I'm not sure! I had supervision yesterday and got some really good, constructive feedback from my supervisors. But it was a peculiar and challenging session too and I came away feeling ambivalent. Interestingly, I don't feel personal about the session as in being pissed off at any of my supervisors over things that were said or comments expressed - I'm just ambivalent about the whole process of supervision and the PhD. The things you have to go through to get to the other side.
Part of my problem is that I'm studying meaning making, I'm studying assessment text production and studying academic literacies and I'm experiencing all the things those wonderful researchers say about writing in higher education. I could be the pin-up girl for academic literacies, damn it! All the frustrations, emotions, feelings of not fitting in, not being able to write, faking it and being caught out, being the 'other', hell that's me. I remember once while doing my Masters at UCT I had a 'moment' and I told my supervisor that I felt as if I just didn't have the Discourse (referring to James Gee's notion of Discourse - that basically means a way of being within a particular context e.g. the academic way of being might mean demonstrating to those already in the academic context that you know the rules, can play by the rules and will be recognised as fitting it). Coming out of that meeting yesterday, while I couldn't put my finger on it exactly, I felt again like I just didn't get the Discourse.
Of course I'm over analysing everything but I'm aware at such a intricate intellectual level of the (probably) ideological and power positions at play around the issue of 'student' writing. And I am in the middle of it - trying to make sense of my own experience, linking it to the field I have located myself in - academic literacies - while acknowledging how immensely difficult the whole writing process is for the student and the teacher. I'm aware of what my supervisors are doing to be sensitive, and I know they know when I'm faking it, but they also get caught out and slip into approaches or dispositions that foreground their ideological position and power in the interaction. Yesterday for example - there were times when I thought - "fuck Lynn why cant you challenge them, be more cocky, defensive, whatever!" But I sat back and listened, trying to see their angle, trying to juxtapose my own position in relation to theirs, trying not to resort to..."but, why haven't you raised this with me before, but when I sent you x and y previously you didn't raise these concerns then?" That just didn't seem like the appropriate response - defence isn't always the best form of offence. Its hard to argue against people who are the leading lights in the field you are exploring and trying to aligning yourself with - or is it? Its also hard to argue when someone challenges your word choices and there is no way in hell you can counter pose their point because, hell, you just don't know or have an alternative.
Anyway...I'm not bitter, I'm humbled to the process, its crap, its destabilising, its a muddle (like my writing apparently!) but I am meant to come out on the other side. And I know I will. Tomorrow the corrections begin and in all honesty they are mostly minor and I know that by working through the correction the piece will be improved and I will live to write another blog entry.
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