to hear “Get dressed, can you find your own way out?” she asks, not waiting for my response as the door bangs

Before I reach the car park the tears have started, I am convinced she has seen something really bad and that the next ten days I’ll just be waiting for the inevitable bad news that will take me back to Dr Panda and the polar bears I go to call mum and dad, but I am too upset and it will only scare them that I’m in a car in this state I’m not the greatest driver in the world at the best of times, I wrote a Ford Escort off the first time my dad took me out Crashed head first into a lamppost on the Falmer Road

So I don’t call them, I call Pete And I’m scared that he will be pleased, I am scared that he will think I might come back to him now that I probably can’t have children but more than that, I need to hear his voice He tells me that she is an idiot, that she had no right to make me feel that way: that I should complain, that he’ll come, right

now, this minute, and demand to see her And this makes me laugh and I tell him, ‘I’m

OK I’ll see you at home.’

When I get back, he is already there There is a bunch of flowers on the table and

he says he doesn’t know what to say That he is scared of getting it wrong That he wants to make it better the only way he knows how

Blackout

In this chapter I explore my earlier work, which prompted my research topic, and state my own position as an academic, researcher and human I examine criteria for the REF and suggest that in my experience – not just personal experience, but also from research data and anecdotal stories acquired from colleagues – the pressure

to write for publication is, for some academics, not conducive to confident and motivated academic writing processes

2.1 PERSONAL AND INSTITUTIONAL BACKGROUND AND THE RESEARCH

EXCELLENCE FRAMEWORK (REF)

My partner says that Brighton (where we live) is a bubble, that the inhabitants have long been distanced from the rest of the world, cushioned by hot yoga, organic hummus, the pink pound and a healthy but self-consciously restrained attitude of

‘anything goes’ He says that I have lived here so long – since I was eight in fact – that

I have forgotten what the real world is like He is quite possibly right I am further cushioned by my supportive and nurturing parents, an actor and a counsellor (formerly

a drama teacher), who have encouraged my creativity and emotional development, rescued me from numerous appalling choices and financed my university education, world travel and the deposit for my first mortgage in the suburbs – not five minutes from where they live I do and I don’t take this for granted After I graduated from the MA in Creative Writing at Sussex University, I managed commercial services at the University of Brighton and side-stepped, quite by accident, into the occasional bit

of teaching A tutor in the then School of Languages had written a creative writing module but didn’t want to teach it despite the demand That was ten years ago The School is now the School of Humanities and I am now a mother of two children and only-sometimes-evil stepmother to one more I am also course leader of the English Language and Literature undergraduate degree programme and also the Creative Writing MA, where I still have the honour of teaching creative writing to students and working with people to help develop confidence in their writing processes I have held a pastoral role at the university where my role was to provide students with academic and personal guidance and I was able to draw on my own experiences and strategies for recovery in order to offer non-judgemental support and advice I am

a socialist, a feminist and a qualitative researcher in the field of the humanities and social sciences I am interested in work/life balance and maintain the notion that our work supports what happens in our real lives My work is personal and local, it aims

to show rather than tell the reader, and asks for “your consideration” (Sparkes 2007, p.522), nothing more

In 2006 I collaboratively ran a series of writing retreats for academics who struggled to find the motivation to write for academic purposes The retreats had been inspired by the work of Sarah Moore (Moore, 2003) and Gillie Bolton (Bolton, 1994b) and sought to use creative and personal writing techniques as a method to empower participants and boost confidence with the writing process The retreats were uplifting and inspiring and I was comforted to discover that regardless of stature – head of school, professor, late-career academic or a novice like myself – many

of the participants felt that their academic writing voice failed to represent who they felt they really were and how they felt about their work and for some, this was problematic:

In one [academic writing] there is still very largely …it’s highly controlled fantasy where people have no emotion and where writing is a highly genred and sort of yeah, academic writing is Halal the blood is taken out of it whereas

writing [creative writing], the blood is left in [laughs] Giovanni

…the voice that I use in academic mode, is it mine, or is the voice of my profession, my ‘ought to’ voice, the voice that I’ve been taught to use? The voice I use today, it is my own; I recognise in it myself, the person who is really

me To find again that voice restores to me myself, it makes me whole, it wakes

me up Oh that I could reconcile those two voices to be me, myself in every

situation’ And I suppose that’s how I felt Dee

I suppose this is a development from your retreat which was really good and

it was great to be there but there was a thing about for me about being real erm versus being I don’t know being pretend, you have to make so many

compromises don’t you? Miles (Moriarty, 2007)

