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4. What Lies Beneath
Pamela Ryan
So I began to have an idea of my life, not as the slow shaping of
achievement to fit my preconceived purposes, but as the gradual
discovery and growth of a purpose which I did not know… I could not
understand at all (at that time) that my real purpose might be to learn
to have no purpose.
Marion Milner, A Life of One’s Own, p. 12
Let us begin with a little perspective. For a substantive period of my life
as a researcher, the phrase “open learning” did not exist. I matured as an
academic long before the digital era: I typed up my master’s dissertation
on an ordinary typewriter, and my PhD on a brand-new electric
typewriter. The internet was a dream in someone’s head. So, obviously,
the field of open and distance learning did not exist. Like several other
contributors to this book, I came to open learning tangentially by
migrating, in my case, from literary studies to issues about openness in
postcolonial theory and thence to open learning. The notion of learning
without boundaries had great appeal for me as it aligned not only
with my personality (independent, freedom-loving, creative, not very
good with rules and regulations) but also with my research interests
which always seemed to go against the grain in some way. The poetry
of Sylvia Plath was largely unknown and unrecognized when I was
writing about it in my master’s dissertation. My PhD thesis crossed
disciplinary boundaries, blending gender studies, psychoanalysis and
literary studies into one research question: “What do women want?” My
published research in postcolonial studies focused on border crossings
and forced migration. So, openness in education was a natural choice
and remains a passionate interest of mine. That sets the scene in one
© 2023 Pamela Ryan, CC BY-NC 4.0
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0356.04
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Research, Writing, and Creative Process in Open and Distance Education
way. The other is more nebulous, more personal, and stems from the
quotation by Milner (2011) which opens this chapter.
When I was in my early thirties, I visited a well-known astrologer for
a reading of my birth chart. She closed the session with a sentence which
has reverberated ever since, and which caused initial consternation and,
later, wry acceptance. She said, gravely yet with compassion: “You will
not realize your destiny in this lifetime.” This worried me deeply. Was
I “destined” to be a wanderer, fruitlessly following different paths and
achieving nothing? Is one’s destiny out of one’s control or could I change
this “fate”? And what has this got to do with writing and research?
Everything, as it turns out. Milner’s words are an exact reflection of my
predicament and, I have come to believe, my gift.
I write to discover what I do not know.
The title of this chapter is intentionally cryptic, but I hope my brief
introduction has given you a clue as to why I chose it. For me, research
and writing (the two are not necessarily conflated) are concerned with
finding out what lies beneath the surface. I usually begin with a title that
excites me without having the faintest idea about how to extrapolate
from it. That comes with time, and the process that falls between the
conjuring of a title and the writing of a research paper entails a long and
slow engagement with ideas and with how best to communicate those
ideas.
When Dianne first called for expressions of interest in her new book,
I leapt at the chance to write something. The theme was enticing because
it entailed a reflexive process on the part of each contributor, and this
appealed to my creative bent. The first call was sent out in February
2022 with a deadline set for the end of September. I quickly wrote out a
draft outline for my proposed chapter and sent it off. And that was the
end of it. Months went by. I occasionally thought, with a fair amount
of guilt and annoyance at myself, that I really should get on with the
writing, but perhaps because there was no definitive research question
or outcome, I found the thinking extremely challenging. Where to begin?
Potted biographies are boring most of the time so I did not want to begin
there, and if I couldn’t begin there, then where? September arrived. I
began to panic, simultaneously composing emails to Dianne explaining
why I was not going to write the chapter after all. Then a friend told me
about a conference he wanted to attend in 2024. The conference is in a
4. What Lies Beneath
49
field that could not be further from my own: Medieval and Renaissance
Studies, and the title is — you guessed it — What Lies Beneath. At a time
when I should have been thinking about, and writing this chapter, I was
immediately smitten with this phrase and began thinking about what
I would write if I were a medieval scholar. The title was evocative. I
had been reading about mycelia and networks that connect with tree
roots that allow trees and other plants to communicate with each other.
Beneath us, at any place, is this subterranean network of thread-like
fibres that mimic our internet. I would take the idea of the green man,
or the search for the holy grail, and link this with my favourite poet, T. S.
Eliot. I ran to fetch my very old and heavily annotated copy of Eliot’s
poems and found the passage from The Wasteland which begins:
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images…
I was not sure why these words came into my head as soon as I thought
of “what lies beneath” but it makes perfect sense now. I was looking for
something, something that was not visible, and all I had to work with
was “a heap of broken images.” I needed these images to coalesce into a
shape. I needed a green tree to grow out of the desert.
