Becoming an ‘authorised’ postgraduate research writer¹

1. A version of this paper was first presented at the Academic Identities for the twenty-first Century Conference at the University of Strathclyde in June 2010 and subsequently published in the refereed conference proceedings.

Abstract

Within the context of postgraduate research education and training in the higher education sector, drafting might be understood as ‘not quite the final product’ produced by the student who is ‘not yet the final product’ of the university. In this paper, I turn this assumption ‘off centre’ to argue instead that writing and subjectivity are mutually constitutive. The execution of competent writing is, I will suggest, the effect of the repeated performance of a particular academic subjectivity, instantiated in text, over time. The interconnected concepts of the social subject and the relational subject are central to the work of this paper and I draw on Judith Butler’s work on peformativity to rethink the relationship between writing and academic subjectivity. Butler’s subject is an unstable subject rather than a fixed identity category, formed in and through discourse and language. Extrapolating from her work to the context of higher education research writing pedagogy, my task in this paper is to exemplify some of what I will call the intersecting vectors; i.e., the limitations, exclusions, foreclosures and improvisations that work together in complex often unpredictable ways in the production of what and who is recognisable as an intelligible text and a competent research writer.

Keywords:

• subjectivity
• postgraduate research writing
• pedagogy

Acknowledgement

I would like to acknowledge the helpful comments made by the two anonymous reviewers in preparing this paper for publication.

Notes

1. A version of this paper was first presented at the Academic Identities for the twenty-first Century Conference at the University of Strathclyde in June 2010 and subsequently published in the refereed conference proceedings.

2. The phrase the subject who writes implies a subject in-excess and in-process. This is contrasted with the writing subject, implying more defined and stable understandings of subjectivity or identity. I owe this distinction to David McInnes (McInnes & James, 2003).

3. Transcript conventions – B: indicates Bernadette and I: indicates interviewer turn.