It has been a year since my article “Doing Academia Differently” was published. Writing the article had been a transformative experience. It inspired me to design my workshops Creative Writing for Academics, and it pushed me to start working as a creative entrepreneur, staying in touch with academia, but from a different position.
While the article was finding its audience, and after I had had the chance to experience the power of making space for researchers to explore their writings in new ways, I experienced one of the most severe winters of my life and had to shut down for a couple of months.
Reading Katherine May’s Wintering helped me make sense of that experience. I loved the way she pays attention to nature’s capacity to adapt to extreme colds. From afar, it then may look as if nothing happens. But when we look closely, we see all kinds of activities going on: burgeons have formed on bare branches, still closed, but ready to burst open when spring comes. Hibernating animals breathe differently, lower their body temperature, change their chemical balance.
Nature doesn’t stop when winter comes. It adapts; it transforms.
So did I, breathing through extreme nauseas, dizziness, and complete exhaustion that came with pregnancy. I entered a subterranean kingdom, a kingdom where time and space function differently. A kingdom of silence. A kingdom of untold stories.
The extremes of being in a woman body is full of silences and is such an untold story. An untold story that I may start writing, bit by bit, as I resurface into the world. Revisiting what it means to be a mother; revisiting what I do for work; finding new patterns in search of equilibriums.
What’s coming up:
And so, we are now a year later, as I gear towards a new season of creation.
These are a sample of activities I look forward to, and I hope to meeting you along the way:
New workshop for grant applicants:
Thanks to a request from Université Saint Louis Brussels, I’ve developed a new writing workshop for grant applicants. The workshop provides tools to uncover the research proposal’s narrative, one of those tricks that tilt a proposal on top.
Sounds like something for you or for your institute? Contact me!
Creative Writing for Academics:
I’ll continue providing series of workshop Creative Writing for Academics, with sessions already book for various institutes at the University of Amsterdam, Nijmegen University, and Queen Mary University of London.
These workshops make space for researchers to explore a diverse and creative pallet of writing styles in their academic writing practice. They are open to all disciplines, and welcome researchers from PhD students to full professors.
Following on previous projects on Social Dreaming, I’ll contribute some of my poems to an artistic exhibition on Social Dreaming held at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London. Details will follow, but I already know that the opening is on November 17, 2022.
Loosening the Boundaries of Our Disciplining Writing Practices
Today is the day that my article has been published with Millennium, Journal of International Studies. I love Millennium for their honesty, for their curiosity, for their openness to invite poems and stories on the page of an academic publication. I love them for having embraced my invitation to loosen the boundaries of our academic writing practices, and to publish work (here: my work) that plays with the boundaries of genre, looking for spaces where that which has been repressed is allowed to speak.
This publication is for me an experience of possibilities. I wrote it with my whole self, speaking and writing with generations of scholars who have invested creative practices within their scientific work. The writing felt like a liberative practice that honoured the legacy of generations of women and men who, time and time again, have revealed an honest story of knowledge production and knowledge writing. As Donna Haraway reminds us:
It matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.
Donna Haraway
Writing the article has been a break-through in my own practice, and paved the way for designing my workshops Creative Writing for Academics, as one possible way of enacted the invitation that the article puts forward:
“To allow a more diverse and creative pallet of writing styles in the academic writing landscape, with the aim to recuperate the reparative in both research and writing by allowing the creative to be present, visibly present.”
Marie Beauchamps
You can book a workshop for your research group, institute, faculty, transnational research activities, and everything in-between! Contact me.
In my own story, the article has been a catalyst to transition from working within the structure of the academia to continuing doing academia differently as a creative entrepreneur. My hope is that the stories contained in the article will inspire you to craft your own way of creative practice within your work.
Whether you join a workshop or not, I would be delighted to hear how creativity finds its way in your work. Stay in touch!
Make space to explore a diverse and creative pallet of writing styles in your academic writing practices.
The choices we make when we write have profound effects on the reality that we observe. Giving an account of our observations requires a multitude of styles of writing for achieving the greatest accuracy. Finding the most accurate style of writing for a particular purpose sometimes implies letting go of a seemingly neutral style of writing, instead embracing a plurality of voices, such as staging a dialogue or exploring a more poetic style.