Feedback from the retreats suggested that they had been useful for many of the participants (myself included) in terms of increasing motivation with their academic writing Several of the participants I interviewed discussed breakthrough moments where they realised their own voice could and should permeate their work:

I think yeah, cause I think that was what came out of our two days was that it was almost set up as an antagonism between creative writing and academic writing and actually what you were trying to achieve was to recognise the one inside the other maybe and that they’re not at opposite ends are they, cause

academic writing is creative Kate

I think I’ve given myself more permission to be a bit more creative… If I can

be a bit more creative I’ll be better at my job actually… it’s part of me Sylvia

(Moriarty, 2007)

My interviews revealed that many of the retreat participants struggled to make time for their academic writing and did not feel it was legitimised by the university in terms of timetables and workloads (Moriarty, 2007), which mirrored my own

experiences with the academic writing process Juggling teaching, a pastoral role and administration meant that time for writing was constantly squeezed and my lack of confidence with the academic writing process led me to delay the inevitable in favour

of other scholarly work

…this is part of our job and yet we all struggle with doing it because it kind of gets squeezed out and it doesn’t get the recognition it deserves; that was ALL the stuff that I sort of needed, you know to hear really because then it’s not just

me, it’s actually that’s what it’s like Sofia (Moriarty, 2007)

The retreats also indicated that for some academics the REF had resulted in increased pressure and anxiety around the writing process and that some participants were unable to identify safe spaces outside the retreats where they could discuss the associated stresses and feel supported In order to build on earlier research (Antoniou and Moriarty, 2008; Brew and Boud, 1996; Grant and Knowles, 2000; Lee and Boud, 2003; McGrail, Rickard, and Jones, 2006; Moore, 2003; Murray, 2002; Webb, 1996),

I have interviewed academics at the University of Brighton and gathered insights into their writing process, the ‘publish or perish’ culture and how they feel this process is supported by the institution

So why now is writing as an act of resistance so important? Why are other ways of being, thinking and understanding motivating my academic work?

In the 1963 Robbins Report, academic freedom in the UK was described as the freedom to publish, to teach according to a teacher’s own concept of fact and truth and to ‘pursue what personal studies and researches are congenial’(Robbins,

1963 p.229) Later, in the 1988 Education Reform Act, the term was redefined to suggest that academic freedom enabled us to ‘question and test received wisdom, and to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions, without placing themselves in jeopardy of losing their jobs’ (Docherty, 2012 p 47) which Docherty argues is being threatened by ‘a quiet ruination and decay of academic freedom’ (Docherty, 2012 p.47) suggesting that this is the result of economic cuts that have resulted in an almost business-like efficiency driving the management agenda in Higher Education (HE) This agenda has resulted in the creation of the Research Excellence Framework (REF), which measures the impact of an individual academic’s work and allocates funding to the university to which they are affiliated

on the basis of this assessment

The increase in administration, pastoral duties and teaching has squeezed time available for research and writing In the university where I currently work, we are advised to apply for funding to buy us out of teaching, funding that Docherty argues

is driven by a government agenda policed by the peer review system It is widely acknowledged, in the university where I work and also across the Higher Education Academy (HEA), that teaching duties now leave little time for scholarship Cuts

to funding across HE, but most specifically in the arts and humanities, means that academic research in these disciplines is increasingly restricted and yet we are still under immense pressure to seem relevant in terms of the REF and produce research

that is deemed as having impact by a government hell-bent on cuts and developing

a HEA that is motivated by wealth-creation, rather than academic integrity The Higher Education Funding Councils (HEFCE) has been managed by the state since it replaced the UK University Grants Committee in 1992 and the effects of this change have spread gradually and insidiously through HE Academics have silently complied with pressure to do more for less and in the meantime funding has all but evaporated whilst the insistence that we produce research that fits the remit of the REF and the government agenda means that ‘We no longer teach as we wish, but according to the logic of cuts and its attendant economics.’ (Docherty, 2012 P.52) Docherty issues

a call to arms: ‘Academic freedom is at the core of democratic intellect and a free culture It must be fought for.’ (Docherty, 2012 P.54) In many ways, this book is a response to this call

