Writing Differently: On the Constraints and Possibilities of Presenting Research Rooted in Feminist Epistemologies

Abstract

AbstractIn this article, we adopted the genre of response letter, answering an editorial letter proposing to reject our submission. The rejection letter itself is fictionalized, but collated from various real reviews our texts have received throughout our academic career. Our aim is to both highlight the mechanisms pushing academic writing toward conformity, dullness, and irrelevance and to point toward the possibilities of Writing Differently: of crafting academic texts aligned with feminist sensibilities, conveying meaning as well as feeling, embedded in context, and open to difference. We discuss some texts by authors who have managed to break free from the constraints of the dominant style and published beautiful, meaningful texts, which challenge the orthodoxy of academic journal articles. We argue that the form of writing matters; that the question of style is, at its heart, the question of epistemology, what can be known, how it can be known, and how can such knowledge be shared. In addition, it also concerns the knowing subject and is thus a deeply feminist issue. We end our text by inviting the readers to join the growing ranks of academics crossing the boundaries of traditional journal articles, and to explore how Writing Differently enables new insights to be discovered and communicated.