Helen Bowstead: the joy of writing

There is joy in writing - real joy! - in its immanence and its ‘nowness’ and its ability to collect and articulate thought. We often see writing as the means to an end, a way of conveying a message, but for Helen, writing has its own identity and its own reason for existing. As Foucault argues, what we do is who we are. We may even write a friendship into existence. Through writing, Helen encourages us to blast the academic discourse open so we can fully work with ideas and respond to the world in which we find ourselves. How do you do that? Be brave. Take the risk and write the work you feel should be out there. We have to seek out the spaces where we can find joy, collaborate, share, and talk about our writing. We also need to create space for other ways of expressing knowledge. Writing is very much like LD in that sense; it’s a space for us to meet, share and learn. If that process is painful, then interrogate that pain, which is probably linked somehow to the expectations we have of ourselves and of our writing. Try writing for the sake of it - you too might find that joy! The resources we mentioned Cixous, H. (1991) Coming to writing and other essays. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Lipsitz, G. (1998) The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Manning, E. and Massumi, B. (2014). Thought in the act: passages in the ecology of experience. University of Minnesota Press Pelias, R. (2004) A methodology of the heart. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press St. Pierre, E. (1997a) ‘Methodology in the fold and the irruption of transgressive data’, Qualitative Studies in Education, 10(2), pp.175-189. St. Pierre, E. (1997b) ‘Circling the text: nomadic writing practices’, Qualitative Inquiry, 3(4), pp.403-417. St. Pierre, E. (2004) ‘Deleuzian concepts for education: the subject undone’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(3), pp.283-296. Tillmann-Healy, L. (2003) ‘Friendship as method’, Qualitative Inquiry, 9(5), pp. 729-749 Syska, A. and Buckley, C. (2022) Writing as liberatory practice: unlocking knowledge to locate an academic field. Teaching in Higher Education https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2022.2114337 Winterson, J. (1989) Sexing the cherry. New York: Grove Press And the paper we talked about Bowstead, H. (2011) Coming to writing. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education (3). https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.v0i3.128