AustLit

'This article takes up Donna Haraway’s discussion of ‘diffraction’ as a remedial to the literal self-centredness of the figure of reflection, in order to propose an alternative learning objective for creative writing curricula. There, currently, ‘reflective learning’ is a common if implicit objective, often manifesting in the form of journal-keeping and some kinds of writing exercises, while a capacity for ‘reflection’ can be seen at least bureaucratically to validate the existence per se of university writing programs (Green & Williams 2018). In the educational literature, self-reflexive contemplation of one’s own experiences is said to be preliminary to the achievement of deep, life-long and transformative knowledge (Ryan & Ryan 2012). But, from a posthumanist standpoint, the discourse around reflection in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning appears ideologically committed to a subjectivity that is integral, insular and (thus) humanist, and constitutionally resistant to transformation. Here, I make use of the post-secondary educational literature on ‘object-based learning’ (OBL) to suggest that students’ touching of objects can be conducive to diffractive rather than reflective learning – that is, conducive to learning that avoids the humanist atomisation of subject from object and instead entails establishing one’s interconnectedness with environments. To this end, I propose a way to frame OBL activities as developing a reciprocal relationship between writing subjects and objects of study, in which students situate their writing not as a reflection on/of objects ‘out there’ in the world, but rather as an active and literal co-creation of the self-as-world.' (Publication abstract)