Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie  Volume 35, 2025  http://journals.sfu.ca/dwr  41   Book Review  Lucia Thesen (2024). Knowledge-making From a Postgraduate Writers   Circle: A Southern Reflectory. Multilingual Matters. Jonathan Faerber   Royal Roads University    Post-graduate writing is often dif6icult  even painful. Readers of this review might relate to some of  the reasons: con6licting and competing demands on time, the associated trade-off between academic  expectations and external priorities, and general feelings of inadequacy, frustration, and occasional  isolation.  In  Knowledge-making  From  a  Postgraduate  Writers    Circle  Lucia  Thesen  re6lects  on  how  these issues impact and challenge the students she engages with in a weekly writer  s circle at the  University  of  Cape  Town  (UCT)  in  South  Africa.  Although  these  challenges  are  to  some  degree  universal and familiar, the novelty of this book lies in Thesen  s unorthodox and refreshing portrayal  of such writing interventions as knowledge-making practices.  Throughout  the  book,  Thesen  skillfully  weaves  together  narratives  from  her  eight  years  of  facilitating a weekly   Thursday writer  s circle   at UCT. In so doing, she invites readers to experience  the  circle  for  themselves  (p.  12).  Writers  in  the  circle  Thesen  describes  take  turns  sharing  short  excerpts of their draft work with fellow members (p. 25). Notably, students and even former students  across disciplinary backgrounds and degrees of expertise (sometimes across institutions) participate  in these activities (p. 24). Although much of the story is told from her perspective, Thesen also allows  these students and other facilitators from the writing circle to speak for themselves  in fact, the book  begins and ends with contributions from a former and current facilitator of the writing group. This  combination of diverse perspectives throughout the book allows Thesen to examine how the group  functions and intersects with the multiple needs and aspirations of its participants.   In the 6irst pages of the book, Thesen understands the writing group as a physical place or   water  point   that shapes the writing processes of its many participants (p. 33). In chapters three and 6ive,  Thesen then considers the ways in which the writing group anticipates and responds to dominant  constructions of knowledge and time within the academy.  In undertaking this examination, Thesen   Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie  Volume 35, 2025  http://journals.sfu.ca/dwr  42   voices  the  unwritten  and  therefore  unnoticed  research  or    knowledge-making    that  so  frequently  takes  place  within  the  writer  s  circle.  For  Thesen,  knowledge  in  the  writer  s  circle  is  more  than    learning to speak and write like a book   (p. 61)  unlike the   text work   (p. 132) often exhibited in  Anglocentric research articles, the process of co-creating knowledge in the writer  s circle is active,  alive,  and  joyous.  It  is,  as  Thesen  puts  it,  a    story  with  verbs    (p.  63).  The  conversations  Thesen  recreates from the circle blend and bend the disciplinary and linguistic traditions, experiences, and  expectations that students share with each other when they experiment with ideas or step away from  the narrow, parochial concerns of their own research projects. Time and again, students in the circle  are able to meaningfully take part in this social process of knowledge-making even when their own  words have dried up (p. 107). In these prolonged periods of drought, students who are otherwise  isolated, overwhelmed, or emotionally incapacitated 6ind a home in a group that values and thrives  upon their collective verbal explorations with other postgraduates (p. 114).  In this sense, the image of a   water point   is an apt metaphor for a writer  s circle: it is a rare space  which welcomes and sustains life (p. 33). In this space, writing occurs organically and abundantly,  but the conditions that give rise to these intense displays of intellectual vitality are unpredictable and  almost  impossible  to  control.  Thus,  instead  of  demanding  or  valuing  writing  for  writing  s  sake  (notably, Thesen rejects the overused slogan   Shut up and write!   (p. 84)), students take control of  how they use their time together (p. 136). In valuing the unwritten and therefore intangible aspects  of academic life itself, the circle departs from the traditional metrics that de6ine academic writing  success to instead invite listening (p. 110), initiate re6lection, and energize students with a renewed  sense of purpose and an alternative conception of achievement (p. 111). The circle thus resists the  many  forces  that  so  often  disrupt  and  alienate  developing  scholarly  writers  from  their  work  and  empowers them to experiment with their evolving academic identity.  Another metaphor is perhaps even more poignant. In the third chapter of the book, members of  the circle characterize literary practices within the academy as a   knowledge    supermarket (p. 53).  