Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.

htm

University of New South Wales

Paul Dawson

Creative writing and postmodern interdisciplinarity

Abstract
This essay intervenes in current debates about the operation of creative
writing as an academic discipline, and provides a polemical critique of
practice-led research as a basis for disciplinary identity. It argues that the
emergence of creative writing studies as a field of academic research is the
product of an ongoing tension created by the pull of centrifugal intellectual
forces that are interdisciplinary in focus and centripetal institutional forces
that are driving towards disciplinary independence.

Since the turn of the millennium, debate over whether creative writing can
be said to constitute an independent academic discipline has gained
increasing international prominence and urgency. This is not an abstract
scholarly enterprise, for its pursuit presents a vital means of developing and
positioning creative writing programs within the modern university. The
foundations for this enterprise were laid over a decade ago. In 1996 DG
Myers published The Elephants Teach: Creative Writing Since 1880, which
bequeathed the subject its first institutional history. This book deserves the
typically overused label of 'groundbreaking', for it provides an invaluable
account of the origins of creative writing as an 'experiment in education'
(2006: 4) designed, according to Myers, to integrate literary knowledge
with literary practice in American universities. Also in 1996, the Australian
Association of Writing Programs (AAWP) was formed, indicating a desire
in this country for a national dialogue on this burgeoning subject of study
across a number of disciplines, and initiating a sustained scholarly
engagement with creative writing as a field of academic research. As a
result of the range and scope of work published in the AAWP's journal,
TEXT, since 1997, Australia can rightly claim to be a leader in this field.

The momentum provided by these two events enabled me to write Creative

Writing and the New Humanities, published in 2005. My intention in this
book was 'to approach Creative Writing not as a practice (creativity), or as a
synonym for literature, but as a discipline: a body of knowledge and a set of
educational techniques for imparting this knowledge' (2). This was a

1 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM
Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.htm

methodological decision, necessary to bypass existing questions about

whether writing can or should be taught and focus more clearly on the
actual operation of creative writing programs in the university system. Such
a decision demonstrates the extent to which a 'research question' and a
methodology can work actively to construct an object of study. In this
article I wish to pursue further the question of whether we can conceive of
creative writing as an academic discipline. Furthermore, I wish to consider
the effects such a pursuit might have on the future direction of teaching and
research in creative writing programs.

The traditional concept of a discipline involves a distinct and discrete

object of study, specific methods for studying this object, and a body of
knowledge emerging from this research that can be passed on through
teaching. The institutional framework for a discipline includes
peer-reviewed mechanisms for the dissemination of research; professional
associations of researchers in the field; the training and accreditation of
future researchers; and administrative authority within a university. When
we think about creative writing in this context, we can certainly say that, in
institutional terms, it functions as an academic discipline, although the
ongoing lack of recognition from research funding bodies indicates that
creative writing hasn't quite achieved parity with established disciplines
within the university. In intellectual terms, I remain sceptical that we can
productively demarcate the discipline as an independent branch of
knowledge. Nonetheless, the growing body of scholarly research in the
field of creative writing has revealed an impetus to do exactly this. The
result is an underlying tension between the intellectual desire to question
the boundaries of knowledge within creative writing, and an institutional
imperative to define creative writing as a university subject. In what
follows I will consider some of the arguments for disciplinary
independence in America and Australia, placing these arguments in the
context of some recent postmodern theories of interdisciplinarity.

The moment of self-awareness

It is fundamental to the epistemologies of the more

sophisticated of the natural sciences that a discipline's object
of study is a constructed theoretical object. Within the
literary disciplines such an awareness has come only as the
result of a process of political contestation. (Frow 1992: 24)

What is the object of study in creative writing? Is it literature? Is it the

creative process? The craft of writing? Or the teaching of writing itself?
Does one teach within the discipline, or does the discipline arise from the
teaching? For much of its history throughout the twentieth century, formal
reflection on creative writing as a university subject has been largely
restricted to the publication of writing handbooks and dilettantish essays

2 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM
Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.htm

musing on the creative process and the question of whether writing can be
taught. Some critical commentary on the subject emerged in America in the
1980s, but this tended to be hostile rather than investigative, bemoaning the
absorption of mainstream literary culture into the academy, and blaming
writing programs for the mediocre state of contemporary American
literature.

By the end of the 1980s it is noticeable that discussions about creative

writing in America had shifted from concerns about the effects of writing
programs on literary culture to concerns about the division between creative
writing and critical theory within the academy. In the 1989 anthology
Creative Writing in America: Theory and Pedagogy, Eve Shelnutt
articulated a frustration with the culture of anti-intellectualism within
writing programs, and issued an early and well-known call for a productive
dialogue with poststructuralist theory. Throughout the 1990s, and
particularly since the turn of the century, creative writing has emerged as an
international field of academic research, especially in Australia and the UK,
where creative writing developed an institutional presence at the same time
that theory and cultural studies were reconfiguring the traditional
humanities.

So my simple point is that disciplinary identity emerges from a moment of

self-awareness, the desire for an intellectual enterprise to critically
scrutinise its own origins and assumptions, rather than simply defend its
existence, and that this desire was formed in the late 1980s and through the
1990s when teachers of creative writing adopted the 'hermeneutics of
suspicion' associated with critical theory. This has occurred because a new
generation of teachers who perceive themselves as writers and critics has
productively engaged with theory to investigate their practices and
transform their knowledge base. 'In recent years,' according to Tim Mayers
in (Re)Writing Craft: Composition, Creative Writing, and the Future of
English Studies, 'a type of writing I call 'craft criticism' has emerged in the
discourses surrounding academic creative writing' (2005: xiv). Mayers
defines craft criticism as 'a kind of critical prose written by (institutionally
defined) creative writers that seeks mostly to subvert - or at least account
for - some of the persistent problems in what I call "the institutional-
conventional wisdom" of creative writing' (2005: xiv). Mayers' book itself
is a contribution to this ongoing impulse for scholarly interrogation in
creative writing.