In this introductory workshop spread over two sessions, we practice writing scenes, working with sensory details, defining the main characters driving the story of our work, and staging conversations between them. All sessions are designed around sample texts, and include on-the-spot writing exercises. There will be time for peer-review, and we will take time to reflect on what it takes to make space for creativity within our academic work.
What people say about the workshop:
I tried a few similar workshops recently, and I find Marie’s ones by far the best: they are not only extremely helpful but also a pleasure to do.
Chiara, associate professor
This course has inspired me to develop my own writing style in my papers. It helped me to be creative and productive (for it makes one want to write!), and it has given me perspective regarding the use of poetic, experiential and metaphorical language in crafting academic texts.
Rodante, PhD candidate
Resorting to our body feelings and sensations, bringing them to our awareness while entering a scholarly conversation, opens up a spectrum of alternatives to engage in discussion. Thank you for your expert guidance, so human, that allowed me to feel at ease while exploring “the feeling” of theoretical argumentation. Your workshop contributes to awareness in academic writing, to taking responsibility for choices, to freedom, to integrity. A real eye opener.
Marina, PhD candidate
Marie’s expertise lies in the fact that she used to be a highly successful academic, and is now both an inspired writer and a gifted teacher. This combination is what makes her creative writing for academics courses so inspiring!
Ida, PhD candidate
I’m grateful for participating in Marie’s workshops. The creative writing sessions have helped me enter the scenes of my research, and to shape these worlds while I write with all my senses. Marie’s prompts facilitate a somatic opening for engaging with my data in ways that my whole body is there; writing-as-inquiry from this space enhances fieldwork memory, feelings, creativity, and clarity. It has been a joyful experience to learn on-the-spot techniques for doing this. After these sessions, I wanted to keep writing! Thank you Marie for sharing your gifts with us.
Gathering scholars working in political science and international relations and whose work enact visual arts, performance, photography, sound, and narrative writing, this roundtable addresses the power of creative and visual methods when doing critical work in political science and international relations.
The aim of this roundtable is to discuss why it matters to include creative and visual methods when doing political analysis; how creative methods work in the interplay between research, theory, and communication strategies; what are their potentials, and what are their limits?
Speakers:
Marie Beauchamps (host and coordinator) Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoc fellow, School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London. Website: http://mobilisingaffects.org/
Yoav Galai Formerly a photojournalist, now Lecturer in Global Political Communication at Royal Holloway, University of London. Website: https://yoavgalai.com/
Ruben van de Ven Artist and PhD candidate in Political Science at the Institute of Political Science, Leiden University. Website: https://rubenvandeven.com/
Raz Weiner Theatre maker, performer and researcher of the politics of performance, Queen Mary University of London.
January 19, 2021 10.00 -17.00 (Amsterdam time, UTC +1), on zoom.
Workshop animated by Marie Beauchamps (Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoc fellow, Queen Mary University of London).
This workshop makes space to explore a diverse and creative pallet of writing styles in academic writing practices.
The choices we make when we write have profound effects on the reality that we observe. Giving an account of our observations requires a multitude of styles of writing for achieving the greatest accuracy. Finding the most accurate style of writing for a particular purpose sometimes implies letting go of a seemingly neutral style of writing, instead embracing a plurality of voices, such as staging a dialogue or exploring a more poetic style. This workshop aims to explore what happens when we loosen up the frame of our habitual academic writing practice, inviting multi-layered stories to bubble up and become part of the conversation unfolding on the page.
In this one-day, interactive workshop, I will lead you through a series of hands on exercises to make you experience creative writing within your academic practice. You will practice writing scenes, working with sensory details, defining the main characters driving the story of your work, and staging conversations between them. There will be time for peer-review, and we will take time to reflect on what it takes to make space for creativity within our academic work.
Practicalities:
The workshop is by now fully booked. I will develop more of these in the future, in different formats. If you are interested to receive future communication about future workshops, please leave your details here: https://forms.gle/TKayfMMo7AjqguYq6.
Space is limited due to the interactive nature of the workshop. I’m working on adding extra dates in the future. Information will follow in due time. You can leave your contact details via the link above to receive information.
A zoom link will be sent to registered participants in advance of the workshop.
