Erin's response, Van Manen Part 1

[Anonymous]

#771

Two of my favorite scholarly works are Kirsch and Royster’s Feminist Rhetorical Practices and the collection on archival research in rhetoric and composition, Beyond the Archives. Both of these books take deep care to confront the connection between our bodily presence in the archives and the ways we address our research subjects with respect and purpose in our writing. I can really see the connection to the ideas about historiography and archival work in those books and those in Van Manen’s piece, as there is a thread regarding how we research: “[T]o do research is to write and that the insights achieved depend on the right words and phrases, on styles and traditions, on metaphor and figures of speech, on argument and poetic image. And even then, writing can mean both insight or illusion…” (Van Manen ). Kirsch and Royster’s framework for a methodology of feminist rhetorical studies pushes scholars in the archives to find that space of truth in words as they research, to tell the story of their subject rather than the one they’d like to tell or the one they feel they should tell in order to heroicize the research subject out of some sense of loyalty. (I haven’t fully formed my ideas here, so you’ll have to forgive me if that’s a bit scattered…)

On a separate note, I was also drawn to Van Manen’s section on Entering, particularly: “[T]here is a doubling of space experience here. The physical space of reading or writing allows us to pass through it into the world opened up by the words, the space of the text… The term space possesses the meaning of lapse or duration in time. It refers both to the time and the distance between two points. So space carries the meaning of temporal and physical expanse as well as the time spent in an experience. When we enter the perspectival space of the text we enjoy a temporal experience in the world evoked by the words of the text.” I’m exceptionally picky as to where I write. My needs for that space change – sometimes I need silence, others I need someplace public; but I’m always exceptionally aware of my surroundings when I write. My long train rides have become my favorite space for writing; those hours are when I’m most productive or when I have the deepest insights. But as Von Mannen points out, those things don’t always go together; having that space (physical and temporal) to contemplate my words often leads to second guessing my meaning, “robbing me of what I seek to say.” So I suppose we – or “I,” anyway – should be looking for a sort of balance, regarding space, between comfort and discomfort? Pushing ourselves forward while still providing ourselves with those spaces necessary to enter our words?

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