Indeed, creative writing can be seen as an exemplary discipline of the

post-theory academy (what Vincent Leitch calls the postmodern
'disorganization' of knowledge and departmental structures in literary and
cultural studies since the 1990s) because it has cherry-picked from an
eclectic range of theories to assert the cultural capital of creative writing as
intellectual work in the contemporary university. Furthermore, much of the
research into creative writing as an academic discipline has been
undertaken by members of what Jeffrey Williams calls the post-theory

3 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM
Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.htm

generation, that is, 'the generation of intellectual workers who have entered
the literary field and attained professional positions in the late 1980s and
through the 1990s', and for whom the embedded presence of Theory is
taken for granted (1995: 25). The crucial institutional site for the formation
of this post-theory generation is the PhD, because it is precisely through
accredited research training that a discipline perpetuates itself. In an article
about the emerging PhD program in America, Kelly Ritter points out that
'there is most certainly a generational divide between the pre-1980s hires in
creative writing, most of whom hold the M.A. or M.F.A., and the current
crop of new hires, many of whom will hold the M.A. or M.F.A. and Ph.D'
(2001: 216). In other words, creative writing students who have been
exposed to what John Guillory calls 'the canon of Theory' in the graduate
school curriculum are now theorising their own discipline.

Throughout the 1980s, when critical histories of English studies flourished

and the politics of criticism became an important subject of debate, scholars
such as Frank Lentricchia, Paul Bove, Jim Merod and Evan Watkins argued
that the role of academics as literary critics cannot be considered in
isolation from the institutional realities of their function as teachers. These
authors often invoked Foucault's figure of the 'specific intellectual' as a
model for the work of 'oppositional criticism' in the academy. In similar
fashion, recent scholars of creative writing argue that in order to resist the
orthodoxies of the traditional writing workshop, the prevailing assumption
that creative writing academics are writers primarily, and teachers
incidentally, needs to be challenged (see Mayers; Green; Amato and
Fleisher). In this way, teachers of writing have participated in the politics of
oppositional criticism characteristic of contemporary literary and cultural
studies by critiquing and redefining standard workshop practices.

The recent emergence of the PhD in creative writing also exemplifies the
institutional exigencies that have facilitated the development of disciplinary
identity in this field. In her article Ritter points out the declining value of
the MFA, suggesting the degree is no longer considered a sufficient
qualification for a university teaching position unless the candidate has
several books published. Hence the PhD has become an important
additional degree for MFA graduates who hope to teach in the academy.
However, for this doctoral degree to justify its existence, Ritter argues, it
needs to be marked as professionally distinct from the MFA. Her
suggestion is that the PhD in creative writing be reconfigured towards
teacher training, specifically 'the ability to teach undergraduates in the field'
(2001: 208). In neglecting to discuss the creative dissertation itself, Ritter
demonstrates a belief that what defines creative writing as an academic
discipline (rather than the master-apprentice system offered by the MFA) is
its ability to be taught in a scholarly self-reflexive fashion, as opposed to its
ability to produce new works of literature. This focus on teaching suggests
that the creative doctoral dissertation is still to be conceived along the same
lines as the MFA dissertation: as a literary work to be circulated outside the
academy instead of a contribution to disciplinary knowledge.

4 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM
Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.htm

In America there is a privileged historical relationship between creative

writing and English studies, the links with composition notwithstanding.
The title of Mayers' book itself is indicative of this relationship. The
development of creative writing in Australian tertiary institutions since the
1970s was more piecemeal, with programs emerging in departments of
English and literary studies; in new degrees in communications and
professional writing; and in the creative arts. I have traced this historical
emergence in Creative Writing and the New Humanities, arguing that:

Creative Writing only developed in this disparate and

interdisciplinary fashion, however, when the discipline of
English had its academic hegemony over literature
challenged by the advent of Theory, the nationalist push for
Australian literary studies, and the expansion of tertiary
education. These challenges opened up the possibility for
Creative Writing to emerge as an alternative means of
literary education. (Dawson 2005: 127)

While Australian writing programs inherited the structure and pedagogical

assumptions of the traditional writing workshop, the comparative newness
of creative writing in Australian universities, compared to those in
America, has facilitated a more positive engagement with the intellectual
changes wrought by what Ian Donaldson dubbed the 'new humanities' in
1990. In 2005 Jeri Kroll and Steve Evans wrote:

anyone engaged in criticism nowadays, in fact anyone

contemplating a higher degree in creative writing, has to be
aware of theory, even if they are not converts to a particular
tribe such as the poststructuralists or the new historicists. In
Australia our discipline has been theorising its practice and
its brand of research for more than ten years. (Kroll and
Evans 2005: 16)

In Australia, the institutional exigencies prompting the development of the

discipline are far more directly concerned with the issue of research. Here,
the proliferation of research degrees in creative writing occurred as
post-Dawkins universities attempted to develop research profiles, and all
universities sought to attract the government funding which accompanies
research student enrolments and completions. The PhD is now an
entrenched part of creative writing programs, and is an essential
qualification for those seeking academic careers in the university. Unlike
doctoral programs in America, PhDs in Australia do not include
coursework or exams. Instead we have a thesis that combines the creative
dissertation with a critical 'exegesis'. The relationship between these two
components, and the problems and possibilities they present, has been one
of the most prominent topics of disciplinary research in creative writing.