Participants are asked to bring a text to work on. It can be an outline, a very first draft, a finished article, or everything in-between, as long as you feel comfortable working with it for the time of the workshop.
If you want to join but cannot attend the full day, please contact me (m.beauchamps@qmul.ac.uk) to discuss alternatives.
I wrote this poem after attending the social dreaming matrix of 30 April, 2020, in the context of Tavistock Institute’s Deepening Creative Practice Programme.
It was in London, on a Monday afternoon. It was still before the lockdown kept us all in confinement, and so we were sitting in an office at university, having an honest face to face conversation about work; about life with work; about the fact that although it might be true that “an unexamined life is not worth living,” it is f***ing hard to live when examining our lives. And that Socrates may have wanted to acknowledge that.
“There is one more book,” he said towards the end of our conversation. “It’s a strange book. It might be the weirdest book I know. It’s even weirder than de Sade or Nietzsche. But I’ve read it over thirty times, and each time I read it, I learn from it. I think it’s time you start and read it. When you’ve read the first couple of pages, let me know, and we’ll meet again.”
Photo by Matthew Hamilton on Unsplash
We said goodbye, and I ordered the book. Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility, by James P. Carse. Little did we know that a couple of weeks later, we would all find ourselves confined. And that thinking of life in terms of finite and infinite games would become a strategy for turning those walls into bridges.
The book arrived quickly. I read; I kept reading; and by now I’ve already read parts of the book a couple of times. For instance, I’ve re-read it while waiting to be virtually let in to do a job interview. I’ve re-read it when thinking about creativity as method in the social sciences. And I’ve re-read it just for the pleasure of re-reading it. It is a strange book. A collection of propositions that offer a vision of life as play and possibilities. Megalomaniac? Perhaps. But I’d rather say profound, intuitive, and thought through to some greatest details.
Since meeting again face to face will have to wait, here are some bits and pieces that I would have thrown into our conversation. To be continued. How could it be different when being introduced to playing for the sheer purpose of continuing the play?
***
The book’s departure point is elegant:
“There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite; the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.”
A seemingly simple proposition, whose elegance nonetheless competes with equations such as E=MC2. Simplicity at its best, holding tremendous powers, for better or for worse.
In the game equation, two things unite the two kinds of games: in both cases, no-one can play a game alone; and in both cases, no one can play who is forced to play. Whoever plays, plays freely.
What differentiates both games, in the most basic terms, is that while the infinite game will always go on, the finite game will come to an end when someone has won.
This was already enough fuel for me to run for some time. No-one can play a game alone. Whoever plays, plays freely. An infinite game is played for the purpose of continuing to play.
I sensed that the trick was to interpret life in view of these two game-strategies. And I realized that in too many areas, I had tricked myself into the rules of finite games. I had tricked myself into believing that I had to win that game. That I had, for instance, to clearly decide in which discipline I would continue working. That I had to decide whether I would continue to run an academic career or try something else. That I had to fix it all, with clear terms, clear targets, and clear ambitions. But I’m not interested in winning. I’m interested in learning. I’m interested in discovering. I’m interested in the poetic space. I’m interested in the silences. In the in-betweens. In the stories that connect that which has been disconnected. And so, the finite game strategy didn’t trigger the right assets for me. Instead, it kept me into a loop, contained within boundaries that I craved to transgress. What our conversation sparked was the possibility of finding ways to transgress those boundaries without destroying the whole thing.
“Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.”
What I sensed was that the trick is to try and see where the infinite games are waiting to be played. Not everything can be an infinite game, but in many situations, the option is to the player. So, the trick is to shift, where possible, from a finite game mentality, to an infinite game mentality. It’s not about relegating our ambitions. It’s about seeing those ambitions from a different angle. With the infinite game mentality, the gains are no longer a disciplinary identity. The gains are no longer the articles that I want to have published. Nor are the gains the next job I will manage to secure. Instead, the gains become first and foremost the conversation. The genuine conversation. The conversation that makes me write these articles in the first place. The conversation that these articles may spark. The conversation that happens just because we felt like having a conversation. Whoever “we” may be.
