“What Wants to be Said (Out Loud)?: Octalogs as Alter/native to Hegemonic Discourse Practices”
by Eric Reid Hamilton | Xchanges 14.1, Spring 2019
Silenced within the Confines of an Academic Paper
To commence our discussions of discussions, it would be useful to illustrate some of the insights afforded by post-structural and feminist scholars regarding the shortcomings inherent within the organizing principles from which Western language is situated. As a result, these concerns return to, and grow embedded within, the discourse(s) of academic communication, making a brief synopsis of particular mentions from such theorists significantly useful for our purposes.
Within her survey article of post-structural feminism, “Writing against Writing: The Predicament of Écriture Féminine in Composition Studies,” noteworthy composition scholar Lynn Worsham brings up a few of these shortcomings and constraints that may provide a foundation (albeit, one that is inherently anti-foundational), of sorts, to situate us in relation to this current hegemonic model of discourse within the academy. As she notes: “Since academic language immobilizes thought through the limits imposed by concepts, models, and methods, écriture feminine is a spreading-overflowing. It spills out, it is limitless, it has nothing to do with limits,” adding that “Écriture feminine gives. It allows departures, breaks, partings, separations in meaning, the effect of which is to make meaning infinite and, like desire, nontotalizable” (74, 90).
To clarify, at its most basic level, the term écriture feminine may be translated from French as “women’s writing,” although as Worsham points out, any process “which turns écriture feminine into an object of knowledge, is in effect a process of commodification,” and “once objectified, it can be systematized, theorized, codified, and ultimately taught” (97). Worsham adds that it “does not want to be brought, from its position on the margin of official culture, into the university. It is more likely to decimate, not invent or reinvent, the university and its discourses” (93).
As a result, it becomes exceedingly difficult to merely deposit écriture feminine into academic modes of communication and expect surrounding structures to automatically conform in compliance. “There is, after all, a difference between really attempting to think differently and thinking the Same through the manipulation of difference,” contends Alice Jardine in Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity (17). This essay, therefore, is in no way attempting to decimate, or even necessarily combat, the university, but rather highlights some notable alternatives to conventional discourse practices which may provide a complementary form of learning and communication in order to supplement traditional educational models.
Since the purpose of this project is to examine alternatives to the academic paper, it would be fruitful to consider Derrida’s notion of logocentrism (often also referred to as “phallocentrism”) as indicative of the many shortcomings built into traditional, hegemonic discourse. In “The Object of Post-Criticism,” Gregory Ulmer breaks down this concept: “The tendency of Western philosophy throughout its history (‘logocentrism’) to try to pin down and fix a specific signified to a given signifier violates, according to grammatology, the nature of language.” In other words, all efforts to contain discourse within any particular system is futile, since the essence of language wants to be free.
The framework by which contemporary scholarship is presented—and, in turn, measured by—ends up creating an environment where aspiring academics are often pressured to conform within the established written constraints of forged exchanges—all of which is contained most often within the genre of an academic article. Yet, this is entirely understandable. After all, these are the conventions their accomplished predecessors have abided by. And within the genre, there have been significant strides by editors to widen the parameters within the system—for example, Pre/Text, a journal that has from its inception in 1981 been dedicated to publishing material deemed “inappropriate” by other publications in the field. Again, to reiterate, this current project will not be diving into the problematic nature of an academic paper, as it is currently conceived and manifested, although that is certainly an enterprise worthy of fruitful deconstruction. Rather, this venture is focused around a somewhat structured yet inherently open example of an alternative to the practice, one which may be widely modeled after and expanded upon indefinitely with countless variations.