The romantic notion of the academic in elbow pads and tweed, gracing the campus with his presence on a semi-regular basis before disembarking to the laboratory and/

or library to complete some undefined research project is a thing of folklore Today,

it is widely accepted that regular writing and publishing in peer reviewed books and journals is increasingly crucial to the development of a successful academic career and that “one’s scholarly worth is estimated according to the number of RAs (Research Articles) one manages to get published” (Canagarajah, 2002, p.33) For many academics this is not a pressure or a problem, but my own experiences and

my interviews with participants from the academic writing retreats indicated that for some of us it was a pressure that hindered, rather than encouraged, confident writing processes In 2011, Vice-Chancellor Schwartz at Macquarie University suggested that the function of a university should be to prepare students for democratic citizenship (Schwartz, 2011), to use our teaching and research to help students consider how they might make a contribution to often confused and confusing societies My previous interviewees and I all accept that part of this scholarship relies on teaching that is informed by research and practice and that this is often necessarily hard This work does not seek to challenge the purpose of a university or argue that because writing and research is difficult we should not do it; merely it suggests that the conditions for academic writing should be supportive, dynamic and motivational

The creation of ‘new’ universities in 1992, together with the expansion of selective funding for UK HE, has taken writing and publishing out of the hands of an academic elite and made them a requirement for almost all HE lecturers In addition, many of today’s lecturers have a bloated workload that is not restricted to teaching and research The volume of emails and administrative duties, coupled with the increase in pastoral work now required to support students, means that contemporary academics rarely experience the luxury of dedicated time and space to write (Lee and Boud, 2003) In

a time of spiralling fees, funding cuts and a national debate in the UK about the point

of a university education (Thomas, 2011), job security is ebbing for many academics, and the pressure to perform and contribute to one’s field has intensified The data analysis from my interviews helped me to identify the academic writing support available at one university and evaluate whether or not time for writing is protected

and legitimised and how this impacts on working conditions and the confidence and motivation of each interviewee

The argument for embedding academic writing support at institutional level has been compounded by the REF which evaluates, and financially rewards, university departments in England and Wales based on the research ‘outputs’ of academic staff

In this context, a lecturer’s scholarly publication record is not only a key indicator

of their professional esteem but also of their financial value to the institution The criteria for evaluating academic writing and quality of research for the 2014 REF were:

Table 1 Criteria for REF (Research Excellence Framework, 2014)

Four star Quality that is world-leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour Three star Quality that is internationally excellent in terms of originality, significance

and rigour but which falls short of the highest standards of excellence.

Two star Quality that is recognised internationally in terms of originality, significance

and rigour.

One star Quality that is recognised nationally in terms of originality, significance and

rigour.

Unclassified Quality that falls below the standard of nationally recognised work Or

work which does not meet the published definition of research for the purposes of this assessment.

This framework has increased the kudos of being published in internationally renowned peer-reviewed journals and, for many academics, is how success is measured in terms of academic writing (Canagarajah, 2002) For this reason, my research sample includes established lecturers with journal editing experience and professorial roles, but I have also interviewed early career academics and asked them

to reflect on their experiences with the peer review process The autoethnodrama considers the possible ‘impact’ of the REF on the academic writing process with a focus on staff who were new or early career when the RAE/REF began and staff who were mid to late career at this juncture

The pressure to write and to write well that the RAE and REF have respectively intensified for some academics has undoubtedly been enhanced by the widespread assumption that all academics are naturally able and willing to write and/or carry out research (Moore, 2003) Issues with workloads, physical space and personal anxieties mean that privately, many academics struggle with their writing process My earlier research and my own experiences were similar to that of Rowena Murray, herself

a well-published and well-respected academic who writes, “I suppose the greatest obstacle to writing is my own attitude I have a real problem in convincing myself that the writing is part of what I do The result is that every activity that is related

to teaching students has, in my mind, a higher priority than the writing” (Murray,

2002, pp 41-42) Clearly these conditions are not conducive to a motivated and

effective writing process and consequently for some academics, myself very much included, writing can contribute to feelings of anxiety and self-doubt that may affect institutional culture Identifying where and what is needed and developing writing support at an institutional level may therefore contribute to improved research outputs and stature for the university and also the individual academic

In previous research the interviews I held generated rich and evocative experiences

in relation to the academic writing process, suggesting that regardless of style, this process was largely personal and that academic and personal identities were inextricably linked I found that the research had been inspiring, illuminating, honest and emotional but that the style I employed to present my data – objective, formative, dry – failed to capture this side of my investigation My writing has since been driven

by a desire to capture autobiographical experiences and reflect them more completely than empirical research Aside from personal desire and an ambition to build on work in the field of autoethnography and alternative ways of writing up research, a rationale for this stems from the work of Roland Barthes, whose work I will go on to discuss in the next chapter, and his insistence on challenging accepted and powerful modes of writing

