a little brighter

My last post was rather pessimistic, maybe downright depressing. I felt rather trapped by having to express myself in writing and not having the 'write' words (an initial typo, but somehow, intuitively feels appropriate) . I'm not so sure that I've shifted from this position but writing my fieldnotes this past week felt more fluid. I guess the writing process is influenced by so many 'things' including your mood and personal attachment / detachment from the subject matter. Fieldwork, especially this week, continues to uplift and inspire me - but this doesn't mean that it's an easy or comfortable experience. Maybe this statement is a bit contradictory - how can something inspiring be uncomfortable all at the same time? Its uncomfortable in the short-term because being in a space trying to understand and make sense of it, is such an overwhelming, even destabilising experience. Yet I am able to see the long term prospects of documenting, critiquing and hopefully understanding the dynamic, resourceful and bright trajectories being created in this learning environment. It's almost infectious - wanting to know more and dig below the surface - paint a picture and then unpack and critique it, all the while being very aware of the personal lives that are infused in the make-up of the picture.

So its been a positive week for me - more concrete patterns are appearing, more defined lines and less smudging. I've decided to focus more on specific literacy events - like particular assignments and students' perceptions of doing them - and moving away from general classroom observations. This is a bit bitter-sweet decision because through the classroom observations I build rapport and interpersonal connections with students - I establish my presence but also see them as they explore and develop in their educational context which gives me the ultimate buzz; re-establishing and reinforcing my connection to my teacher identity.

can't write

I can’t write anymore – I can’t find the words to describe the world I’m seeing in my research site. I can’t find the words to capture the main points raised in the supervision meeting I had a week ago. Writing fieldnotes feel like torture as I struggle to write simple but accurate descriptions of events that have taken place in the classes I participate in. I can’t seem to write any that feels vaguely intelligent at the moment. Where have all the words gone? Did I have them one day and then lose them the next? I’m also feeling so distracted, too many thoughts racing through my head but none coherent, rational, logical – I imagine it’s like musicians tuning their instruments before a gig – all these strange competing sounds fighting to be heard over each other, all disconnected noise.

I’m not sure how to move on from this stage – sit in front of a blank computer screen, willing myself to write words on the page? Telling myself I’m not allowed to go to bed until I have written the fieldnotes for the day? Sit it out I guess? Just wait until the words return? How can I claim my identity as a researcher, a PhD student - if I can’t write?

the heat is on

Goodness its hot in Cape Town - yes the heat wave continues to reek havoc on my levels of productivity. I finally submitted a rather 'rough' (to put it mildly) draft to the French publication people today. I really wasn't happy with the manuscript and felt it just didn't come together in the way I would have hoped. I needed more time to think about what I really wanted to say. But more importantly I need more enthusiasm and drive to get me to find the time to think about the things I really wanted to say about that piece of research. I feel it is a patchwork paper - bits and pieces of this and that neatly (well maybe not so neatly) stitched together. Well the reviewers will probably pick out all these concerns/discontinuities and send it right back to me for revision. So the problems haven't really gone away - I've just bought myself some time before I will really have to deal with it. But maybe that's ok for now. I really need to get into the proper head space for my fieldwork. Time is ticking away and it ain't coming back.

the buzz that is south africa

What a thought provoking day. I was challenged today to confront the essence of what makes me a black South African from the Cape Flats. And I was inspired by the dynamic, energetic, enthusiastic, critical, thoughtful, reflective, young people who want to contribute to their country and make it a better place.

I've just spent the past 2 hours trying to capture the events of the day - events that took me through a whole range of emotions, both positive and negative and that threatened to conjure up the full spectrum of the most counter-productive stereotypes held in the South African psyche. I resisted (I'd like to think I did anyway!). I've been forced to confront my dual roles in the research context - as insider and outsider - and powerfully realise that I cannot exclude my history from how I see, engage and represent the research context and myself in that context. To borrow from Lynn Mario de Souza - my history is a fundamental part of the context. How can I possibly try to exclude it from my position as researcher?

I'm sitting here reflecting on the day, revelling in the energy and buzz that makes this place what it is. The contradictions that define our daily lives, our journey to find meaning and to make sense of what is happening in our country and why we act, behave and think the way we do and to find that bits of common ground that join us together, sometimes, irrespective of race or belief. 

I met some of my ex-students in Long Street for drinks,which was the perfect antidote to the day. I sat there most of the time just smiling - looking at some more young people being all they can be in this country, although acutely conscious of quirky features that defines our society's ways of being. It's at time like this that everything honourable about being a teacher just make sense to me and just makes me smile with a serious sense of pride.

fieldwork in the Cape summer

I've seriously forgotten how hot it can be here in Cape Town - maybe it not the heat, maybe it more to do with moving around in that heat and of course the lack of air conditioning while moving around in that heat. The office where I work has sans air con - that's practically amounts to inhuman working conditions - I say that in a cheeky kind of Euro-centric tone, my newly acquired European sensibilities are starting to frame my impressions of Cape Town it would seem.