Photo by Mihai Surdu on Unsplash
From the infinite game perspective, the gains become the process of creation, and ever more so, the process of co-creation. And who says creation says messy process. Creation comes with many silences, and with many in-betweens. Creation comes with a lot of rough edges, with unfinished sentences, with unfinished thoughts. Creation is working with raw material. It is working with sounds—noise even—instead of words; it is working with threads instead of material; it is working with muds instead of bricks. But during the creative process, words emerge from the noise and become stories; threads become materials, which become cloths, or a kite that flies the winds above the horizon. During the creative process, mud does become bricks, and bricks become shelters, and bridges. The essence of creation is to play with boundaries while finding meaning in what we do. Be it in telling the forgotten stories of unknown citizens. Be it in highlighting the affective essence of institutional rules, showing paths where emotions flow like water, connecting the personal with the public, the rational with the affective, the juridical with the political, the poetic with the scientific. But also, the essence of creation is to embark on a journey with unknown destinations.
“The only purpose of the game is to prevent it from coming to an end.”
Now, it does happen that energy runs out, and that what once was a shelter becomes a wall, a fence, sometimes a prison. But the game goes on. And so, it’s about finding the bits and pieces that will make this whole into a meaningful whole. Beyond disenchantments. Beyond doubts. Beyond vengeance. Beyond anger. Beyond fatigue. Beyond resignation. It is about finding the spark in the machine. That tiny little bit of electricity that can move loads, turning the wheels, getting us on the move of discovery and admiration, bringing laughter on the table, there where seriousness threatened to take over.
“The finite play for life is serious; the infinite play of life is joyous. … The joyfulness of infinite play, its laughter, lies in learning to start something we cannot finish.”
The finite play for life. The infinite play of life. The difference lies in a tiny preposition. One letter difference. But that one letter may turn, in time, a wall into a bridge.
And yet, although the finite game mentality may be somewhat closed and confined, the two elements that unite it with the infinite game mentality may be the bridge between the two. One never plays a game alone. And whoever plays, plays freely. In these times of confinement, where mobility and social connections are being reduced beyond our will, the finite game mentality may help to cope with the load of our new daily life. For instance, dividing a day into realistic tasks is a finite game. It is serious business. It is playing within boundaries. But winning that game is joyful, and enables the other game to continue, too.
“Finite games can be played within an infinite game.”
Photo by Bee Balogun on Unsplash
Perhaps, the trick of playing the infinite game is to identify where playing a finite game within the infinite game will open the horizon instead of closing it. In view of continuing to play the infinite game, we all play an archive of finite games. Each of them being a game in themselves. Played with some others. Played freely. Played with rules known prior to playing the game. And ending when someone has won. And each of these games participates in the infinite picture of the ongoing game of life. It’s a matter of perspective. The finite game is a step. The infinite game the path.
Finite games can help bring things closer to home. They can be a call to action—for instance: write a little every day, no matter what; spend at least one day a week researching the archive. They can create moments of connections—for instance: engage in a job opening procedure, for the sheer pleasure of connecting. They can make space to practice creativity, in whatever form. In the end, finite games can be that spark in the machine. The threshold that allows one to move from a finite perception into new horizons of play and possibilities.
I remember
the time just before my first piano lesson. I was nine. My father is cellist, and
he was playing sonatas with a wonderful pianist. A young woman, short hair, soft
hands, eyes that were full of life. She rode a motorcycle. I found her one of
the most fascinating women around. I loved her to be around, but I also felt
very shy to address her personally.
I had
decided for a long time already that I wanted to play the piano, and it was
without a question that she would become my instructor. When the school year
would begin, I would start with private lessons. During the summer, I would
join the two-weeks chamber music retreat that my father organized for children,
in the middle of the mountain area where we were living. I still see her approaching
me one late afternoon, after their sonata rehearsals. I don’t remember what she
said exactly, but I remember it was about me and her becoming pupil and teacher
of one another. And I remember becoming very shy, to the point that I might
have given her the impression that I was not really into this.
I was. I
had been for years already. And it was just the beginning.
Since then,
playing the piano has become one of my most precious moments in life. Almost everything
else has changed in the twenty-six years that separate today from that summer. But
playing the piano has remained. And as the years passed by, I started to realize
that playing an instrument yield many a lesson for doing our jobs and for being
humans.
