on being marked

LT says that as South African researchers (or scholars from the South) our writing is always marked - there is an expectation that our research or scholarship will be different, exotic, unusual in relation to the Western norm. When the research conforms to this expectation we are marked and when it doesn't we are also marked simply because we haven't meet the expectation. So we are always marked.

Yesterday I felt marked because of my writing but in a way that felt more sinister and negative to me. It made me think of my childhood and my Std 2 needlework teacher. It made me think of one of my 1st year my use of some or other superficial or surface-type features to complete a particular educational tasks meant they could judge me as stupid or intellectually incapable. Unfortunately, I was misguided in thinking that I could forever relegate these negative learning experiences  to my past.

I'm used to being marked. I was born into apartheid South Africa where because of your race you were always marked - whether you were black or white. Typically if you were black, though, you were more likely to be marked negatively. And yet I grew up fiercely proud of my blackness, always knowing that I was never inferior or better than anyone else simply on the grounds of my race - in fact I grew up knowing that the only thing I could ever be, and the only way I could never see myself and anyone else was as an equal. So this is my background - living in a society said to have discrimination dripping off every vestige of its being.

I've experienced another instance that made to feel the full force of being negatively marked. This time simply because I'm unable to impliment a range, of what many regard as surface-level, superficially and ultimately highly subjective, grammatical and stylistic writing features. What I was saying, the argument and interpretations I was construction was seemingly less important than the need to draw attention to my inability to construct 'proper' sentences. I've been doing some or other post-graduate studies since I was 25 and I've never had my writing subjected to this level of negative grammatical scrutiny. Now maybe this is reflection on my teachers, maybe they were poor teacher who like me don't understand the first thing about grammar or academic writing style. Maybe we have 'lower' standards in South Africa. Or maybe grammatical problems, that are visible but don't significantly obscure the meaning the writer is trying to convey is tolerated more or not regarded as such a major problem. Especially in writing clearly signalled as a draft. I don't mind having my grammatical 'problems' identified for me. I know I have a grammar and spelling problem - most of my teachers (or readers of this blog for that matter) have probably picked this up, many times I have told them this myself. It becomes slightly worrying when grammar and style become the major point of discussion rather than the issues I'm trying to raise in my writing. Usually I try to correct as much as I can, I've adjusted and adapted my writing style to suit my new UK environment, but sometime I just don't see the problems - because I simply can't see the problem (but then again it's hard to pin down a moving target). I just don't know all the rules and conventions and I don't think it's important for me to know all the rules and conventions - what is important is that before I hand in that key, high stakes, final piece of writing,  I will get the necessary help to ensure that whatever I produce will conform to the necessary standards demanded. At the moment my job is to make sure that I can, to a reason level of grammatical correctness and adherence to academic style demanded, articulate my argument. Having my writing 'marked' in this way has been a very difficult thing to deal with because it marks me as somehow inadequate and in the most irrational  way threatens to erode or belittle all my academic achievements to date. I know I can't let this get me down, I know I will rise to the challenge but it doesn't make the sting any less painful. Ironic that I had experienced such a powerful sense of being marked negatively not in SA, said to be fuelled by  discrimination and racial hatred, but in one perceived as the custodian of all things morally correct and civilized.