« The Monstrosity of (Auto) Biography | Main | Having something to say... conclusion(s) »

April 20, 2006

The Horror, the horror! A monstrous text!

I've been really struggling with this thesis... I have about 5 or 6 different 'starts' and other bits and pieces of texts. Everytime I feel like I know how to approach it I get some way into, a couple of thousand words if I'm lucky, and I begin to get cold feet. In my mind I project what would come... how the entire thesis would need to be played out if I was to continue in that vein... and I begin to feel sick, literally... like I've just wasted another day, or another week, writing myself down a dead end road.

I've always had in mind a romantic vision of my thesis at the end... a cohesive grand narrative... flowing from contentious/disruptive beginning to irreverent and final end. I can't describe the anxiety that comes with the realisation that this might not be going to happen. I've spent most of the last week in a state of paralysis! Not knowing how to proceed. Stuck. Not sleeping... getting worse.

Then, riding over the Williamsburg bridge lastnight (always good for a think!), and feeling down about leaving New York, it occurred to me that, if nothing else, this was all quite appropriate! Lots of starts with no finishes, pot shots,... failure and frustration. The story of my masters. There is no cohesive grand narrative, only observations, a fragmented but loosely stiched collection of realisations about research, about graphic design, about philosophy, about creative practice, about relationships...

The 'cohesive grand narrative' I have had in mind since the beginning. What I failed to do then was modify the expected outcome based on what I've actually learnt about research and about design!? Or maybe, to be more precise, what I've learnt about 'myself' as a researcher and a designer. My thesis isn't working because I'm trying to dress a monster in academic narrative. A beginning, a middle, and an end... hypothesis, experiment, conclusion... that's not how it happened, and if anything my actual research - the projects, the failure - testifies to a certain value in working in a mode that is almost oppositional to that model.

My thesis then might also be monstrous!? This realisation comes as a huge relief to me! Already I feel like I have a bunch of texts I can use/reuse, and I feel like I can 'move' about freely. But not only does this give my thesis the kick in the pants it needed, it also tells me something more about the monster... or my relationship with the idea, proof that, for me, the metaphor is indeed generative... that it acts as a foil to my often overwhelming anxiety and pessimism... and that it opens up and promotes a sense possibility from within a sense of failure... that it might actually render faliure very generative?

What do I mean by a monstrous text? Just quickly... I want to be able to write about things inside of and outside of my research. I want to be able to write about other people; Dylan, Kaleb, Stuart, Lisa, and maybe certain students. I want to be able to write in whatever style seems right to me at the time. I want to be able to be highly personal and anecdotal one day, and critical and academic the next. I want to be able to interview myself. I want to be able to write a horror story, a self-help manual, a glossary, and a letter to my girlfriend. And I want to be able to write when and where it feels right... to be able to stitch this all together at the end... like Dr Frankenstein - the monster is an exercise in editing!


Posted by Luke Wood at April 20, 2006 02:51 AM

Comments

This doesn't relate to the above post, but your Tapeman post from November last year, which is not open for comments, and just showed up in my search engine.

Just to let you know that Voodoo Savage is not one of Dylan's alter egos. It's an alias of Smiley, the drummer and singer for the Voodoo Savage and the Savages and Zombie Prom Queen, and drummer for the Shambolics, the Opium Cowboys, and others. He has lots of music on the Postmoderncore website.

Posted by: The Unknown Rockstar` at April 25, 2006 12:58 PM

hey luke,

good to read your latest machinations, gestations…I have been immersed in Roland Barthes’ article lately ‘form work to text’ as part of teaching and research here at RMIT.
http://homepage.newschool.edu/~quigleyt/vcs/barthes-wt.html

The liberating aspect of his approach to writing is as you mention the freedom to weave all types of genres together without hesitation – in fact the whole idea he argues is to break down cateogaries, disciplines including the even notion of academic writing in your case... An artist who is also inspirational in terms of working with found materials and bringing disparate things together is Thomas Hirschhorn – give away what is expected and go for what works for you I say – as Barthes would say that is where the pleasure is…

Posted by: seth keen at April 27, 2006 11:07 AM

Hi Luke,

I haven't read all your blogs contents but I've read the last one. I heard about your Monster's project from Laurene, Neal, Yoko and others.

I don't how this will help you in anyway but I hope it will, atleast. I've been reading recently about Structuralism, the general principles and may be this have a relation with your research.

Monstrous boundaries

Monster: from L " to warn" : the embodiment of things that frighten society.


Monstrous Boundaries
control / wildness
beauty / grotesqueness
education / ignorance
speech / silence
sanity / madness
civilization / nature, barbarity
science / magic,supernatural
orthodoxy / heresy
community / exile

http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F70/monstrous.html

Hope you will get well soon..and best of luck.

nurul

Posted by: no_rules at April 27, 2006 01:03 PM

Hi Seth and Nurul,

thanks for these tidbits... I've been a bit out of touch as I've just moved back home to NZ. Will check out Hirschorn... I haven't actually read Barthes, but liked little bits I've heard about, esp the "tissue of quotations" which I had in mind when I thought about this monstrous writing/text strategy.

Re the boundaries... it's funny you bring these up now as I'd been talking about boundaries to begin with almost 3 years ago. It was this that lead me to the monstrous metaphor... looking at your list now it reads like a before and after... what I've been and where I'd like to get to. You'd think it would be easy—just a decision—to become monstrous? But it's really very hard to be provocative... to create heresies, to believe in magic, to act in ignorance, to love what's ugly... but yes I'd like to be able to develop a provocative practice, and that would seem to have a lot to do with such boundaries. I did spend time working at these boundaries but it was funny how they would just dissipate as they came into view... perhaps you can never really see yourself as a monster?

Posted by: Luke at May 11, 2006 09:54 AM