Att skriva emancipatoriskt. Akademisk dialog för två röster

Abstract

This article is an attempt to open a discussion on feminist academic writing, its obstacles and its emancipatory potential. The form of the article is a dialogue, in ten parts, for two voices. By choosing this form we want to find a strategy for avoiding the reductive and hierarchal dualism that all too often characterizes academic thinking and writing. The geography of writing in a Swedish academic context is described as a contradictory field for feminists, and Shadowland is used as a metaphor for a landscape that demands well kept secrets about the feudal conditions in academic life. This creates a split subject in the process of thinking writing- a her and me situation. The unknown story of Dr Jekyll and Ms Hyde (inspired by the more widely known novel Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by R. L. Stevenson) captures the dilemma. Stevenson's characterization of Mr Hyde as a person carrying an "unexpressed deformity" is used as a metaphor for the threefold split between "I", "you" and "she", sensed by so many female and feminist academics trying to assimilate personal, physical and emotional experiences in the thinking/ writing process. The discourse of academic writing is imagined as a discourse of fear, where traditional form is created through unspoken expectations; a no-need-toexpress- what-you-should-know infantilises alternative ways of thinking and writing at the same time as it establishes academic homogenisation. The existence of a formula for the Right Way of Writing an Academic Text, whether it be a student paper or a doctoral thesis, is one of the most eagerly reproduced illusions, also among feminists. Here is a central question - and challenge - for every discussion on emancipatory writing. The liberation of words, genre, as well as style, is a necessary step in the direction of a non-hierarchical, anti-dualistic writing strategy. The article concludes by raising the issue of the emancipatory potential of endings in academic texts and presents two possible endings and an untimely letter. The first ending is created in the form of theatre where the intention is to reconsider the construction of Other, Them, Us, We. The second ending follows the same theme in the form of an academic summary. The third ending, the 'untimely letter', describes the creative and unpredictable outcome of the process of academic writing when working with form in different ways.