Then I stopped. What on earth was I doing? Instead of writing a
real chapter for a real book, I was wasting time dreaming up a mythical
paper for a conference I had no intention of attending. Talk about
procrastination!
And then it struck me. I knew what to do. I would use this
moment to write a self-reflexive piece on how I approach and have
always approached a research assignment, because the route I take is
disappointingly consistent. I sign up eagerly, even greedily; I come up
with a title that I really like, then I do nothing. For a long time. But
miraculously, every single time, and always at the last minute, I manage
to produce something I like, and submit the work on time. Is this a
personal vagary? Am I peculiarly lazy? Or is the truth closer when I say
that I am scared? Scared of writing. From that fear issues procrastination.
The words I quoted earlier, by the astrologer, about my destiny, still
reverberate. However, that fear is enormously productive, as is the slow
burn between the choice of a title and the writing of the chapter, which
50
Research, Writing, and Creative Process in Open and Distance Education
allows ideas to percolate. Could this, I wondered, be helpful to other
writers? Certainly, I was overjoyed to find Geoff Dyer’s book Out of Sheer
Rage (2012), supposedly his magnum opus on D. H. Lawrence, in which
he postpones writing about Lawrence indefinitely:
… after years of avoiding Lawrence, I moved into the phase of what
might be termed pre-preparation. I visited Eastwood, his birthplace,
I read biographies, I amassed a hoard of photographs which I kept in
a once-new document wallet, blue, on which I had written ‘D. H. L.:
Photos’ in determined black ink. I even built up an impressive stack of
notes with Lawrence vaguely in mind but these notes, it is obvious to
me now, actually served not to prepare for and facilitate the writing of a
book about Lawrence but to defer and postpone doing so.
I almost wept when I read these words:
All over the world people are taking notes as a way of postponing,
putting off and standing in for. My case was more extreme, for not only
was taking notes about Lawrence a way of putting off writing a study
of — and homage to — a writer who had made me want to become a
writer, but this study I was putting off writing was itself a way of putting
off and postponing another book.
So, is procrastination, at least for some people, part of being a writer?
Unless you are extraordinarily disciplined by nature, you are likely to
put off the moment when you settle down in front of your computer
and begin writing. Firstly, there is the desk to tidy. This must be done
now. The act of sorting and resorting, assigning places for things and
reassigning places for things, then carefully cleaning each thing is the
first step. Then there is the making of tea or coffee. Then your phone
pings, and it might be important. Then there is a knock at the door. Then
you are not in the mood to write after all, and besides your brain has the
consistency of congealing porridge. Tomorrow then…
Most of us recognize this reluctance to begin a task. Perhaps this
reluctance is not merely a natural consequence of fear but a generative
precursor to the creative process, allowing different parts of the brain to
work on something that is going to be challenging but which needs time
to develop, in much the same way as walking or any kind of movement
aids the mental or creative mind (see Williams, 2021). So, procrastination
per se need not be a liability. But there is a more insidious form of
procrastination at which I excel: repression. I pretend that I do not have
4. What Lies Beneath
51
a deadline. I strenuously avoid thinking about my topic for weeks, even
months. Occasionally, I will have a brainwave after reading something
in a book or magazine that has no bearing on my topic. I will make a
note somewhere, either in the Notes app on my phone or on a piece of
paper, or in a notebook that happens to be within reach. Invariably, I
can’t find that note when I need it.
At this point, the editor of this book should be thinking: what is
this woman doing? I wanted my contributors to give sound advice to
aspiring researchers, but she is proving to be a terrible role model. I
agree. I am not much of a role model. Yet I have published plenty over
my long life as an academic, and I have had good responses (usually) to
my work, so bear with me.
All research begins with a question — usually “what” or “what
if.” The more difficult and compelling the research question, the more
interesting will be the research journey. If something seems obvious
to you, then it will be obvious for your reader. Oftentimes, when we
write about that which we are certain, the result is flat. When writing
is exploratory, hesitant even, it becomes a kind of “thinking out loud”
which enlivens the dialogue between writer and reader. Moreover, as
a literary scholar, I have been trained to read texts for their points of
difference and for their gaps or silences. I am interested in what is not
said, in what is left out of a text because I believe it is important to take
nothing for granted but to question received notions so as to reveal their
hidden contradictions and tensions. In any discipline, certain beliefs
become embedded in their discourse and presented as self-evident,
therefore true, and it is the intellectual’s task to delve into those tensions
and extrapolate the hidden dimensions of a text or an issue.