5 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM
Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.htm

The other institutional pressure bearing upon the construction of

disciplinary identity in Australia has been the need to attract competitive
research funding for publications. We have spent the last decade battling to
get 'creative' work recognised as research by university and government
funding bodies, and this has been for one reason: to get money. As
Malcolm Gillies said in a 1998 symposium on research in the performing
arts: 'When is a pot or a painting research, and what is the size of the
research element in these items? If it were not for our ever-deepening
funding crisis I suggest that we would not be much concerned with these,
often ridiculous, questions' (1998: 27). The intellectual work gone into
defining creative writing as research, into proving its academic merit, has
been one of the driving forces of disciplinary research in Australia. As the
editors of TEXT wrote in their editorial for the inaugural issue in April
1997:

the status of creative writing in tertiary institutions in

Australia still requires full recognition from the rest of the
tertiary education and research communities. Few research
grants have been awarded to the area, and the Research
Quantum (the means by which Australian universities are
ranked and funded according to research activity) is biased
against creative writing ... Being the first refereed journal in
the creative writing area in Australia, TEXT represents a
further step towards claiming full recognition. (Krauth and
Brady 1997: 1)

It can be noted here that funding is the most important marker of

institutional status within the modern university, operating as both the
generator and the reward for research. So far we haven't had much luck
getting research funding for our creative writing, but at least we're getting
research funding for writing refereed articles about why we should get
funding for our creative writing.

Disciplinary identity

My central argument in Creative Writing and the New Humanities was that
the historical development of the subject can be understood as a series of
ongoing educational responses to the perennial 'crisis in English Studies',
from debates between scholarship and criticism in the early part of the
twentieth century to the fundamental shifts in disciplinary knowledge
presented by the New Humanities. The widespread academic critique of
traditional categories such as 'literature', 'creativity' and 'aesthetics' in the
late twentieth century has provided an intellectual environment in which
teachers of creative writing have been able to interrogate their practice and
expand the possibilities of the subject. This has led to the development of

6 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM
Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.htm

new pedagogical practices drawing from a range of fields: from

poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, identity politics and postcolonialism, to
linguistics and cognitive science.[1] These pedagogical practices have
resulted from a growing body of research which we can legitimately refer
to as 'creative writing studies'.[2] However, the institutional need to turn
intellectual disciplinary identity into departmental autonomy and
professional recognition has led to attempts to demarcate creative writing as
an independent discipline. This is an inevitable and perhaps necessary
outcome of 'creative writing studies', but I think it could ultimately work
against the possibilities offered by the original impulse for
self-interrogation: which was not to make explicit what was already there,
but to reconceptualise teaching by fostering links with existing fields of
scholarly knowledge.

In America, attempts to define creative writing as a discipline revolve

around distinguishing its practices from those of the English departments in
which writing programs are typically housed. In a 2003 article, 'The
Strangeness of Creative Writing: An Institutional Query', Shirley Lim asks:

How does the modern research university incorporate or

contain creative writing? Does creative writing possess a
disciplinary base from which certain methodological notions
and practices can be drawn, and if so, how should we begin
to talk about such a discipline? (Lim 2003: 151)

I think the first question here is vitally important, but that the second
question betrays a limiting approach: of trying to determine what might
already exist but has yet to be articulated. As it turns out, Lim never
answers this question, instead concluding that if creative writing 'is to be
realized as a complementary discipline', it must overcome its 'inherent
resistance' and perform a necessary integration into the intellectual and
academic work of English' (Lim 2003: 165).

In a 2004 article, Patrick Bizarro argues that creative writing lacks

disciplinary status in English departments because of the dominance of
literary studies, and that '[a]cademic independence for creative writing
requires an assertion of its epistemological differences from other subjects
in English studies' (Bizarro 2004: 296). According to Bizarro, a new
generation of scholars has been investigating how creative writing is taught,
and contextualising it in relation to other subjects in English studies,
particularly composition. And now that a PhD has been established, the
epistemological difference of creative writing from other subjects has to be
asserted by 'teaching skills unique to the research creative writers do'
(Bizarro 2004: 297). This will allow 'teachers of creative writing' to
'function independently in the English departments that house them', rather
than having to rely on courses taught by literary critics (Bizarro 2004: 297).
Bizarro's catalogue of these unique skills is not inspiring: we read as
writers; we observe and interview people; we conduct historical research;

7 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM
Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.htm

we believe in the discovery of meaning through the process of writing; we

understand the demands of different audiences; and we are 'adept at
employing various genres' (Bizarro 2004: 303). Furthermore, he asserts
rather than explains how these skills differ 'at an epistemological level'
when used by writers. What is most important to gain from this is that, like
Ritter and Lim, Bizarro's claim for disciplinary independence relies on
training PhD graduates to teach creative writing, and that none of them can
comprehend creative writing outside an English department.[3]

In Australia, and in the UK, there seems to be a strong desire to define the
discipline not in terms of the skills and teacher training that can be provided
at the graduate level, but in terms of the creative work produced by staff
and research students. The reasons for this difference are institutional. In
discussing American creative writing programs, DG Myers writes: 'Today
writers are hired and promoted in academe on the basis of their writing - it
has become their equivalent of original research - and yet they have been
less successful than academics in other fields at establishing institutional
peer-review mechanisms for legitimising their own work and excluding that
of others' (2006: 6). The dilemma Myers points to is how to distinguish, in
academic terms, between writers who teach and writers who don't. It can be
easily understood, then, why, for scholars such as Ritter, the capacity for
critically-informed teaching in the contemporary academy has assumed
importance as a marker of professional distinction. In Australia, creative
writing academics do not have the luxury of their creative work being the
basis for hiring and promotion, or at least the sole basis, for writing has not
been considered the 'equivalent of original research'. The crucial
importance of research productivity for a successful academic career has
made it necessary for teachers of writing to think strategically about how
their creative work can be recognised as research.

In 2006, Jen Webb and Donna Lee Brien pointed out that over a ten-year
period since TEXT was established, 'it is possible to trace a shift … away
from pedagogical issues and towards research-oriented questions' related to
creative writing as an academic discipline (2006: 1). A search through
TEXT will reveal that in the 1990s the most common term for framing
creative work in an academic context was 'research equivalence'. The
accepted terminology is now 'research through practice', where the creative
work is the 'outcome' of 'practice-led research'.