2.2 CHAPTER SUMMARY

In this chapter I have discussed the potential effect of the REF on academic culture and individual life I have stated my personal viewpoint, where my lens is located, and explored my personal experiences with academic writing in terms of my academic career and my struggle to write for academic publication and how this affected my confidence and motivation In the next chapter I detail my inspiration for linking the social sciences with autobiography and present a re-reading of Barthes’ work as a rationale for breaking with the conventions of academic writing

NEEDING PERMISSION: IDENTIFYING

FRAMEWORKS FOR EVOLVING ACADEMIC WRITING

IMPACT – Scene 2

Office at the university DEBBIE sits at her desk with her back to the door, typing furiously Her email pings and she stops work to look at whatever has arrived in her inbox

DEBBIE: (laughs) Oh that’s a good one!

JAN enters the office JAN is also in her 30s and head of the school that DEBBIE is in; she grimaces as she sees DEBBIE laughing and not working

JAN: Something funny?

DEBBIE: (turning round) Oh, hello Jan, I didn’t hear you knock?

JAN: I didn’t We run an open door policy

DEBBIE: Of course

JAN: I’ve just come from a strategy meeting…

DEBBIE: …another one?

JAN: Yes, it seems you’re on the radar

DEBBIE: The radar?

JAN: (leans against the desk) People know who you are

DEBBIE: And that’s good is it?

JAN: It’s good for you, not so good for your colleagues who don’t appear to

have done any research for the last 5 years

DEBBIE: Everyone knows that our teaching load is higher than in other schools,

there are only so many hours in the week!

JAN: Then how have you managed it?

DEBBIE: I don’t know No life I guess!

JAN: And you did have to go to counselling last year didn’t you?

DEBBIE: CBT

JAN: Yes…for stress?

DEBBIE: It’s all in my file

JAN: I’m not here to talk about that now; I just want you to know Debbie

that the department is in a very vulnerable position at the moment I have to save 5% on staffing costs this year alone, and that’s just the start, anyone not seen to be making an impact is at risk

DEBBIE: Doesn’t good teaching and feedback from the students count as

‘impact’?

JAN: It does, of course it does, but funding and research, they count too

Not that you need to worry, you carry on as you are! A real high flyer aren’t you?

Uncomfortable silence

JAN: There is one thing; a lot of your work doesn’t have anything in the

title that can directly tie you to the school

DEBBIE: It’s mainly about creativity and personal development

JAN: That’s what I mean It isn’t always relevant is it?

JAN: Not meaningless! It must mean something to someone, but from our

point of view, well, we’re worried if it will count

DEBBIE: Even my thesis?

JAN: Yes, that too (pause, puts her hand on DEBBIE’s arm) You

understand? I’m just thinking of your profile? I can really see you going somewhere at the university and I want to do all I can to support you

DEBBIE: Of course, no, no, that’s great Jan, thanks I’ll er, I’ll have a think and

see what I can do

JAN: Oh that’s smashing (looks at watch) Gotta run, I promised Roger I’d

be home before six for a change, he wants us to see that new Polish film at the Duke of York’s

DEBBIE: Let me know what it’s like? I wanted to go but Pete refuses to come

with me to the cinema now

JAN: Why on earth would he do that?

DEBBIE: Oh it’s always, ‘why can’t we just watch a film? Why do we have to

spend three hours afterwards tearing it apart and working out what was wrong with it? Why can’t I just enjoy something without feeling

guilty?’ (laughs) I suppose he has a point

JAN: Philistine For Chrissakes, I hope you’re not going to let a

Neanderthal like that hold you back Debbie? I mean it; relationships

can play havoc with our careers (heads for the door, turns and looks back) I see great things ahead for you (turns to exit) Just don’t do

anything stupid like get yourself pregnant or anything like that Plenty

of time for babies after the REF!

DEBBIE sits alone She touches her stomach and sighs

Blackout

Scene 3

Office at the university GERALD sits at his desk facing DEBBIE who is sitting in a chair across the room GERALD is in his early 60s

GERALD: I don’t know why you’re surprised The woman eats babies

DEBBIE: She isn’t that bad

GERALD: Debbie, Debbie, Debbie…

DEBBIE: If you’re going to make some patronising comment then just stop

right there

GERALD: I was just going to say, that if you want my opinion…

DEBBIE: Do I have a choice Professor?

GERALD: …as soon as she finds out you’re pregnant, you’ll be written off DEBBIE: Don’t be ridiculous

GERLAD : I’m serious Debbie

DEBBIE: You’re just trying to frighten me

GERALD: You can be an academic or you can be a mum But both?

