"to write is to draw a map"

Thankfully it has been a more productive day today. I persevered with the Arrested Development paper for some time, and although it was slow going I am starting to see a real way forward here, making connections with some previous work as well as considering some new possibilities. I also spent some more time on the research presentation for a couple of weeks time.

Anne and I met yesterday morning as usual. Although we have now finished Discipline and Punish, we are in the process of putting together the talk. So far we have a number of subheadings that we are just starting to flesh out. It goes something like this:

• Introduction and Background - how and why we started reading together in a formal way
• Our own connections to Foucault - before beginning reading. So here we talk about out specific areas of research and what, if any, influence Foucault had been to this point.
• Foucault as historian - our various impressions about Foucault's historical practice
• Thoughts about the writing practice and style Foucault employs - this was a topic that came up very regularly
• Outcomes - thoughts to take to our teaching and research now

So it's fairly straightforward. The main aim is not to talk about what's in the book - but rather the ramifications of engaging in a reading project like this, particularly in a regional community where the practice of research can often be fairly isolated.

As I went through and started writing some notes out, I went back and did a little background reading, particularly to see if there were any useful comments by other writers that we could incorporate into the presentation. And I came across one that had really struck me in my initial reading of Deleuze's book on Foucault (which is a fabulous read by the way).

"To write is to struggle and resist; to write is to become; to write is to draw a map: 'I am a cartographer'' (1988, p. 44).

I really like the ideas I feel this quote encapsulates about writing. That writing is necessarily creative, productive - producing a new territory or a shape, constructing a landscape that is both imagined yet very real.