The phrase 'research equivalence' was used by Dennis Strand in his 1998
report, Research in Creative Arts, to propose a research funding model for
academics in the visual and performing arts. Strand argued that it was
necessary to recognise the creative work of academics as equal in value to,
but different in nature from, traditional scholarly research. The key concept
underlying the argument for research equivalence is the idea that creative
work involves research in rather than about the arts: 'Their research
methodologies are in the arts, their investigations are in their practice'
(Strand 1998: xvi). According to Nigel Krauth, creative writing was not

8 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM
Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.htm

included in the Strand report, nor involved in the government-funded

project out of which this report was produced, because no peak body for
creative writing existed before the formation of the Australian Association
of Writing Programs in 1996. In fact, Krauth argues, '[t]he Research in the
Creative Arts Project was undoubtedly one of the catalysts which brought
together the creative writing programs in Australian universities' at the
inaugural conference for the Association (2000: 2). The Strand report does
acknowledge that creative writing is a notable omission from its coverage
of the creative arts, but points out that the 'newly formed Australian
Association of Writing Programs, a national body for creative writers, has
indicated it is likely to develop indicators for that discipline in the future
based on the material in this report' (Strand 1998: 127).

The Strand report acknowledges the bureaucratic function of its genesis: to

study research outputs in the creative arts and develop performance
indicators that can be adopted by the federal government as an instrument
of measurement. 'The question of what is research in the creative arts,'
Strand points out, 'is one that has special significance in Australian
universities today but little significance elsewhere. Its importance lies in the
fact that there are scarce dollars attached to the definitions of research'
(1998: xv). In the ensuing years, however, academics in the creative arts
have taken on with genuine scholarly relish the challenge of defining
creative work as research, and the term 'research equivalence' has,
accordingly, fallen out of favour.

The phrase 'practice-led research' was used by Brad Haseman in his

keynote address to the eleventh AAWP conference in 2006. In this address
Haseman generously told assembled academics in creative writing that
'[y]ou have been among the leaders in problematising and clarifying the
relationship between your creative practice and research' (2007: 1). He
argued that creative practice as a mode of research can be said to constitute
a 'fresh, distinctive and new research paradigm - Performative Research'
(2007: 2), one which has grown out of the limitations of traditional
quantitative and qualitative modes of research.

In some ways, the concept of practice-led research is a more sophisticated

attempt to define the 'epistemological difference' of creative writing,
arguing that the process of writing is an investigative method in itself, so
that researchers in the field arrive at disciplinary knowledge through the
practice of writing rather than the study of writing. This assumes, however,
that we know what that disciplinary knowledge is: is it simply knowledge
of how to write, or is it something more difficult to define and
transdisciplinary in its origins and effects, something related to the 'content'
itself of the creative work? If this is the case, then the 'knowledge' creative
research can deliver is as limitless and nebulous as the subjects with which
writers deal. If the 'outcome' of practice-led research is the creative work
itself, what, in any academically definable fashion, could this work
contribute to knowledge of these subjects? Nor do I think it is clear how

9 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM
Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.htm

this sort of research in creative writing relates to scholarly (quantitative and

qualitative) research about creative writing. This question is important if
practice-led research is to form the basis of disciplinary identity, for it is
this scholarly work, not creative work, which is really responsible for
establishing creative writing as a field of study.

More importantly, I'm not sure how the concept of research through
practice helps us understand the process of writing in such a way that it
would benefit our teaching, which I think is at the core of creative writing.
Furthermore, because this concept is borrowed from the visual and
performing arts, I don't think it really addresses the textual specificity of
creative writing. For instance, the strong presence of fictocritical writing
within Australian creative writing programs demonstrates the generic
permeability of creative and scholarly work - or, performative research and
quantitative/qualitative research - in a way that the relation between, say,
dance or painting and an academic dissertation does not.

For me, the concept of research through practice is a purely bureaucratic

enterprise, brought about by the institutional exigencies of the research
university. I fully understand the political necessity for making the
argument that creative writing is a form of research, but I don't see much
intellectual merit in defining the discipline in terms of 'praxis'. I think
research in all disciplines involves praxis: these are called methodologies.

The emphasis on praxis is especially designed to distinguish creative

writing from English studies, since both fields of study deal with literary
texts. This makes some sense at the level of coursework teaching, where
manuscripts are edited via the workshop process, while in literary studies
students simply submit an essay for marking. At the level of research
production, though, all theses go through multiple drafts and I think it is
hard to justify the difference without relying on unproductive distinctions
between first-order (creative) and second-order (critical) texts. Yes, writing
a novel is different from writing an academic dissertation, but I think it's
difficult to say that the process of one is a practice while the other is not.

The real disciplinary function of 'practice-led research' is not to distinguish

creative work from traditional academic research in the academy, but to
distinguish it from other types of creative work outside the academy. The
investigative rigour of the writing process separates it from the formulaic
work of popular culture; and the reflexive nature of the investigation
separates it from the literary work it would otherwise be if it were not
written in the academy. Ultimately, the efficacy of this language of praxis is
less in its epistemological account of disciplinary specificity, than its
rhetorical power as a marketing exercise. In an article taking stock of
creative writing at the turn of the millennium, Nigel Krauth described a
power shift within the university system creative writing is poised to
benefit from:

10 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM
Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.htm

English and Humanities Departments, that once held sway

in terms of offering studies for generic and analytical
interpretative language skills, are now facing notions of
'productivity-value' not previously encountered. Reading
and criticising texts, as opposed to producing them, doesn't
cut so much ice with the clientele anymore. In the 1990s, the
'real world' focus of university training has added a practical
'can do' aspect to the receptive 'will do' orientation of
English departments and traditional arts degrees. (Krauth
2000: 5)

While in America much is written about how outmoded assumptions about

teaching creative writing need to be reformed (or about how these reforms
should be resisted for the sake of literature), creative writing in Australia
and the UK claims the post-theoretical dynamism of the new, drawing on
the rhetoric of praxis to distinguish it from traditional English studies and
position it within the new economy of the creative industries, which
reconfigures the notion of creativity from a traditional aesthetic category to
a form of cultural capital in the new knowledge economy. This move
indicates that creative writing need not remain aligned with the fine arts in
its search for an appropriate model of disciplinary research, for it opens up
a relationship with the exemplary interdisciplinary enterprise of the
post-theory academy: cultural studies.