(shakes head)

DEBBIE: And is that what you think?

GERALD: (looks wounded) I may have been here since the dawn of time but I like

to think I’ve managed to remain outside that male, hierarchical culture DEBBIE: A maverick?

GERALD: If you like

DEBBIE: Haven’t you heard? ‘Mavericks and free thinkers no longer required’ GERALD: Must be why they want me to retire

DEBBIE: Don’t you want to?

DEBBIE: I promise I’ll still beg you for advice

GERALD: Just whiling away the days watching Countdown until the inevitable

happens and I’m weeing into a bag and struggling with the crossword

in The Guardian

DEBBIE: You do that now

GERALD: Not the peeing in the bag…

DEBBIE: You’ll be fine Just stop feeling sorry for yourself and start enjoying

the prospect of retirement? You’re not in God’s Waiting Room! Why don’t you book a holiday? Do some writing? Spend some time with your grandchildren?

GERALD shudders

DEBBIE: Besides I still hang on your every word don’t I? Now what did you

think of the chapter?

GERALD: I have always wanted to travel and Agnes has been going on

about it…

DEBBIE: Gerald The chapter?

GERALD: Yes! Quite Honestly?

DEBBIE: Of course

GERALD: I thought it was boring

DEBBIE: Oh That honest

GERALD: I’m sorry It’s just…

DEBBIE: What?

GERALD: It doesn’t feel like you It doesn’t feel like you care

DEBBIE: Oh God

GERALD: I mean it’s alright but…

DEBBIE: …it sounds like I’m trying to sound like someone else?

GERALD: Exactly!

DEBBIE: I wanted to sound like an academic

GERALD: You are an academic

DEBBIE: But I wanted to sound like a real one

GERALD: Oh Debbie!

DEBBIE: Don’t

GERALD: You’ve really let them get to you?

DEBBIE: I just want to be taken seriously

GERALD: Then write in your own voice?

DEBBIE: What if it isn’t good enough?

GERALD: It will never be good enough for some of these morons, but so what?

To thine own self be true?

DEBBIE: Even if it’s meaningless?

GERALD: It is not meaningless Stop letting Jan ruin your confidence with her

own issues and insecurities and rewrite this chapter

DEBBIE: Was it really that bad?

GERALD: I stopped reading it to listen to what they were saying in a budget

meeting

DEBBIE: I hope you do have to wee in a bag

GERALD: Charming

Blackout

3.1 SHIFTS IN QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Laurel Richardson identifies “a serious problem” in qualitative research: “topics are riveting and research valuable, but qualitative books are under read… Qualitative

Research has to be read, not scanned; its meaning is in the reading” (Richardson,

1998, 2003, p.01) In this chapter I identify academic research that compelled me

to engage, rather than scan, and to apply this to my own processes I also offer a re-reading of Barthes as a rationale for further scaffolding the evolving processes emerging in academic writing, specifically autoethnography

This work seeks to contribute and evolve existing work in qualitative research that is concerned with storytelling and composing research in new ways (Bochner

& Ellis, 2002; Ellis, 2004; Goodall, 2000; Pelias 2004; Richardson, 1997) and a trend that acknowledges the need for new ways of thinking and being in academic research that resists conventional, dominant traditions and offers more democratic and inclusive knowledge cycles and theories of meaning making Denzin and Lincoln (2008) describe qualitative researchers who are interested in interpretive, narrative, theoretical, political, cultural techniques as ‘bricoleurs’ or quilt-makers as they seek

to offer a patchwork montage of their research experiences, drawing on a range of skills, techniques and genres to project a version of the research that is evocative, messy and openly imperfect Denzin and Lincoln identify the tradition of telling and legitimising stories that see research ‘differently’ as being part the fourth movement

in qualitative research or the crisis of representation that encouraged the mixing of writing styles and genres and placed the emphasis on writing as a method of enquiry (Richardson, 2000) as a means of resisting and evolving traditional and authoritative academic research methods As part of this fourth movement, I have chosen to blend autoethnodrama with a more traditional (but still personal) academic writing style Following on from this expansion, qualitative researchers in the humanities and social sciences have been able to present writing that enabled them to know more about their research topic but also about themselves, as meaningful academic work that was deemed (in some cases) worthy by the peer review process and has had

a significant impact on qualitative research methods, creating space for new and untested genres of writing (Bochner, 1995; Byrne-Armstrong, 2001; Caulley, 2008; Carlees & Sparkes, 2007; Clough, 2002; Denzin, 1997, 2003; Ellis, 1995, 1997, 2004; Morse, 2002; Pelias, 2004, 2005;Ronai, 1995, 2003; Sparkes, 2002) It is from this evolution that new styles of writing and methodologies in qualitative research emerged, amongst them: autoethnography (Doloriet and Sambrook, 2011; Ellis, C., and Bochner, A P, 2000; Grant, 2010a, 2010b; Grant & Zeeman, 2012; Holman-Jones, 2005; Holt, 2003; Humphreys, 2005; Jago, 2006; Jegatheesan, 2005; Johnson

