An uncertain balance: Negotiating theory, politics and love in academic writing

Abstract

Writing up qualitative research requires researchers to consider many issues, including the representation of participants, academic standards for scholarship and researcher subjectivity or agency. In this article I refer to Žižek's notion of the ideal love relationship to examine some of the messy processes involved in constructing the written texts of such research. Principally, I describe the loss of authorial voice that occurred in my doctoral thesis following my appropriation of Žižek's post-Lacanian psychoanalytic approach as the methodological framework. In an attempt to untangle the tensions that plagued my use of Žižek's work and convey a sense of their disruptive implications, I adopt a writing style that is intermittently disordered, a voice that is inconsistently empowered and a reflexive engagement that is critically self-conscious. I argue that the negotiation of an academic writing style is an under-acknowledged site of ethical, political and personal struggle that, as such, represents an important methodological concern for feminist researchers.

Academic voice: On feminism, presence, and objectivity in writing

“…Voice is embedded in the social (Ivanič, ; Lea & Street, ; Paxton, ; Stock & Eik‐Nes, ), political (Leggatt‐Cook, ), gendered (Fleischman, ; Leggatt‐Cook, ), and cultural (Lea & Street, ; Stock & Eik‐Nes, ) milieu of power relations (Elbow, ; Fleischman, ; Paxton, ) present in academic writing. The objective rigidity of academic voice has its origins in the positivist traditions of science (Fleischman, ; Lillis & Turner, ; Ryan, Walker, Scaia, & Smith, ).…”

“…Historically, positivist voice has held a place of privilege in academic writing (Paxton, ). To stray from its rules is crossing an invisible line, an act Leggatt‐Cook () refers to as ‘collusion.’ The history and biography of the writer is prohibited in positivist writing, which denies the emotions and self‐disruptiveness present in the real‐world research process (Fleischman, ; Leggatt‐Cook, ). Haraway () describes how the concept of objectivity within the scientific method, and taught in many first‐year classes, is a parable.…”

“…A discussion of Suzanne Fleischman (, ) and her work is relevant as a case study of the feminist academic voice and the power that self‐inclusion in text can have for a reader. I was introduced to Fleischman's () work via a citation found in Leggatt‐Cook (). Her mammoth‐sized paper, which is 42 pages long, on voice and gender is extensively researched to a degree reflective of doctoral dissertation work.…”

“…Voice is embedded in the social (Ivanič, 1998;Lea & Street, 1998;Paxton, 2012;Stock & Eik-Nes, 2016), political (Leggatt-Cook, 2010), gendered (Fleischman, 1998;Leggatt-Cook, 2010), and cultural (Lea & Street, 1998;Stock & Eik-Nes, 2016) milieu of power relations (Elbow, 2007;Fleischman, 1998;Paxton, 2012) present in academic writing.…”

“…

I obediently defer to the academy by paying homage to rigor and restraint, when perhaps all along, the simple truth of this article is that I am completely self‐absorbed. (Leggatt‐Cook, , p. 405)

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