Daimys Garcai – Response to Ch. 10 Ethics

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#884

“Too much reportage and we cross into scholarship or journalism. Too much imagination and we cross into fiction.”
“We imagine her saying to Quindlen: If it felt cold to you, it was cold—whether it was 40 degrees or 2 degrees. No need to fact-check that.”
“We all vent in our notebooks, but in stories meant to be shared, we need to get our subjects “right”—not just for the moment, but for all the days that follow.”

I have been struggling lately with my position as a writer…a writer of any kind. In my academic work, I have to constantly back my ideas with sources, with theories. I can never just have an idea – I need to show where that idea came from. And it’s frustrating because sometimes I can’t track my ideas – I can’t find a point of origin for them. I think that’s where my habits of pointing out different books to people comes from. I try to keep track of everything I’ve read so that if I come up with an idea, I can find a point of entry from a text that has already been deemed worthwhile.
But there’s something a bit different to that in creative nonfiction. It is similar in that the story has to be true. But the same in that true has to not just fit your likings, but the likings of most others. What I enjoyed most about this chapter was the distinction (that I don’t know if academic writing affords) between a general truth and a truth of the writer. There is a space for the reader and writer to connect on an emotional level – where there is an understanding that something may not be True but can be true, and there is a larger understanding that everyone is human and we have to do them justice.
Academic writing can use more of this – even if I don’t know exactly what that would look like.

[Sondra Perl]

#896

Dear Daimys,
I don’t know what it would look like either, but I think I do know what you mean. Especially in the humanities, the truth we are searching for is often not a universal Truth but an experiential truth–this is an experience that someone had or that readers of this text share or that we assume that we all share as humans, but aren’t quite sure–and those experiences all have an emotional component. But that emotional connection between reader, writer, and subject is not really part of academic writing, despite the fact that it is part of what makes the questions we’re asking important.

[Sondra Perl]

#913

There is a movement in academic writing towards voice, point of view and revealing the writer behind the writing….at least in the humanities. Academic does not have to mean voiceless. And in many circles, certainly feminist circles, it’s fairly common to assert that objectivity is not possible. We all have stands and see the world from various standpoints. This colors what we study and how we write about it.

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