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'Pleasure balks, bliss appears' or 'The apparatus shines like a blade' : towards a theory of a progressive reading praxis in creative writing pedagogy

  • Timothy Jarvis
Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Open access

Abstract

This article argues that a reformation of Creative Writing’s reading praxis is required if it is to develop its unique potential as a field of intellectual enquiry. Roland Barthes, in his essay ‘On Reading’, identifies three types of reading pleasure. The third of these modes is that of ‘Writing’, in which ‘reading is a conductor of the Desire to write’. Of this mode, Barthes writes: Is this pleasure of production an elitist pleasure, reserved only to potential writers? In our society, a society of consumption and not production, a society of reading … and not a society of writing ... everything is done to block the answer ... my profound and -constant conviction is that it will never be possible to liberate reading if, in the same impulse, we do not liberate writing. (Barthes 1989: 41) It is the contention of the author of this article that the teaching of the ‘reading as a writer’ method in Creative Writing classrooms gives rise to a situation the inverse of that Barthes describes; it makes Creative Writing into a ‘society of writing’ in which reading is trammelled. The article explores and critiques the ‘reading as a writer’ technique, examines various progressive models of Creative Writing reading praxis, and proposes a radical ‘writerly reading’ praxis suggested by concepts from the work of Michel de Certeau. Keywords: Pedagogy, 'reading as a writer', experimental fiction

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Original language

English

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

Text (Australia) (Volume 15, Issue 2)

Publication milestones

  • Published - 01/11/2011

Publication status

Published - 01/11/2011

ISSN

1327-9556

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/622742

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