Before anything
else, playing an instrument requires concentration. In that concentration,
technique finds precision to the extent that it can almost be forgotten. But as
soon as the concentration breaks, technical weaknesses take over to the
detriment of the play. Playing an instrument thus means training one’s ability
to concentrate, which has served me many a times. It has served me when
teaching, when reading, when writing, when brainstorming. The faculty to
concentrate is a gift: it is one of the best tools we have to make space
where we first see only chaos. In that space, meaning can emerge.
Autonomous Artists Anonymous
Playing an
instrument also goes hand in hand with an intense training in listening. And
that goes deeper than it seems. On the surface, we listen to the notes that we
play: the melody they form, the harmony they carry, the rhythm that propels
them forward, or that let them linger. To hear all of this properly already
requires training and perseverance. And suddenly we start to hear more: we start
to hear the details in-between: the silences without which the music would not
sound; the interstice between the notes, forming in themselves melodies, harmonies,
and rhythms. We start to hear the pulse of the piece, precise and steady as the
heart of a living creature. In that listening, we enter the realm of music in
all its magnitude, leaving behind the daily chores, our worries, and our
ambitions. Listening makes us live the moment in all its dimensions, and that
is a skill that has enriched my life and the relationships within it. From family
to friends to students and colleagues, I have noticed many a times how much
listening helps when things need attention. Listening allows emotions to be
there, but to be there at rest. Listening creates a space of consciousness in
which we connect to better understand, leaving space for the unexpected.
Above all,
playing an instrument comes with a practice of knowing that has nothing to do with words, books, or
encyclopedia. The knowing that we do through music
has to do with being present. From the very first note of the simplest
technique exercise, making music comes with a kind of devotion and intensity
that is kind of unique. The body takes over in a matter of concentration that
not only makes it possible to play a possibly technically difficult piece, but that
also makes it possible to use flows of energy and flows of emotions as if these
were words, sentences, and stories.
Just as language,
music is all about communication. When I play a piece, I always see a story unfolding.
It can be a simple bedtime story, but most often, it is a whole journey. I traverse
magic forests where I meet trolls and giants. I hear thunderstorms and raindrops
merging with the glittering of the sun. I hear people dancing of joy, sadness,
or anger. I sense fear, regret, and hope, their relation and their separation.
Most of
all, I sense the depth of respiration in which multiple layers of life connect
with one another. It starts with the very physical sensation of my own breathing,
the air moving through my lungs and filling up my belly; it grounds me in its
quiet rhythm of in and out; and it provides me with the necessary stability to perform
the technical rhythms of my play. Somehow, becoming attuned to the physical rhythm
of breathing also opens the door to sensing the rhythm of life: from the banal
flow of people and things in my direct surrounding, to a much bigger and diffuser
reality. Sometimes, it even seems as if I can begin to sense the loop of time
at a scale that is much bigger than a human life, and maybe even bigger than
humanity. Sometimes, the scale is no longer about human breath, but about the
breath of magma, of stones, of mountains, of rivers, of oceans. In music, the
scales of million and of the infinitesimal cohabit.
Photo by Kimberleigh Aleksandra on Unsplash
And yet, playing
music is one of the most sober experience I know. Without practice, no music. And
practice has nothing to do with the grand sonata that we eventually want to
play. Practice is about repeating a series of notes over and over again, in
order to find the physical sensation that will allow to eventually play the
notes with musicality. For an amateur like myself, we are not talking here
about ten times. Not about fifty times. It’s about hundreds of times, sometimes
even thousands. It’s incredible what it takes to find the right balance between
tonicity and relaxation. Without tonicity, the music cannot take off. Notes won’t
be precise, and the rhythm will disaggregate and wither away. Without
relaxation, notes will sound hard and dry, and it won’t take long before
muscles stiffen and slap your body with cramps.
In that
practice of repetition lies a life lesson that I find both humbling and
sobering. Humbling because music is infinitely bigger than what I will ever be
able to express in words. Sobering, because with patience, practice and repetition,
we can train our body to make music. One note after the other. If we
find the discipline to repeat those notes, we can reach the beating heart of
the grand sonata, and with it, feel, just for a moment, the whole cycle of
life.
