Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 Becoming-game : An Assemblage of Perspectives on Challenges for Early Career Academics in Neoliberal Times
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Our script Becoming-game is an assemblage in the spirit of Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) concept of the assemblage as a contingent formation of elements that could equally be separate, differently formed and/or combined with other things altogether. It comprises fragments of our distinct creative writings around the theme of games from a collaborative creative writing research project in which we – eight academics from differing backgrounds, all bearing broadly feminist and/or queer outlooks – came together to share and compare our experiences and perspectives with the aim of realising strategies we can engage to resist inequality in and beyond academia today. Performing our assemblage enriched our appreciation of the multiple themes running in and across our writings – and thus of the complex games played in and through neoliberal academia. Theatre researcher and practitioner Di Niro directed our collective in translating the creative piece to a theatrical medium. We performed Becoming-game at the JM Coetze Centre’s ‘Scholarship is the New Conservative’ Symposium on 6 September 2019. Overall, this collaborative work speaks to games of power and privilege, especially although not only those of gender and late capitalist modes of production.' (Publication abstract)

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    y separately published work icon TEXT Special Issue Website Series Creating Communities : Collaboration in Creative Writing and Research no. 59 October Lee McGowan (editor), Alex Philp (editor), Ella Jeffery (editor), 2020 20756512 2020 periodical issue 'An Early Career Researcher (ECR), a Higher Degree Research (HDR) candidate and an older researcher walk into a bar … a cliché perhaps, but we are keenly aware that this is all too often how discussions of collaborative endeavours begin. We are confident it is how a number of the contributions in this Special Issue began – the creation of informal spaces, opportunities and networks to make it possible is the focus of at least one article. The idea for a TEXT Special Issue centred on collaboration emerged when we, as three creative writing academics in different stages of our careers, began discussing not only how we collaborated, but why we did (or did not) do it. Our discussions ranged from the collaborative process as a means to build capacity, academic employability, and a research profile; to produce a sense of belonging in HDR communities; and to the deeply rewarding though at times challenging nuances of working with colleagues who are also friends. Collaborative endeavours raise questions of opportunity and innovation, and of power shifts and hierarchies, as well as of what we value as practitioners. The increasing pressure to publish placed on academics in all stages of their careers by both our institutions and the broader research environment demands further considerations. Questions raised in our early discussions are centred in this Special Issue. We ask: How does collaboration in our patch of the academy work? What are the possible benefits and challenges of collaborative practice? How do we build creative writing communities in the academy, and why should we?' (Lee McGowan, Alex Philp and Ella Jeffery, Introduction) 2020
Last amended 28 Aug 2024 13:55:40
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