voi Cesat the beginning of the nineteenth century, at a time when language was
burying itself within its own density as an object and allowing itself to be
traversed, through and through, by knowledge, it was also reconstituting itself
elsewhere, in an independent form, difficult of access, folded back upon the
enigma of its own origin and existing wholly in reference to the pure act of
writing. ... at the moment when language, as spoken and scattered words,
becomes an object of knowledge, we see it reappearing in a strictly opposite
modality: a silent, cautious deposition of the word upon the whiteness of a
piece of paper, where it can possess neither sound nor interlocutor, where it
has nothing to say but itself, nothing to do but shine in the brightness of its
being.
(Foucault 2002 [1966]: 326–7)For Foucault, then, poetry and philosophy (or, in his case, philology) must not be
forced into a single frame. Creative writing, for Foucault, is not ‘about’ knowledge
but must be permitted to exist of, and for, itself, and not to be forced into the domain
of applied research. While we are sympathetic to this idea, and in many ways agree
that the point of creative writing is first to deliver creative products and knowledges,
we note that Foucault first published this work in 1966, and that his reference point
was the shift, for language/literature, from the Classical through the Romantic to the
mallarméan periods and their related practices. Close to half a century later, it might
be argued that the field has changed radically. literature has moved past that late
nineteenth- century struggle for identity to become part of the current episteme, one
predicated on utility, public service and value for input. in addition, it might be said,
those nineteenth- century battles have been fought and won; now it is time to turn
our attention to what is important in the twenty- first century. That, we suggest, is the
production of knowledge that will be of use in the creation of a more ethical, more
democratically organized and more sustainable society.
an example of this approach comes from a recent work by australian novelist
Kate grenville, The Secret River (2005a), which explores and exposes both frontier
violence in australia, and the dispossession of the indigenous people during the
settlement of australia. as a part of the debate which is known locally as ‘the history
wars’, grenville’s work makes a significant contribution by offering readers a glimpse
into how she imagined early nineteenth- century australia. about this, grenville
writes:
I did an enormous amount of research. This book isn’t history, but it’s solidly
based on history. Most of the events in the book ‘really happened’ and much
of the dialogue is what people really said or wrote.The point of this work, she continues, is that:
i hoped to create an experience for a reader in which they could understand
what that moment of our past was really like. The great power of fiction is that
it’s not an argument: it’s a world.
(grenville 2005b)