Jacques Derrida tells of a dream in which he appears to abandon responsibility for his writing:
I always dream of a pen that would be a syringe, a suction point rather than that very hard weapon with which one must inscribe, incise, choose, calculate, take ink before filtering the inscribable, playing the keyboard on the screen, whereas here, once the vein has been found, no more toil, no responsibility, no risk of bad taste or violence, the blood delivers itself all alone, the inside gives itself up and you can do as you like with it, it's me but I'm no longer there, for nothing, for nobody , diagnose the worst...
(Derrida 2003)
And yet, Derrida repeatedly insists on the need for responsible scholarship. Writing, he urges, should be informed by a principle of reason, to which:
we have a duty [...] through research, questioning, inquiry that seeks the "true," analysis, presentation of what "is" or exposition of the "facts," historical narrative, discussion, evaluation, interpretation, and putting all these propositions together thanks to what is called language, communication, information, pedagogy, and so forth. (Derrida 1995 427)
It sounds as if as writers we are caught up in a double bind. On the one hand, we are being asked to surrender to writing; to allow ourselves to be sucked into it, while on the other hand, we are informed that we must take full responsibility for what we write: to be scholarly.
Are these two practices distinct? Can we be critical and creative? If so, how do we do both?
In this section, we hope to show you how to take scholarly responsibility for your writing. In doing so, we hope you will be encouraged to give up something of yourself as you write - to write with the syringe as well as the nib.
