Political Writing as Transformation

What might it mean to inhabit the process of writing as transformational practice? How can we turn an everyday skill into a site of exploration and discovery, and what may be the individual and collective benefits of doing so? What implications might it have to expand our ability to sense and make sense of what surrounds us, not only for enriching our own experience but also for navigating and potentially, transforming social relationships? This course is built around two main aims, each facilitated by a series of guided, timed writing processes: 1) experiential diagnostics; and 2) creative remaking. The course begins by offering a conceptual framework and a series of experiential anchor points for probing deeper into how contemporary social imaginations and structures of government – such as late capitalism, security apparatuses, surveillance, bordering practices – impact upon our bodies, minds, lived experiences and particularly, on how we use our attention. The demands of the ‘attention economy’ fragments our ability to sustain an engaged, open, and compassionate relationship to others, ourselves and the world. With that, it limits our sociological imagination: the capacity to recognize and envision more accommodating, caring and creative worlds. Experiential diagnostics maps out ways into locating seemingly abstract forces and concepts as living, felt, relatable moments in everyday life. This modality of embodied research places special emphasis on our own involvement and entanglement within them, which are both collectively constituted and deeply personal.

Becoming aware of the ways in which social structures affect how we think and feel, how we imagine and construct what we deem to be (im)possible and (un)desirable, as well as our habits and routines that we may no longer reflect on, is already key in opening to alternative modes of perception and conduct, within both our professional and personal lives. Drawing on the power of writing as a form of presencing, this course makes available a series of guided writing practices that have the potential to open up remedial pathways for remaking experience, rewiring our modes of operation and redrawing the contours of our imaginative horizons. Through these writing processes, which re-center attention on the ‘here and now’ and with that, assist in embracing the actuality of what we carry within ourselves, our potential to ‘think outside the box’ and craft gentler, more self-aware, and resourceful forms of being can be accessed and cultivated.

 While these practices have grown out of innovative pedagogy, narrative methods of social inquiry and academic concerns within the discipline of International Relations, they have been designed and developed with a view to help unlock creativity and facilitate transformational experiences in all professional fields and personal processes, enabling new understandings and orientations.