Postmodern interdisciplinarity

Recent approaches to understanding a discipline accept that an object of

study is always constructed, must be constantly defined, and that it is more
productive to conceive of a discipline not as a body of knowledge, but as a
flexible set of methodologies organised around a series of recurring
questions. We know that for much of its history the question that informed
debate and guided the acquisition of knowledge in creative writing was: can
writing be taught? In other words, creative writing began as a pedagogy,
enshrined in the writers' workshop. Those who taught 'writing' assumed its
independent existence, as self-evident a term as 'literature' - something
which students could be taught to do, in order to produce literature. And if
students could not be given talent (for that, too, obviously must already
exist as a genetic quotient), they could be taught the process and craft of
writing in order to develop their talent.

When we began to ask different questions, when we accepted the

contingency and porousness of our assumptions about writing, we opened
up the possibilities for thinking about writing programs as involving more
than the teaching of writing, more than the training of future writers, and
becoming centres for the production of knowledge. This scholarly

11 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM
Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.htm

investigation of the theoretical underpinnings of creative writing pedagogy

was, necessarily, interdisciplinary in focus, for there were no 'internal'
methodological tools for conducting this sort of investigation. If our
guiding question is now, 'what makes creative writing an independent
discipline?', I think we will be unduly limiting ourselves. It seems
paradoxical to suggest that branching out our disciplinary focus should in
fact lead to a coalescence of knowledge around a definable object of study.
If writing programs and postgraduate degrees are to conceive of themselves
as being based in the discipline of creative writing, it cannot be a discipline
in the traditional sense. First, because I don't think this is conceptually
possible, and secondly because the idea of establishing, or recognising the
prior existence, of a 'new' discipline seems at odds with contemporary
theories of disciplinarity.

In his 2004 book, Theory Matters, Vincent Leitch argues that postmodern
culture is characterised by disorganisation or disaggregation, and that this is
manifested in the university in the post-theory proliferation of disciplinary
subfields. This proliferation, Leitch says, 'contributes to the postmodern
disorganization of the modern bureaucratic departmentalized university ...
The new postmodern interdisciplines challenge the autonomous discipline,
or, more precisely, each discipline per se contains, it turns out, ineradicable
elements of other disciplines' (2004: ix). Leitch lists over a dozen of these
subfields, including women's and gender studies, film and media studies,
whiteness studies and cultural studies, arguing that 'these are all
postmodern (inter)disciplines, formed in the late twentieth century, and in
certain specific ways also counterdisciplines, that is, constructed
self-consciously against the oversights, blindspots, or ingrained prejudices
of the modern disciplines' (2004: 169).

It could be argued that creative writing is one of these postmodern

interdisciplines, emerging out of the blindspots of English studies (and
other disciplines), and occupying a space in established departments, but
seeking to develop its own independence. This drive for independence is
inevitable, for, as Leitch says, the 'origin and end of all interdisciplines is
the discipline' (2004: 167). Nonetheless, as I've said, I think this is neither
possible nor desirable in the case of creative writing.

It is worth considering Leitch's postmodern interdisciplines within the

polemical framework of Bill Readings' earlier well-known book, The
University in Ruins (1996). In this book Readings proposes a radical
dissolution of traditional disciplines in favour of 'short-term collaborative
projects of both teaching and research (to speak in familiar terms) which
would be disbanded after a certain period, whatever their success' (1996:
176). The reason for this, Readings argues, is that, despite their intellectual
energy, 'such collaborations have a certain half-life, after which they sink
back into becoming quasi-departments with budgets to protect and little
empires to build' (1996: 176). To put it another way, the end of all
interdisciplines is bureaucratic institutionalisation.

12 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM
Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.htm

For Readings, the university is in ruins because as an institution it no longer

has a defined cultural mission, one which historically has been linked to the
ideology of nationhood. 'In a general economy of excellence, the practice of
research is of value only as an exchange-value within the market; it no
longer has intrinsic use-value for the nation-state' (1996: 175). To protect
the integrity of intellectual thought in this context, he argues, the
humanities can no longer rely on traditional concepts of disciplinarity.
Instead, the relations between knowledge and disciplinary form must be
constantly questioned. His intention is to avoid the deadening institutional
and bureaucratic effects of disciplines, and to make use of the curricular
elective system without succumbing to the concept of the student as
consumer. And, rather than exchanging the 'rigid and outmoded disciplines
for a simply amorphous interdisciplinary space in the humanities,' Readings
argues that 'the loosening of disciplinary structures has to be made the
opportunity for the installation of disciplinarity as a permanent question'
(1996: 177). He goes on to claim that the 'short-term projects I suggest are
designed to keep open the question of what it means to group knowledges
in certain ways, and what it has meant that they have been so grouped in the
past' (1996: 177). By way of example, he points to constellations such as
'Modern Art History' and 'African-American Literature', suggesting that
unless disciplinarity remains an open question, such constellations will not
remain attentive to their own conditions of production and reproduction.

Without endorsing Readings' 'structural diagnosis' (1996: 2) of the

university, or advocating his overall argument for the dissolution of
disciplines in favour of shortterm projects, I think it is worth trying to avoid
the fate of newer interdisciplinary constellations, those which Readings
argues 'become modes of unthinking participation in institutional-
bureaucratic life' when they establish themselves as independent disciplines
(1996: 176).

In a 1997 article entitled, 'At the Forefront: Postmodern Interdisciplinarity',

Roger P Mourad considers the challenge to traditional disciplinary
structures presented by the increasing quantity and diversity of knowledge.
He argues that it is becoming more difficult to see disciplines as 'absolute
structures' (1997: 130) that can apprehend discrete elements of pre-existing
reality through the progressive refinement of methods and accumulation of
knowledge. In a postmodern environment of proliferating knowledges,
disciplines can be seen as robust structures able to accommodate the
ongoing expansion of knowledge, or they can be seen as increasingly
incoherent. For Mourad, '[t]he most significant evidence of this incoherence
is the blurring of disciplinary boundaries as a result of the intellectual
activity that pursues knowledge by combining, or seeking to combine,
theories or modes of inquiry from more than one discipline' (1997: 130).