In line with this thinking, the idea of the palimpsest is rich with
possibility. What we think of as self-evident is usually only the top layer
of a complex, richly layered architecture. This idea of layering used to
fascinate me when I lived in Johannesburg, where, underneath the city,
lies a vast network of mine tunnels which cause occasional earth tremors.
More poignantly, underneath the surface of many cities in South Africa
lie the bones of previous generations. Do you remember the excitement
a few years ago when the bones of Richard III were discovered under
a car park in Leicester? What lies beneath may be hidden but resonant
with history.
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Research, Writing, and Creative Process in Open and Distance Education
This has been a long digression, but it is aimed at emphasizing the
central motif of this chapter — that what lies beneath, hidden from view,
is fertile ground for research inquiry and research writing.
The word research derives from the French word rechercher which
means “to look again.” Research is about looking and looking for. It is
concerned with digging beneath the surface to find what lies below. Let
me explain this by referring to another genre. I have recently joined an
art class and am making a study of my local landscapes. I am blessed
to be living in a particularly beautiful part of the Western Cape, South
Africa, not far from Cape Town. I can see mountains from my kitchen
window and can get to the Atlantic Ocean in fifteen minutes. When I
started painting mountain scenes, my paintings were very gauche. It
took me several weeks to learn how to look — to really look. I now notice
the subtle shadings when the light falls at an angle, and how to mix
paint to best depict light and shade, closeness, and distance. Research
involves a similar learning experience. One’s first question must be
followed up by further and stringent questioning. The initial “what”
turns into “what if” and “what then?” Our first gaze is rarely accurate.
We have to look behind and to the side of the question, scratching the
surface to discover what lies underneath.
In fact, perhaps we can replace the pejorative term procrastination
with “slow writing.” I cannot imagine the act of writing without
a simultaneous act of reading. My best ideas emerge after reading
something that makes me stop midstream and think. Somehow those
ideas, nudged by what I have just read, get stirred and shaken, put on a
slow simmer, then set aside on the back burner. Ideas must go through
a slow burn or allowed to rise unhurriedly like a sourdough mix. There
is something about this gentle simmer that is immensely productive.
Writing cannot be rushed.
If you have survived thus far and are still reading, I have a few tips
which have emerged from my own experience as a writer. The first one,
as I have hinted, is that writing emerges out of reading. That may seem
obvious, but I am not necessarily thinking here about reading that is
directly related to the research topic. I read a wide range of material
and occasionally my reading will spark an idea which I have to jot down
quickly. If I leave my chair to get to my computer, the brilliant idea will
vanish along with the choice words I had thought of to elaborate on the
4. What Lies Beneath
53
idea. But by some miraculous process, the reading moments and the
collection of misplaced ideas coalesce at some point and then I am ready
to write. A more successful method of note-taking for me is using the
old-fashioned notebook to copy notes and quotes by hand. I find this
more rewarding as a research tool and have a series of notebooks which
I have kept since the eighties (some with characteristically brightly
coloured covers) and which I still take pleasure in reading.
It is the circling around the “re” part of the research process that
is the ticket to writing success. More often than not, when I am about
to write an academic piece, my best ideas come from reading that is
completely unrelated to the topic. For example, when I was asked to
contribute to a book about open educational resources or openness in
academic work, I was reading The Hidden Life of Trees in which Wohlleben
(2017) shows how trees connect with other trees via a “wood wide
web,” an intimate network and partnership between fungi and roots.
It’s a fascinating account of what we do not see — a form of life that is
more resilient than anything else on our planet and which has existed
for billions of years. The resonances with the internet sparked further
thinking about how initially the internet was seen as an open, free form
of communication and information sharing but how recently this notion
has become tarnished by oversharing and surveillance; and this fed into
my chapter on openness and what it means.
Reading a variety of texts from different disciplines has benefited
my thinking about open learning in productive ways. In my journey as
a researcher and writer, I inclined more and more to taking ideas from
other disciplines: psychoanalysis, anthropology, sociolinguistics, and so
on. I found being restricted to one discipline confining, whereas ideas
from other disciplines lent an extra dimension to my thinking. When I
first read Clifford Geertz (2000), the American cultural anthropologist, I
was captivated by the idea of thick descriptions, a concept Geertz derived
from the philosopher, Gilbert Ryle. Thick descriptions involve carefully
analyzing human actions in terms of their cultural context as well as the
influence brought to the analysis by the interpreter (this has intriguing
resonances with the thinking in quantum physics which shows how and
whether or not the observer influences the movement of neutrons). The
example given by Geertz is the difference between a twitch of the eye
which is involuntary, and a wink, which is purposeful. Although the
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Research, Writing, and Creative Process in Open and Distance Education
two may look identical, there are subtle differences, cued by the context.