I'm finding that by 3pm I'm completely out of it - I cant think, I need to shower, I need to sleep...I cant seem to function for a full day - in one go that is. So I'm working at night, well I have no choice I need to catch up on the time I'm missing showering and sleeping in the afternoons. Was my life really like this before I left for England? Well I was working in a different office (which I saw today, actually, same pictures I put up still on the noticeboards, how really weird is that?) and I dealt with the heat differently then, and lets not forget I was living in a different home - big big difference. I've been pining, totally pining for my old flat recently - everything was 'better' and 'brighter' in Kenilworth - goodness I miss it so so much.

Fieldwork is still happening and still exciting and I'm grateful that I'm not an anthropologist because my fieldnotes activities and fieldwork disposition really leave much to be desired. I'm constantly evaluating my own performance in the field - mostly picking up all my mistakes and lack of gusto - to ask particular questions, to unashamedly take those photos, failing to remember verbatim some poignant point someone made, to write beautifully accurate yet descriptive fieldnotes...and the list goes on. So I'm grateful I don't see myself as that lone ethnographer painstakingly trying to capture the 'reality' of some community's lived experience. At times like these I am also grateful I'm the novice - so I'm allowed to make the mistakes and not do it RIGHT (whatever that means).

But having done my English inspired whinge I'm couldn't be happier to be in Cape Town in the blissful summer heat, sweating like a pig, doing a less than perfect job of fully capturing the lived experiences of students and staff in my research site and revelling in the fact that I'm a novice researcher.

whooooosh days

I feel like the broadband speed Trevor Noah so beautifully advertisers - the periods of the day all blend into one as I wish I could be in England simply to have an extra two hours per day to fit in all the 'stuff' I need to do. I never seem to have enough time to write my fieldnotes. And I constantly feel as if my fieldnotes are hopeless inadequate in the depth and breath of their descriptions. I'm using written notes while in class, but last night I decided I would capture my analytical memo's (see Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007) using my computer. I can write these faster on computer anyway and at the moment I feel I need to get down as much of what I remember as soon as possible, before I forget and just in case that one 'bit' of info becomes a crucial piece of insight about my research site.

I submitted my article last night - and what a nail biting experience that was - I kept thinking I had misspelt something  or uploaded the wrong file, did the word count incorrectly, had missing references in my bibliography. Writing what a gloriously soul searching (maybe even destroying), upheavaling, nerve  wreaking, energy depleting and draining experience. Sorry I can only focus on the challenging aspects of the process today. Of course it has its positive and uplifting moments and experiences - but that's not what I want to focus on today. I could easily have sat another couple of days refining and reworking sentences and paragraphs - but hey it was taking up too much of my time and I had to let it go into the world.

And so onward to many more whooosh-like days

writing fieldnotes

This must be the best way to write fieldnotes - magnificient view, iced coffee and chocolate brownie to help the interpretative processes...sjoe that was a really difficult research task to complete!

finding time to blog

At 2am in the morning I find myself thinking about things I need to say in my blog, yet during the day I cant seem to find the time to write about all these seemingly important and valuable insights.

So here is a whistle stop tour of some (those I remember) of these important insights
- the Mobility, Language and Literacy conference last week was a resounding success for me. Of course for all the 'wrong' reasons as it was rather tangential in its focus on academic literacies. However, I was once again reminded to appreciate the work of literacy and language theorists and scholars as they try to explore and unpack the ways in which language and literacy creates and shapes inequality in our society. While I don't always understand their theorisation, their analytic frames or their terminology, nor do I necessary want to use these frames, I continue to develop an appreciation and respect for what they do and see the connections with my own work. We are all looking at similar problems (even if only at the macro levels of our fields) using different lens.
- I have been able to put faces to some of the many famous researchers and theorists whose work I have encountered -  thanks being a little conference bunny over the past 2 years at the OU. Last week was no exception and 'they' were all there - Ben Rampton, Ilana Snyder, Hilary Janks, Brian Street, Mike Baynham, Theresa Lillis (so I'm cheating here), Lucia Thesen (another cheat), Jan Blommaert, Suresh Canagarajah, Jennifer Rowsell, Raj Mesthrie, Alastair Pennycook, Mary Scott (cheat, cheat), Cheryl Brown, Caroline McKinney, Cathy Kell, Lynn Mario de Souza
- apparently my accent is changing and I'm sounding more and more Capetonian...mmm, wonder if my supervisors will understand me when we have our supervision meeting on Thursday?
- I still haven't figured out how I will manage the ethics of blogging while doing fieldwork. Until I have worked it out I'm going to be rather reticent about what is happening 'in the field'
- I saw that little spark of interest and enthusiasm for my research topic appear during the conference last week...think I need to fan this fire and feed it some oxygen
- I'm having an internal debate about whether to use only hand written fieldnotes or use my laptop in the field to create my notes - I can see the obvious advantage of being able to import my digital notes directly to Atlas_Ti but wonder what I might be loosing in the process - AND Jan Blommaert waxes lyrically about the value of handwritten, tangibly, material fieldnotes captured in endless journals
- I'm a manic editing machine - there are so many track-change correction in my article I've had to accept and reject many of the amendments just so I can make sense of what I want included and/or excluded. I'm once again reminded of the difference between devoting time to thinking through the argument and points I want to make and time needed to actually capture these in the paper.