Mourad argues that the blurring of disciplinary boundaries as the result of

increasing quantities of diverse knowledges that cannot be contained in

13 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM
Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.htm

traditional disciplinary structures is a demonstration of the increasing

fragmentation of disciplines in the contemporary world, and thus can form
a basis for a postmodern higher education. 'The 'blurring of boundaries'
suggests that even though the disciplines as structures are absolute in effect,
some intellectual activity within the disciplines does not follow this
principle but is trying in part to move out of these boundaries' (1997:
130-31). However, Mourad distinguishes between modern concepts of
interdisciplinarity, which essentially seek to shore up the absolute status of
disciplines, and postmodern interdisciplinarity, which seek to move beyond
them. Modern interdisciplinarity seeks to fill in the gaps between
disciplines by combining disciplinary approaches to a larger problem:

In effect, modern interdisciplinarity tries to repair the

modern fragmentation of knowledge by bringing disciplines
together. It implies an ultimate ideal, namely, the unification
of disciplinary knowledge as a totality. For these reasons,
modern interdisciplinarity is largely an uncritical extension
of the disciplines rather than a critical alternative. (1997:
136)

In contrast, Mourad claims, 'the postmodern idea of the disciplines

advocated here does not view the fragmentation of knowledge as an
abnormality that needs to be repaired so that the normality of unity can be
restored or realized' (1997: 136). Instead, disciplines would lose their
essentialised status as repositories of permanent and unified knowledge,
and the pursuit of knowledge would be more open-ended and contingent.
As Mourad states:

First, a postmodern inquiry would be self-organizing in that

its particular foundations would emerge in the course of the
inquiry rather than be predetermined in the form of
discipline-bound theories, methods, and schools of thought
... Such an idea of a theoretical ground is 'local', in that
inquiry is explicitly dependent on a context that is
essentially defined by a knower or group of knowers
engaged in a particular inquiry, rather than the context's
being 'already there' in a discipline (197: 132).

To facilitate such a move towards a more contingent understanding of

disciplinary structures, Mourad proposes the idea of research programs,
similar to Reading's shortterm projects. In these research programs,
'interested individuals from a diverse group of disciplines' (1997: 133)
would gather together and use their various intellectual groundings as
points of departure 'to produce compelling ideas that are not limited by the
disciplines', in order to 'change what is normal' (1997: 136). It is not clear
what form these 'compelling ideas' might eventually take, and where that
would leave the traditional disciplines, but then, that is because Mourad is
projecting an ideal.

14 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM
Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.htm

Interdisciplinarity in creative writing

Interdisciplinarity has been a feature of the development of creative writing

studies, bringing to bear new ways of thinking about the teaching of writing
which are not purely centred on illuminating the consciousness and creative
processes of the writer, thus opening up the possibility of thinking about
creative writing as a more rigorously defined scholarly pursuit.
Nonetheless, there is no reason to suggest that this interdisciplinary
approach should eventually cohere in an understanding of creative writing
as an 'absolute structure' defined by its knowledge of a pre-existing aspect
of reality, ie. 'writing'.

The difficulties inherent in discussing creative writing as a discipline are

apparent in Nigel Krauth and Tess Brady's introduction to Creative Writing:
Theory Beyond Practice (2006). This book recounts the various approaches
teachers of writing have taken towards developing a unique creative writing
theory over the last decade, contributing to a body of knowledge which
would enable writing to 'exist in the sector as more than an elective, to be
able to reach the dizzy heights of a discipline' (2006: 14). They point to the
variety of work carried out in the name of this enterprise, and acknowledge
the 'eclectic nature' of the scholarly essays in this anthology, designed to
advance the possibility of a creative writing theory:

Scholars use many and varied doors to enter the discipline

of writing; some are even climbing in the windows.
Approaches are based in psychology, biology, philosophy,
ecology, architecture, ethnicity studies, psychoanalysis,
sculpture, writing technique, and so on. These source areas
work as portals or provide metaphorical structures, but each
of them brings to the discipline a richness, a complexity.
This is one of the great gifts that writing conveys to the
academy; and rather than suggest that the focus should be
narrowed, this collection celebrates the breadth and
elaborate color range offered by writing research. (2006: 16)

There are admirable sentiments being expressed here, but the metaphor for
the discipline is instructive; in fact, it resonates with Henry James' famous
'house of fiction', operating as a kind of scholarly mirror image of this
metaphor. For James, the house of fiction offers a million possible angles to
the world as perceived by the artist, or the fictional world created by the
artist. The house has a myriad range of windows which serve as vantage
points from which to perceive characters in this world, but the windows are
only tools, the literary form which enables authors their distinct approach to
their subject.[4] For Krauth and Brady, scholars are standing outside the
'discipline of writing', with various scholarly approaches offering a variety

15 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM
Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.htm

of complex portals into this discipline.

The interpretive possibilities offered by this metaphor present us with a

choice for how we are to understand interdisciplinarity in relation to
creative writing. Is the 'discipline of writing' a pre-existing object of study
or body of knowledge which can be entered (which I take to mean, 'known')
by a range of interdisciplinary approaches, or 'external' methodologies? If
so, what is at the core of this interdisciplinary inquiry, what is in the 'house'
of writing? Is it the act of writing, the products of writing, the teaching of
writing? It may be all of them, but regardless, the metaphor is inward-
looking rather than outward-looking. Or is the 'discipline of writing' itself
only a metaphor, a constructed theoretical object, a 'compelling idea' (to use
Mourad's phrase) which can act as a nexus point for interdisciplinary
'writing research?' What is the 'gift' that writing conveys to the academy?
That it may help fill one of the gaps between separate disciplinary inquiries
on the way to a totality of knowledge? Or that it provides the basis for a
rich and complex understanding of interdisciplinarity because of its very
haziness as an object of study, and the range of scholarly approaches this
necessitates?