This is a very simple explanation but it will suffice for now. This idea
of the importance of context had huge relevance for my thinking as a
literary scholar because I was trained in Leavisite principles whereby
the text is all. The scholar of literary texts had no recourse to information
outside the text, so bringing to bear on the text information about the
author’s life or tendencies was taboo. As you can imagine, a study of
Sylvia Plath without her biography would be unthinkable these days, but
in my master’s thesis I stuck rigidly to the poems themselves, sometimes
hesitantly mentioning the impact of Plath’s father on her work. Now,
context is acknowledged to be significant and we are intrigued by facets
of a writer’s life and loves. We merge these facets into our thinking about
the text.
Another helpful borrowing from social anthropology is the topic
of “wicked” problems. When I became absorbed by topics outside of
literature, such as forced migration, postcolonialism, and identity, I was
dealing with wicked problems, those that have no imaginable solution
at the time of writing. Think about forced migration, sub-Saharan
poverty and unemployment, climate change, and suchlike. These are
issues that are so huge, so complex, sometimes so overwhelming, that
we would rather not think about them. These are wicked problems.
Open and distance learning as a research topic, while it may not be
a wicked problem, lends itself to deep thinking about context. For
instance, it matters where such learning takes place. Students who study
at a distance in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, cannot rely on a steady
electricity supply for their online needs while studying. Nor do they
always have the financial resources to afford the necessary hardware to
access the internet. In a sense then, this becomes a wicked problem as
we excavate the reasons underlying poverty and unemployment, poor
social benefits, and electricity shutdowns.
My second tip is to remain true to yourself. I am not a conventional
researcher. I do not like rules and I do not like to be confined. My most
successful articles have occurred when I arrive at ideas sideways. By
approaching a topic tangentially, I can examine it more deeply and
more creatively. It is similar to reading backwards. Often that simple act
can reveal more than was first apparent when reading conventionally.
Coming at something from an unusual angle can be fruitful in
4. What Lies Beneath
55
unexpected ways. This is not to say that research that proceeds logically
is less pleasing. My point here is that one method may not suit everyone,
which is why the recent trend in South Africa of determining in advance
how doctoral dissertations should be set out, via a predetermined set
of chapters, fills me with dismay. I like to be creative in whatever I
am writing. For example, the final chapter of my doctoral dissertation
was set out in two columns. I had reached the end of a very long road
without answering my research question. So, after months of internal
debate, I decided to “fess up” and present my concluding chapter as a
visual display of uncertainty. Two opposing views were presented on
the page, so that the reader had to peruse one column, and then the
other. One of my examiners nearly gave up on me at that point, but she
(fortunately for me) grasped what I was aiming at, and praised me for
it, suggesting that of all the chapters, this one should be published.
The lesson here is to be brave enough to stay true to oneself. It has
generally worked for me although there have been times when I have
suffered for it. I am not suggesting that we become research mavericks.
I hope that what will emerge from this confession is an encouragement
to follow the path that most aligns to your deepest and truest instincts
while finding a way to express those in ways that accord with scholarly
norms. To take the best of yourself and align it with the best that
scholarship stands for.
My next tip is similarly derived from my own experience. Apart from
procrastination, repression, and wayward creativity, I have another
“problem” as a researcher, and that is my low boredom threshold. This
has given me several challenges along the way because it has meant that I
find it impossible to repeat myself. I had a dear friend who was the exact
opposite. She discovered Henry James in her English Honours year,
went on to write a master’s thesis on James, then a PhD, then a book,
and so on. She never deviated. As a result, she became a world expert
on Henry James and was given an excellent research rating. This was not
the case with my research. I discovered Sylvia Plath in my Honours year
and went on to write my master’s thesis on her poems. This was in the
early days of Plath research when there was only one book available on
the poet. I therefore relied on close readings of the poems for the bulk
of the dissertation. If only I had persevered with Plath, I would now
be a world expert. Instead, over the following two decades I read and
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Research, Writing, and Creative Process in Open and Distance Education
wrote about, variously, postmodern American poetry, women’s studies,
feminism, gender studies, postcolonial studies, and, finally, for my PhD,
produced an interdisciplinary investigation involving psychoanalysis
and women’s writing. Not content with that, I entered the field of open
educational resources and devoted my research time to investigating
how OER could change the face of higher education, particularly in
postcolonial territories. In sum, my research interests are varied.
