Abstract
I will read and discuss poems from my creative/scholarly essay “Mahjong, the PhD, Bourdieu and Me” (Sun, 2024). My work is inspired by and builds on Gou et al.’s (2021) “Writing, Playing and Transforming,” —a creative practice-led research paper that examines the impact of neoliberal policies on university cultures through ludic inquiry, an approach that uses games to explore a broader sociocultural phenomenon, and encourages a playfulness that imbues the functional world with expression” and the personal (Sicart, 2014).
My focus is on the “Western” mahjong games that I played at a white working-class senior’s centre where I experienced the familiar “almost the same, but not quite” (Bhabha, 1994) feelings that still surface in my interactions as a creative writing PhD candidature at a “Sandstone University”. Although I have sufficient cultural capital to enter these spaces and play games with others, I am a newcomer and marginalised by age and race within these Anglocentric institutions. While there are some aspects of my habitus that align with the dominant group habitus, the mismatch results in uncomfortable feelings that do not meet the criteria for any DSM-5 diagnoses, and grand theories also fail to adequately capture out-of-place ness or take into account the contestations within these spaces that impact on wellbeing. The mental discomfort caused by the hysteresis effect can only be explained and ameliorated through poetry.
I will also discuss how the new insights gained in adopting this poetry-led method changed the focus of and genre of my current PhD project, which was initially a traditional novel set in regional colonial and earlier Federation Australia.
References
Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. Routledge.
Gou, Y., Di Niro, C., Spasovska, E., Walker, A., Cannell, C., Clarkson, R., Nilsson, A., & Levy, N. (2021). Writing, playing, transforming: a collaborative inquiry into neoliberalism's effects on academia, and the scope for changing the game. In Reimagining the Academy: ShiFting Towards Kindness, Connection, and an Ethics of Care (pp. 219–238). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75859-2_13
Sun, E. (2024). “Mahjong, the PhD, Bourdieu and Me.” [Manuscript accepted for publication]. Routledge.
My focus is on the “Western” mahjong games that I played at a white working-class senior’s centre where I experienced the familiar “almost the same, but not quite” (Bhabha, 1994) feelings that still surface in my interactions as a creative writing PhD candidature at a “Sandstone University”. Although I have sufficient cultural capital to enter these spaces and play games with others, I am a newcomer and marginalised by age and race within these Anglocentric institutions. While there are some aspects of my habitus that align with the dominant group habitus, the mismatch results in uncomfortable feelings that do not meet the criteria for any DSM-5 diagnoses, and grand theories also fail to adequately capture out-of-place ness or take into account the contestations within these spaces that impact on wellbeing. The mental discomfort caused by the hysteresis effect can only be explained and ameliorated through poetry.
I will also discuss how the new insights gained in adopting this poetry-led method changed the focus of and genre of my current PhD project, which was initially a traditional novel set in regional colonial and earlier Federation Australia.
References
Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. Routledge.
Gou, Y., Di Niro, C., Spasovska, E., Walker, A., Cannell, C., Clarkson, R., Nilsson, A., & Levy, N. (2021). Writing, playing, transforming: a collaborative inquiry into neoliberalism's effects on academia, and the scope for changing the game. In Reimagining the Academy: ShiFting Towards Kindness, Connection, and an Ethics of Care (pp. 219–238). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75859-2_13
Sun, E. (2024). “Mahjong, the PhD, Bourdieu and Me.” [Manuscript accepted for publication]. Routledge.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publication status | Published - 30 Nov 2023 |
| Event | We Need to Talk: Issues that demand personal, social and institutional attention. - University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia Duration: 29 Nov 2023 → 1 Dec 2023 Conference number: 28 https://aawpuc.wixsite.com/aawpuc2023 |
Conference
| Conference | We Need to Talk |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | Australia |
| City | Canberra |
| Period | 29/11/23 → 1/12/23 |
| Internet address |