supervisory meeting p2 of 2 (11 apr 14)

met with Laura today on Skype.  Very fruitful.  The big questions centered around form and structure, I’m looking for central metaphors to guide this work, central metaphors that could dictate the form and structure of the work.  The Nkisi is still in my mind as a guiding poetic object, but the form that lets the reader in is Performance.  I’m still thinking through this in terms of how the rest of the chapters are laid out, but the literature review, instead of a glossary, will be a play.  I’m already writing in voices, and the problem I’m having is how the voices need to be able to speak to each other, and a play solves that.

The idea of a Rehearsal Director being the central narrator (which fulfills the same role the Lecturer does in Malcolm Ashmore’s The Reflexive Thesis).  Two assistant directors, a Santer@/Paler@, and a Lacanian.  Aha.  This will work.

In the next week I’ll be writing a revision to the RDC2 report, and in three weeks a new draft of this chapter, to allow for another round of revisions for a May submission.  Yes.

Other points:

To include my footnotes, I can’t use Harvard style, but, Laura suggests, Harvard style makes better writing, because we’re forced to focus.  I will do that then, because the form is playful enough to allow for side trips, but it needs to take the reader on a journey that’s not frustrating to follow (at least, not at the outset).

Also, need to include Mulvey (of course).

And more theatrical and other artistic sources throughout.  Again, the play format, where the setting is a rehearsal with a dialogue about the research questions, will make this not only easy, but really essential.

Finding out that so much of this writing is learning how to say what I know but haven’t spoken because it’s so much a part of my world that I don’t think to articulate it (but without these articulations, it doesn’t communicate what it really is).  And also finding out that so much of this is unknown, what is happening and what will happen when these notions are put to the test in the laboratory of art.