& Strong, 2008; Rambo, 2005; Saldana, 2003; Sparkes 2000, 2003; Wall, 2006)

3.2 IN THE BEGINNING – CHAPTER 1

In May 2007 I attended a symposium on reading and writing research at the University of Sussex The keynote was by the Director of the Qualitative Research Unit at the University of Exeter who seemed to be predominantly interested in sport Why had I come? As I prepared myself to adhere to Richardson’s statement above and disengage from the presentation, Andrew Sparkes started talking about new

ways to write up academic research, as poems, plays, life stories I emailed Professor Sparkes the same day to thank him and explain my own frustration with academic writing; I felt as if I had to conform and adapt my writing style to fit in with the academy in order to be taken seriously Sparkes kindly sent me a draft of an article he was having published later that year The article told the story of Jim, a character not unlike Sparkes who struggled with the RAE (now the REF) culture and the pressure

it was putting on staff at the institution where he worked The story was engaging, warm and human and, as with a good film, novel, poem or play, it moved me, spoke

to me, made me think ‘yes; that is what academic life can be like.’ The notion that

I could write something personal about my experiences of academic life and that this could be pertinent to educational research triggered my subsequent enquiry, culminating in the production of this book

Sparkes had asked people to read and give feedback on the story and included their comments within the article The feedback clearly demonstrated that the piece had helped readers make sense of their academic and personal worlds, engendering

an enlightened reading (Kant, 1794):

The theory is brilliant but divorced from people and society or alternatively the data is good but divorced from theory… It moved me deeply on a number

of levels and in places sent shudders down my spine and tears to my eyes as I connected with the professional and personal passions portrayed in the various

moments depicted male academic early career (Sparkes, 2007, p.556)

The essay did for me what I believe an excellent essay of this kind can do:

it allowed me to see more fully the complexity, both conceptually and emotionally, of the problem It reminded me how the literary can have power

within the social sciences… It persuaded me that change is needed Reviewer 2

(Sparkes, 2007, pp.551-552)

This process of creation and review is not unlike the model Anderson (2006) offers

as a framework for analytical autoethnography Sparkes had achieved what this study now seeks to accomplish Firstly, he had written an academic piece that was deemed worthy by a reputable academic journal and judged to fulfil the four star criteria of the RAE Secondly, he had written a story that said something pertinent to

me about academic culture: something that was human and had engaged me, and the reviewers of his article, on a personal and emotional level I knew if I wrote in the dry and objective style I thought I would have to use, it would erase my motivation and eat into my confidence I saw it as my responsibility to my interviewees and my practice of creative writing “to create a text in which the person or persons you have learned about come to life What one writes can make what was studied tangible, compelling, credible or flat, uninteresting, questionable.”(Anzul et al, 1991, p.167) Knowledge, language and ideas should be shared in order to inform and enhance the world but in order to do this, we must engage our readership and help the stories of research come to life “Indeed, we can do work that can be shared with everyone”

(Hooks, 2003, p.xii) Academic writing should be challenging, but it need not be impenetrable to those in and outside the academy A way to achieve this, as Sparkes demonstrates, is to merge creative writing with academic theory and practice My intention is to produce a complex text, which is creative and theoretical, personal and analytical, and for it to have emotional and cultural resonance and relevance for colleagues working in HE

A writer is also a guide Together we are searching for lost and unknown tribes

of experience, and for human beings experience is always felt experience We don't just see the sunrise, we are elated by it; we don't just watch the sea raging,

we are awed by it (Pateman, 1998, p156)

Listening to Sparkes made me realise that it was possible to satisfy my emotional desire to write something personal and engaging, which reflected my own experiences with academic culture and writing Having researched and identified an academic framework that legitimises the employment of creative writing practices

as a potential research tool, I shall also reflect on my creative and academic writing process and identity and evaluate if combining the writing styles has any impact on the pressure to write and the writing process