Hopefully now that I've captured these thoughts I can get a full nights sleep tonight.

writing as collaboration

Academic writing is often describe as inherently about the self and identity - think I've made similar comments recently  myself. But today at the conference, after having a casual conversation with someone about our common experience of trying to get our conference paper published in the HERD journal, I realised that writing papers for journals is a very collaborative process. And I want to extend this point to say - that all writing is collaborative.

We talk to others about what we plan to write, we discuss with others the problems and joys we're having in articulating our argument, we consult with others as we try to construct, re-construct and de-construct our argument and  we seek advice, sympathy, commiseration, and guidance from others when we are struggling, grappling, suffocating as a result of the writing or reviewing process. And through this involvement of 'others' the text, the paper, becomes a co-construction with multiple others. And so our writing becomes a reflection of this very dialogic (in all senses of the concept, extending beyond the Bakhtinian consideration of the self and the intended reader) and collaborative process. So while my name might be on the paper, the thesis, or the book, the many 'silent' collaborators leave their contribution to the manuscript like soft fingerprints on glass. I rather like this realisation; reminding me once again that I can only be, because of others.

the ethics of fieldwork and blogging

My fieldwork has started - and while that might sound serious or fundamental - in reality nothing much has really happened, and it's been a rather mundane couple of days. My focus at the moment is on 'blending in' as much as possible.
BUT I've been wondering... how do I deal with the ethics of blogging about my fieldwork experiences?

I shouldn't really be blogging about my fieldwork is what I think is the ethical thing to do. In my communication to participants and the consent forms I hope they will all sign - I provide reassurances that I will protect their identities and their right to confidentiality. Blogging about my experiences flies in the face of all those reassurances. Even without specifically identifying particular people, mentioning events and happenings in the research site on this blog will mean that I am using information gained for research purposes on a platform that is clearly outside the academic environment - the only environment I indicated where I would use the data I gathered. I don't have a solution at this point - but I also know that I want to be able to reflect and comment about my experiences through this platform, so its a complex and very moral dilemma I need to resolve.

On the HERD publication front - I'm awaiting a second opinion - promising??? well I think it could go either way, for or against the previous feedback-on-feedback I received. But either way I'll feel more reassured that I stayed true to myself, my own unease, a sense that something was not right. Of course all these delays are eating away at my revision time - less than 17 days to submission - and will ultimately put more pressure on me.

Tomorrow I go to the Mobilities Language and Literacy conference which I am really looking forward to. I will get to see all the BIG names in the varied fields of language, linguistics and literacies in THE FLESH. All the big Chiefs (and yes they are mostly men but probably more of the Pilgrim variety) will be in action - although I suspect the little Indians will have more interesting things to say. I will also get to see some of my favourite Capetonian colleagues and friends and connect and network.

Now to write up my fieldnotes...

feedback and conflicting emotions

Writing is an emotional undertaking. It's not just about writing words on a page, but involves every element of your being and your identity. What I'm saying here aren't new insights - I just have to refer to the work of Ivanic, Lillis, Lea, Thesen, Paxton etc, etc...who have written more articulately and intelligently about the crucial role of the self in academic writing. It stands to reason then that when you get feedback on your writing, especially critical feedback, it can feel as if you have been punched right in the stomach, and you are sent reeling as you try to recover.

I got feedback on some feedback relating to my attempt to get published in the HERD journal. Basically I've been encouraged to rework the article in order to adequately address the reviewers' concerns. Concerns which I thought I understood and addressed. I feel in such a powerless position because I don't know who to trust - my own interpretation or that of the secondary reviewer. The stakes are too high to get it wrong and as a novice at the journal publication game I feel I've been squeezed into a corner. I haven't had the strength to look at my reworked paper and my own responses to the journal reviewers' comments since I received the secondary feedback on Friday, but with only 19 days before a submission is required I can't keep my head in the sand much longer. The suggested changes are do-able, I'm just conflicted and fighting the obvious issues of power embedded in the whole process, yet I can feel myself capitulating. Choose your battles and maybe you can win the war - but why do I feel like its like 'know your place'

I plan a walk on the Sea Point promenade and a movie later today - maybe this will help to ease me into the inevitability of the situation.