For me, Krauth and Brady's introduction demonstrates that the emergence
of creative writing studies is the product of an ongoing tension created by
the pull of centrifugal intellectual forces which are interdisciplinary in
focus and centripetal institutional forces which are driving towards
disciplinary independence. Rather than resolving this question, I suggest
the most productive approach is, to use Readings' phrase, to install
disciplinarity as a permanent question.

In some ways the debate about disciplinarity is one of semantics, but

writers more than most know the importance of words. Some programs
prefer the more inclusive term 'writing' to the traditional one of 'creative
writing', with its emphasis on the literary and the fictional; although our
'discipline' finds its identity and its institutional niche in the idea of
'creative' research. I think creative writing is most productively conceived
as a distinct, theoretically informed, pedagogy that occupies a space within
multiple (and themselves permeable) disciplines such as English, cultural
studies, media and communication, film and theatre studies, and the
creative arts.

Creative writing, therefore, is best understood as an interdisciplinary

pedagogy, rather than a discrete discipline that can be illuminated by
drawing upon other modes of knowledge. By this I mean that 'writing' is
not an independent object of study (even the 'craft' of writing which
academics employ as 'practitioners' is taught according to the principles of
formalist criticism). And I mean that asking broad theoretical, cultural,
institutional and political questions about how and what we teach does not
simply stem from an eclectic theoretical approach to the practice of writing;
this sort of critically-engaged pedagogical enquiry depends on the

16 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM
Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.htm

ineradicable structural presence of other 'disciplines', especially literary and

cultural studies. It engages by nature with questions - what is literature,
what is creativity, what is writing - that keep the question of disciplinarity
perpetually open.

This does not mean we should not offer research higher degrees, what
Krauth and Brady call 'the jewels in the university crown' (2006: 14), or
that we should no longer lobby for institutional parity and funding equality,
but that the study and profession of creative writing in universities must
avoid becoming what Readings calls a mode of 'unthinking participation in
institutional-bureaucratic life.' For me this becomes a possibility when a
concept motivated by the desire to attract funding for the creative
publications of teachers of writing is taken seriously as a new paradigm of
research around which our disciplinary identity should cohere.

Notes

1 Creative Writing: Theory Beyond Practice (2006), edited by Nigel Krauth and
Tess Brady, provides a good example of this range. The standard genre of
writing handbooks is also developing, as evidenced by two recent publications:
Hazel Smith's The Writing Experiment: Strategies for Innovative Creative
Writing (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2005) which aims 'to theorise the process of
writing by relating it to the literary and cultural concepts which students
encounter on other university courses' (vii); and Amanda Boulter's Writing
Fiction: Creative and Critical Approaches (Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan,
2007) which 'attempts to unpick the oppositional logic that has developed
around creative writing, a logic that sets "creativity" against "criticism" as if
they are utterly distinct elements of writing' (1). In 'The Future of Creative
Writing' (2007) I argue that the cumulative effect of ongoing critiques of
creative writing pedagogy has been the emergence of a new aesthetic in the
poetics of creative writing: a shift from the 'sublime' to the 'avant-garde'. return
to text

2 This is in fact the title of a new scholarly anthology edited by Graeme Harper
and Jeri Kroll: Creative Writing Studies: Practice, Research and Pedagogy
(Multilingual Matters, 2007). The field of creative writing 'studies' might also
include this shortlist of books: Stephen Wilbers, The Iowa Writer's Workshop:
Origins, Emergence and Growth (Iowa UP, 1980); Wendy Bishop and Hans
Ostrom (eds), Colors of a Different Horse: Rethinking Creative Writing Theory
and Pedagogy (National Council of Teachers of English, 1994); DG Myers, The
Elephants Teach: Creative Writing Since 1880 (Prentice Hall, 1996; Chicago
UP, 2006); Katherine Haake, What Our Speech Disrupts: Feminism and
Creative Writing Studies (National Council of Teachers of English, 2000); Paul
Dawson, Creative Writing and the New Humanities (Routledge, 2005); Tim
Mayers, (Re)Writing Craft: Composition, Creative Writing and the Future of
English Studies (Pittsburgh UP, 2005); Anna Leahy (ed), Power and Identity in

17 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM
Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.htm

the Creative Writing Classroom: The Authority Project (Multilingual Matters,

2005); Wendy Bishop and David Starkey, Keywords in Creative Writing (Utah
State UP, 2006); Kelly Ritter and Stephanie Vanderslice (eds), Can it Really be
Taught?: Resisting Lore in Creative Writing Pedagogy (Boynton/Cook, 2007);
David Morley, The Cambridge Introduction to Creative Writing (Cambridge UP,
2007); and Michelene Wandor, The Author is Not Dead, Merely Somewhere
Else: Creative Writing After Theory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). return to text

3 It is worth noting that a PhD in Creative Writing was first offered as early as
1931, in the School of Letters at the University of Iowa. Here 'imaginative
writing', as it was then called, was conceived as one element of graduate
specialisation alongside language, literary history and literary criticism. DG
Myers argues that creative writing first found identity as a discipline in this
context: 'in the first stage creative writing settled into a discipline while only in
the second stage did the teachers of this discipline make themselves bodily into
a profession' (147). This is manifested in the shift from the School of Letters to
the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1939, and the eventual establishment of the
Associated Writing Programs in 1967, which facilitated what Myers calls an
'elephant machine' of teacher training. According to Myers: 'In the first stage
creative writing was the perfection of one tendency in the history of criticism. It
was an effort to handle a single order of human discourse in a way that would
yield a unified body of theory. It was the movement of criticism toward
constructive knowledge - knowledge how conceived as both the only means of
access to and somehow the equivalent of knowledge that' (147). One can see
connections between Myer's account of disciplinary knowledge and the
argument for practice-led research. Nonetheless, if one reads Literary
Scholarship: Its Aims and Methods (1941), the manifesto for the School of
Letters edited by Norman Foerster, it can be seen that the word 'discipline'
relates more to a particular type of graduate training rather than to a body of
knowledge. It seems most appropriate to say that, in the School of Letters,
creative writing was conceived as one methodological approach to knowledge
in literary studies alongside criticism, history and language. return to text