Roland Barthes championed alternative styles of writing, contesting that traditional and conventional forms of writing contribute to hierarchy and to readers responding to text passively, rather than engaging with or challenging writers’ ideas (Barthes, 1982a) For this reason, and building on the work of Perselli (2004), I have re-read Barthes’ work on writing to offer a theoretical rationale for evolving academic writing processes

3.3 BARTHES: A CHALLENGE TO FORMS OF CONVENTIONAL WRITING

Barthes identified five voices: the Voice of the Empirics (the proairetisms); the Voice

of the Person (the semes); the Voice of the Science (the cultural codes); the Voice of the Truth (the hermeneutics); and the Voice of the Symbol and a series of codes that could be attributed to each voice as a way of defining the ‘I’ He used this to argue that there is no single way of reading and writing, even claiming that his own work

“must be considered as if spoken by a character in a novel” (Barthes, 1982b, p xv) Barthes identified that all writing, even his own, should be regarded as a product of codes, and subsequently, there is no single truth or representation of truth, “This ‘I’ which approaches the text is already itself a plurality of other texts, of codes which are infinite or, more precisely, lost…Yet reading is not a parasitical act… To read is

to find meanings, and to find meanings is to name them” (Barthes, 1974, pp.10-11)

In this case, a function of the writer is to produce text to which readers will ascribe their own individual meaning (s) In traditional academic writing this plurality can be resisted, as academics conventionally write in an objective style, devoid of personal utterances, in an attempt to avoid bias and to represent a convincing form of truth in their work I acknowledge, however, that this is potentially problematic and do not

seek to suggest that academic writing should all be personal and emotional Whilst supporting scholarship that attempts to resist oppressive and conventional forms

of knowledge, I accept that a fractured text is not always appropriate or relevant and that many academics would prefer not to work in this way Some, arguably most, academic writing needs to be authoritative and distinguished as expert This is accepted as being relevant to standard meaning-making processes Unlike Barthes,

I do not find it useful to dismiss writers and academics who do not seek to pursue new forms of subjectivist writing and resist dominant discourses in the social and human sciences I am not arguing for one genre of academic writing, or suggesting that one style is better or more relevant than any other Rather, I suggest that personal and creative writing can engender an enlightened reading and evoke an emotional resonance that is potentially useful in academic research Resistances to dominant conventions in academic writing are useful in the pursuit of democratic and inclusive methods of meaning-making and disseminating ideas and knowledge, and should

be valued as highly as traditional methods A re-reading of Barthes is useful here

in terms of an emphasis on the enlightened reader and a resistance to the dominant oppressive structures that Canagarajah (2002) suggests are synonymous with some academic work

Barthes recognised that the problems facing (all) modern writing was: “how to breach the wall of utterance, the wall of origin, the wall of ownership?” (Barthes,

1974, p 45) and examined different modes of writing in order to provide a viable solution When I first joined the academy as a lecturer, this was something I struggled with and, like Barthes, I was consistently frustrated by the “vulgar rules of system-builder, authority, mentor, expert” (Barthes, 1982b, p.x) that were imposed by the existing writing culture in HE Barthes was permanently searching for something untried, untested and new (Barthes, 1982b) He scorned traditional approaches, saying that the point of writing “is to make us bold, agile, subtle, intelligent, detached And to give us pleasure” (Barthes, 1982b, p xvii) and that it is an “ideally complex form of consciousness: a way of being both passive and active, social and antisocial, present and absent in one’s own life” (Barthes, 1982b, pp xvii-xviii) This notion

of writing as a political and emotional act is useful as autoethnographers seek to resist the traditional relationship between writers and readers of academic research, challenging the distance of the privileged objective researcher and favouring an evocative and emotionally resonant connection (Grant 2011) Traditional academic writing can, of course, be pleasurable to read and write, but eliciting an emotional response in the reader tends not to be a focus of the research and/or writing

Any conventional forms of writing then become problematic to Barthes as they promote passivity and inaction in the reader, stunting the acquisition of knowledge Instead, Barthes favoured writing in fragments that represented the multiple voices, suggesting that:

the character is a product of combinations… this complexity determines the character’s ‘personality’, which is just as much a combination as the odour of

a dish or the bouquet of a wine… the character can oscillate between two roles, without this oscillation having any meaning: it can be read in any direction (Barthes, 1974, pp.67-68)

