SAHT2001 Lecture Notes - Juliana Huxtable, Institute For Operations Research And The Management Sciences
25 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
WEEK 1
Cultures of reading and writing
• What is writing as practice?
o Argues that writing itself is an art practice
o Aimed to facilitate critical, conceptual experimental and creative modes of
reading/writing
o Reflects ongoing and emerging relationship between contemporary writing and art
practices
o Somewhere between theory and a studio - argues that theory is practice
• Writing as practice is not (simply) art writing, art criticism, creative writing and/or literary
studies
• Juliana Huxtable, Untitled (Causal Power), 2015
• Ulysses by James Joyce, 2012
• Think about textuality as a process
• Having a Coke With You by Frank O'Hara
• We live in a post-digital moment
o The internet and digital systems are at once historical and contemporary
• already historicised* yet conditioning our everyday life in the present
o *i.e. the previous aesthetics of the web
o There is a nostalgic awareness
• On Anne Boyer's Not Writing
o In Not Writing, Boyer challenges the idea of 'high' reading and writing 'culture' as she is,
herself, a working class woman, a single mother and an outsider, to said cultures. She
outlines the forces that stop her from writing, or making writing difficult -- if not
impossible. Boyer cleverly uses this piece as a written defiance to literary 'gatekeepers,'
by not bowing her head and continuing to stubbornly write. She outlines that majority of
the time, to write is to not-write.
• From Astrid:
o Anne Boyer reminds us that most of time, writing involves not-writing. I think she means
this in two ways: first, there is so much that informs writing that is not writing itself –
thinking, talking, eating, sleeping, working; second, when we’re ‘actually’ writing, we’re
constantly making decisions about what and how to write, each decision is about what
to include and exclude, what to keep and what to edit out. And maybe there’s a third
way, too: that the things we don’t write are important, too – things we can’t write
because we lack support, resources and access; things we won’t write because they
don’t belong to us; things we can’t write because we’re scared; things we shouldn’t
write, and so on.
WEEK 2
Docupoetry
• The merging of factual information and organic poetry, regardless of conflict.
• From Astrid:
o Firstly, these poems can “extend the document,” thus giving second life to lost or
expurgated histories, yet still finally remaining a poem. In this outcome, the
documentary poem offers its readers a double movement both inside the life of the
poem and outside the poem.
o Second, the poem itself can be extended through the document, given a breadth or
authority that it cannot otherwise attain on its own.
Document Summary
In not writing, boyer challenges the idea of "high" reading and writing "culture" as she is, herself, a working class woman, a single mother and an outsider, to said cultures. She outlines the forces that stop her from writing, or making writing difficult -- if not impossible. Boyer cleverly uses this piece as a written defiance to literary "gatekeepers," by not bowing her head and continuing to stubbornly write. She outlines that majority of the time, to write is to not-write. From astrid: anne boyer reminds us that most of time, writing involves not-writing. Docupoetry: the merging of factual information and organic poetry, regardless of conflict. From astrid: firstly, these poems can extend the document, thus giving second life to lost or expurgated histories, yet still finally remaining a poem. Produces perspective, response and critique that neither a personal expressive poetry nor a scholarly historical account could provide" (harrington)