4 The metaphor of the house of fiction can be found in James' preface to The
Portrait of a Lady. See Henry James, The Art of the Novel, ed RP Blackmur,
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934, p46. return to text

List of works cited

Amato, Joe, and Kassia Fleisher 2002 'Reforming creative writing pedagogy:
history as knowledge, knowledge as activism', Electronic Book Review,
<http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/endconstruction/nubby> return
to text

Bizzaro, Patrick 2004 'Research and reflection in English studies: the special
case of creative writing', College English 66.3: 294-309

18 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM
Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.htm

Bove, Paul 1986 Intellectuals in power: a genealogy of critical humanism, New

York: Columbia UP return to text

Dawson, Paul 2007 'The future of creative writing', in Steve Earnshaw (ed) The
creative writing handbook, Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 78-90
return to text

Dawson, Paul 2005 Creative writing and the new humanities, London/New
York: Routledge return to text

Donaldson, Ian 1990 'Defining and defending the humanities,' in AM Gibbs (ed)
The relevance of the humanities, occasional paper 8, Canberra: Australian
Academy of the Humanities, 18-36 return to text

Foerster, Norman (ed) 1941 Literary scholarship: its aims and methods, Chapel
Hill: North Carolina UP return to text

Frow, John 1992 'Beyond the disciplines: cultural studies', in KK Ruthven (ed)
Beyond the disciplines: the new humanities, Canberra: Australian Academy of
the Humanities, 22-8 return to text

Gillies, Malcolm 1998 'The creative arts and research', Proceedings of the
National Symposium on Research in the Performing Arts, Victorian College of
the Arts, University of Melbourne, May 15-18, 26-32 return to text

Green, Chris 2001 'Materializing the sublime reader: cultural studies, reader
response, and community service in the creative writing workshop', College
English, 64.2, 153-74 return to text

Guillory, John 1993 Cultural capital: the problem of literary canon formation,
Chicago: Chicago UP return to text

Haseman, Brad 2007 'Tightrope writing: creative writing programs in the RQF
environment.' TEXT 11.1 <http://www.griffith.edu.au/school/art/text/april07
/haseman.htm> return to text

Krauth, Nigel 2000 'Where is writing now?: Australian university creative

writing programs at the end of the millennium', TEXT 4.1
<http://www.gu.edu.au/school/art/text/april00/krauth.htm> return to text

Krauth, Nigel, and Tess Brady 2006 'Towards creative writing theory', in Krauth
and Brady (eds) Creative writing: theory beyond practice, Teneriffe: Post
Pressed, 13-18 return to text

Krauth, Nigel, and Tess Brady 1997 'Editorial: the new journal of the AAWP',
TEXT 1.1 <http://www.griffith.edu.au/school/art/text/april97/apriled.htm>
return to text

Kroll, Jeri, and Steve Evans 2005 'How to write a "how to write" book: the

19 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM
Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.htm

writer as entrepreneur', TEXT 9.1 <http://www.gu.edu.au/school/art/text/april05

/krollevans.htm> return to text

Leitch, Vincent B 2003 Theory matters, New York: Routledge return to text

Lentricchia, Frank 1983 Criticism and social change. Chicago: Chicago UP

return to text

Lim, Shirley Geok-lin 2003 'The strangeness of creative writing: an institutional

query', Pedagogy: critical approaches to teaching literature, language,
composition, and culture 3.2, 151-69 return to text

Mourad Jr, Roger P 1997 'At the forefront: postmodern interdisciplinarity', The
Review of Higher Education 20.2, 113-40 return to text

Mayers, Tim 2005 (Re)writing craft: composition, creative writing, and the
future of English studies, Pittsburgh Series in Composition, Literacy and
Culture, Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh UP return to text

Merod, Jim 1987 The political responsibility of the critic, Ithaca: Cornell UP
return to text

Myers, DG 2006 The elephants teach: creative writing since 1880 (2nd ed),
Chicago: Chicago UP return to text

Readings, Bill 1996 The university in ruins, Cambridge, Massachusetts:

Harvard UP return to text

Ritter, Kelly 2001 'Professional writers/writing professionals: revamping

teacher training in creative writing Ph.D. programs', College English 64.2,
205-27 return to text

Shelnutt, Eve 1989 'Notes from a cell: creative writing programs in isolation', in
Joseph M Moxley (ed), Creative Writing in America: Theory and Pedagogy,
Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 3-24 return to text

Strand, Dennis 1998 Research in the creative arts, Evaluations and

Investigations Programme, Higher Education Division. Canberra: Department
of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs return to text

Watkins, Evan 1989 Work time: English departments and the circulation of
cultural value, Stanford: Stanford UP return to text

Webb, Jen, and Donna Lee Brien 2006 'Strategic directions for research in
writing: a wish list', TEXT 10.1 <http://www.textjournal.com.au/april06
/webbbrien.htm> return to text

Williams, Jeffrey 1995 'The posttheory generation', in Peter C Herman (ed)

2000 Day late, dollar short: the next generation and the new academy, Albany:
State University of New York Press, 25-43 return to text

20 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM
Paul Dawson TEXT Vol 12 No 1 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/dawson.htm

Paul Dawson is the author of Creative Writing and the New Humanities
(Routledge, 2005) and Imagining Winter (Interactive Press, 2006), which
won the national IP Picks Best Poetry Award in 2006. He is currently a
Senior Lecturer in the School of English, Media and Performing Arts at the
University of New South Wales.

Return to Contents Page

Return to Home Page

TEXT
Vol 12 No 1 April 2008
http://www.textjournal.com.au
Editors: Nigel Krauth & Jen Webb
Text@griffith.edu.au

21 of 21 1/03/13 8:23 AM