Mini Essay: Embodied Writing in the Context of Feminist Theory and Personal Practise

Since beginning my creative writing course, and over a three year journey of adapting and modifying my writing practise, I have been very interested in the concept of embodied writing. Rosemary Anderon defines embodied writing as writing which “seeks to reveal the lived experience of the body by portraying in words the finely textured experience of the body and evoking sympathetic resonance in readers.” (Anderson, 2001). I first began to look at writing as a physical experience itself which depicts other experiences of physicality. I became interested in the concept of the mind contained within my physical personhood, and the act of writing words in order to relate to others the same impression of these lived experiences. Over time, I have begun to adapt my own writing to this concept and have attempted to make the words on the page as physical as possible for the reader, as “embodied knowledge often begins with bodily response—or what we might call ‘gut reactions’.” (Knoblauch, 2012). In one of the first essays ever written for this course, I asserted that embodied writing becomes less about physical space and more about conceptualising the mindscape as an area to be occupied by a reader. Whilst I still maintain this assertion, I also believe that my writing practise has become much more rooted in theory to ‘bring it to life’ as it were, which has had the effect of increasing the amount of elements in my writing which attempt to cause bodily responses. Perhaps most relevant is the integration of feminist theory into depictions of the physical that has found its way into my writing practise. Katie Conboy asserts that “feminist theories have disputed casual explanations that assume that sex dictates… certain social meanings for womens’ experience” (Conboy, 1997) and that therefore “phenomenological [feminist] theories of human embodiment have… been concerned to distinguish between the various physiological and biological casualties that structure bodily existence and the meanings that embodied existence assumes in the context of lived experience.” (Conboy, 1997). Rather than suggesting that there is one female experience (either internal or external), I have begun to explore womanhood in feminist embodied writing as a series of experiences which intersect and differ but can be examined through various lenses of physicality and embodied analysis. Embodiment, I have come to explore in my own work, means something different in the context of womanhood than it does elsewhere. This deconstruction exists on my own page in fragments of physical experience, for example amplified through pace, tone, rhythm, and a variety of narrative techniques which attempt to reflect theory in a more relatable context. This is necessary in fiction, as poet Andy Jackson suggests that the “sense of [a character’s] embodied self within the world is a crucial aspect of the decisions...made” within the context of the story. (Jackson, 2016). Jackson was heavily influential on my prose in my first year of university. To take this concept and apply it in a way which is more relevant to my own writing, both in a feminist context and in the context of my personal style, has vastly improved my grasp on my own writing practise. The course of these three years has been a process of exploring how I can transition abstract concepts (which up until now felt like unspoken accompaniments to my experience as both a woman and a writer) into writing in a more embodied sense.



Reference List

Anderson, R. (2001). Embodied writing and reflections on embodiment. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 33 (2), 83-98.

Conboy, K. (1997). Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory. Columbia University Press; 7th ed. Edition

Jackson, A. (2016). Re-embodied poetics: recognising bodily difference in poetry. AAWP, The University of Adelaide.

Knoblauch, A. (2012). Bodies of Knowledge: Definitions, Delineations, and Implications of Embodied Writing in the Academy. Composition Studies 40.2 (Fall 2012), Parlor Press.