Barthes believed that in all genres, the act of writing is essentially a performance that should be challenged by every reader in order to develop their own meaning

of the text, and that in order to preserve a necessary freedom in reading and writing this meaning should not be enforced or dictated “True, I can today select such and such mode of writing, and in doing so assert my freedom, aspire to the freshness of novelty or to a tradition; but it is impossible to develop it within duration without gradually becoming a prisoner of someone else’s words and even of my own” (Barthes, 1982b, p.37) When I first started working in HE, I believed I had to write

in a certain way and my expectation of what that meant was restrictive, stifling and demotivating in terms of my writing output and confidence with the writing process

I felt trapped and oppressed by my perception of what my academic writing was supposed to be and by an overwhelming sense that I would be unable to write in that way and remain passionate about my work and/or writing

Barthes argues that the writer should be explicit within a text and that the codes and multi-faceted identities that the author assimilates to their writing should also

be represented This provides an additional and viable rationale for autoethnography

as a methodology that resists authoritative discourses whilst remaining viable and relevant in research in the humanities and social sciences

In his discussion of genres of writing, Barthes disavows conventional academic writing as it is enforced and regulated by authoritarian regimes, policed by journal editors and review panels, meaning that the writers of academic work are essentially repressed and controlled and therefore their work cannot inform freely as good writing should (Barthes, 1982b) He suggested that not only is “the line between autobiography and fiction … muted, but that between essay and fiction as well” (Barthes, 1982b, p xv), and that the lines between genres of writing were ultimately and positively blurry and blurring, providing potential for new modes of writing that would challenge, inform and entertain Despite academic writing becoming highly genred as a result of the way it is regulated, there is still a belief that academic freedom is vital in the advancement of knowledge (Henkel, 2000; Kogan and Hanney, 2000; Henkel, 2005) Alternative methods of presenting research data, including autoethnography, are potentially useful in the pursuit of democratising examples of education and learning, empowering hidden voices (Grant, 2010b) working in HE and using their stories to understand academic culture and life (Hayler, 2004) Barthes’ explorations and musings on writing provide a relevant framework for

my own writing process in this text His argument that split narratives offer a valid –

if not the only valid – way of writing is flawed in this instance, as academic writing

by its very nature and purpose must also be expert, informed, critical and analytical Whilst reliability is always a contentious issue in academic work, at some point scholarly work must be convincing and unstable texts are still considered by some

to be unreliable compared to conventional academic discourses Barthes’ argument that a text need not be written in one pure voice is also useful in autoethnographic work, but is vulnerable to criticism from academics who seek to convey their ideas via traditional academic writing methods

The best way to conceive the classical plural is then to listen to the text as an iridescent exchange carried on by multiple voices, on different wavelengths and subject to a sudden dissolve, leaving a gap which enables the utterance to shift from one point of view to another, without warning: the writing is set up across this tonal instability, which makes it a glistening texture of ephemeral origins (Barthes, 1974, pp.41-42)

He avoided writing in one distinct style believing that ordered text was repressed and controlled Accepting that I am a character within my own writing and that I possess mingled identities, all seeking voice and representation here, has provided a rationale for using a combination of creative and academic writing, which celebrates

my creative, personal and emotional identity, and also my academic, cerebral and analytical identity

Barthes’ writing is often frustrated as he wrestles with his belief that writing is ultimately narcissistic, but that it provides material that can be used as an instigator for discussion and debate that will eventually move the world on

The author is a man who radically absorbs the world’s why in a how to write And the miracle, so to speak, is that this narcissistic activity has always provoked an interrogation of the world: by enclosing himself in the how to write the author ultimately discovers the open question par excellence: why the world? What is the meaning of things? (Barthes, 1982b, p.187)

While the process of producing this work has been self-revelatory and emancipatory, Barthes certainly would have found it, at times, narcissistic Through the process

of writing about the social and cultural world where the research took place and using my autobiographical experiences to locate and frame the research, I hope that primarily the study says something about the culture of HE and the potential problems the ‘publish or perish’ culture can engender I am not ashamed that my work has a personal and developmental angle (Ellis and Bochner, 1998), but if this is all it has then it becomes navel-gazing and I also want it to resonate with peers – students and staff - working in academia In this instance, the analytical autoethnographic model that Anderson (2006) suggests is useful, as it requires the researcher to provide a dialogue with informants beyond the self and a commitment to theoretical analysis

(Anderson, 2006) Using Murphy’s The Body Silent (Murphy, 1987) as an example,

Anderson suggests that the model he identifies enables autoethnographic texts to remain relevant to the broader social sciences and is not limited in its interest to those working in the exactly the same field (Anderson, 2006)

Mason (2002) suggests an argument for an inward gaze might be its potential to enrich academic research: