The Textual Disembodiment of Knowledge in Research Account Writing

Abstract

Recent writers on autobiography and biography have questioned the extent to which the text represents a set of `facts' about `a life'. The following arguments question the extent to which the research account can be seen to represent a set of facts about the research process, in a simple and straightforward manner. Concepts problematized by writers on autobiography and biography, including authorship, self, time and memory, are used here to re-embody what will be argued is the textually disembodied knowledge contained in most research account writing. How simplistic invocations of these concepts can be seen as hinging on actually very complex textual constructions will be explored. The arguments have their source in two pieces of research writing; the first is a survey research account of some research undertaken for a master's thesis; the second was produced as a re-appraisal of that thesis, the purpose of which was to explore the more personal, autobiographical aspects of that same research process.