This shifting from one topic to another did not do much to get me
a good research rating in South Africa. The feedback suggested that
I was “too diverse,” that there was not an obvious thread linking my
publications, that I needed a clearer focus. Naturally, I was dismayed
by this reaction and I wondered if my research career was doomed to
mediocrity because I could not be said to be an expert in anything. It
was only much later that I found the thread that my reviewers thought
was missing. Borders of all kinds and resistance to boundaries, whether
these be physical, intellectual, or academic, have been a constant theme
in my work. Crossing borders and borderlines has been the connecting
thread or ficelle that forms the core of my writing career. I have sought
out sedimented practices and forms and nudged them aside in favour
of an open exploration, a journeying to find out what lies beneath and
beyond. I have not found it easy to be contained within a disciplinary
border, preferring instead to notice what happens when one discipline is
placed alongside or in between another. What new insights are revealed
when literary studies finds a neighbour in anthropology, for instance?
What stops us from reinventing a discipline, to stretch its seams, and
to open it up? This has led to a rethinking of timeworn structural
oppositions — indigenous/exotic, inside/outside, home/away — into
a more fluid displacement of certainties with questioning and doubt.
I prefer to pursue a continuum rather than a fixed line of inquiry. And
openness as a field of inquiry is a particularly fertile place to linger
awhile, especially if you can find correspondences between openness as
a broad concept and open learning as a research topic.
My advice here, therefore, is to do what feels right for you and follow
your research passions. No one can write with any verve without being
inspired by the topic. At the same time, and to avoid receiving the kind
of feedback I received from the National Research Foundation, you need
to cultivate self-awareness and anticipate potential misunderstanding in
4. What Lies Beneath
57
your readership. Make clear the linkages between your lines of inquiry
and know that each person’s research journey is unique. Far better to
keep the momentum in your writing than to hit a brick wall caused by
indifference to your topic.
Following on this point, it is important always to be aware of your
imagined audience — those who you are writing for and those whom
you will address — then adapt your register accordingly. I cannot overemphasize the importance of audience. The people you are writing for
determine your register and approach. I would not be writing in this
conversational style if this were a book on a different topic, say, The
Self-Organisation of Students in Distance Learning. This is another way
of saying that you need to pay attention to the norms of the journals
you are thinking of submitting your manuscript to if you are writing an
article. You have to heed the journal’s house style, but it involves more
than this. If you are wise, you will read back issues of the journal in
question to see what kinds of articles the journal deems publishable. A
personal example of not reading an audience correctly follows. When I
entered the field of open and distance education as a researcher, I was
still very much enmeshed in literary norms and in postmodernist and
poststructuralist theory. I attended a conference on distance education
in Bergen, Norway, and presented a very abstruse, theoretically inclined
paper to a bemused audience. It went down like a damp squib apart
from one person who understood my references and applauded with
gusto. Learn to pick your conferences. There are those that welcome
critical discourse and those that do not. Writing is always intertwined
with communication and if you are not communicating with your
readers, you are not writing with effect.
In conclusion, writing this chapter has afforded me the opportunity
to think freshly and for the first time about the less obvious components
of what it means to “do” research in the field of open and distance
learning. Looking back over 50 years of research and writing and reliving
the precious times I have spent in various libraries across the world has
been a joy and an unexpected learning experience. My most treasured
memories are of these times in some of the finest libraries in the world
and those memories are stored safely away in my notebooks. My last
words to you are to be brave, be adventurous, follow your interests,
trust your instincts, and follow the rules sensibly. The field of open and
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Research, Writing, and Creative Process in Open and Distance Education
distance learning is a vast territory leading to a variety of approaches,
and I believe we have not nearly exhausted its fertile possibilities. We are
only at the cusp of thinking about what “the commons” really means,
and it is an urgent responsibility, in my opinion, that we stand ready to
contest all efforts to shut it down.
References
Dyer, G. (2012). Out of Sheer Rage. Canon Books.
Eliot, T. S. (1963). Collected Poems, 1909–1962. Faber.
Geertz, C. (2000). The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books.
Milner, M. (2011). A Life
org/10.4324/9781315782751
of
One’s
Own.
Routledge.
https://doi.
Williams, C. (2021). Move: The New Science of Body Over Mind. Profile Books.
Wohlleben, P. (2017). The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They
Communicate. William Collins.