By way of explanation, Thesen quotes a colleague who compares published writing to   your mince,  your chicken wings, neatly packed and priced, but what we don  t see is the abattoir. The blood, the  pain,  the  messiness  of  the  making    (p.  53).  This  comment  will  resonate  with  readers  for  several  reasons. First, as Thesen points out, academic writing comes with casualties. More accurately, the  academic  environment  in  which  we  write  causes  these  casualties.  Too  often,  ruthless  competition  exterminates  promising  ideas  and  eliminates  aspiring  writers  from  the  scholarly  arena.  Countless   Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie  Volume 35, 2025  http://journals.sfu.ca/dwr  43   articles  do  not  live  to  see  the  light  of  day,  and  the  ones  that  do  are  bled  dry  of  their  animating  complexity, deceptively packaged for easy consumption. On this view, scholarship is death.   But the metaphor has a second meaning. The process of writing is alive, but only when we provide  it with the requisite sustenance and care. Conversely, without this process, we starve. And although  this  process  is  often  hidden  or  ignored,  although  it  can  be  unnecessarily  painful  and  wasteful,  practices of knowledge-making are scholarship too. These practices include the writer  s circle with  its inclusive emphasis on how writing grows and develops and its tacit rejection of what writing in  the    knowledge  supermarket    looks  like.  The  writer  s  circle  also  includes  moments  of  confusion,  shame, or uncertainty when writers might admit to feeling trapped and suffocated (p.70). Sometimes,  these moments are not resolved until writers admit that they cannot move. But once they vocalize  their dif6iculties, they are better able to understand and overcome the conditions that prevent them  from becoming knowing subjects within the academy (p. 2). In fact, it is precisely because the writing  circle  privileges  the  messy  and  necessary  creative  acts  that  birth  the  products  of  the  so-called  supermarket that knowledge becomes possible for these postgraduate scholars. This is why Thesen  contrasts  more  traditional  forms  of  scholarly  inquiry  in  her  fourth  chapter  with  a  more  effective  animating process in the circle: laughter (p. 72).  In simply giving aspiring scholars room to breathe  and permission to not write (or at least, to not write for the supermarket), the writer  s circle collapses  the stubborn dichotomy between publish or perish, or product and process (p. 56).   Perhaps this metaphor is somewhat dramatic or dif6icult to accept, but so is the reality students  often  face.  Thesen  s  book  allows  us  to  conceive  alternatives  to  the    publish  or  perish    model  and  provides us with tools to reimagine scholarship (p. 138). Although Thesen stops short of proposing  speci6ic  solutions  (p.  134),  there  are  signi6icant  lessons  to  learn  from  her  work.  First,  Thesen  illustrates the dangers of tying writing interventions too closely to traditional metrics such as the  number  of  participants,  the  amount  of  time  spent  in  workshops,  and  the  visibility  of  academic  outcomes  these  workshops  enable  (p.  39).  This  is  not  to  say  that  writing  interventions  cannot  or  should  not  be  measured,  but  to  recognize  that  our  attempts  to  measure  academic  success  are  themselves causing the anxiety and frustration that has made writing circles necessary interventions  in the 6irst place (pp. 28    29).   The most encouraging stories in the book are not just the stories where students 6inish or publish  their work, but the stories in which students continue conversations and relationships beyond the  circle, change the trajectory of each other  s academic careers, and even depart from degree programs  to put their skills to work on successful entrepreneurship or nonacademic projects and to directly   Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie  Volume 35, 2025  http://journals.sfu.ca/dwr  44   in6luence the lives of others outside of the academy (p. 45). The conclusion to draw from these stories  is this: rather than reinforcing negative patterns and the rhetoric around academic writing, effective  writing  groups  allow  participants  the  freedom  to  break  patterns  and  resist  scholarly  norms  of  knowledge production.   A  related  point  concerns  knowledge  production  itself.  Although  writing  can  be  a  form  of  knowledge and knowledge-making, it is far from the only way we make knowledge. The writing circle  Thesen describes consists of participants periodically exchanging ideas as they take their turn in a  weekly ritual centered on sharing just two written pages of their work (p. 25). Rather than serving to  increase the amount of writing that takes place, the exercise momentarily suspends the importance  of the words students write (there is a maximum page count after all, and it is two, not 200!) and to  increase  their  capacity  to  create  knowledge  with  each  other  beyond  the  two  pages.  As  counterintuitive as it may seem for writing centres or instructors to stop students from writing too  much, the lesson here is that balance matters. We cannot expect students to write all the time. Perhaps  instead of characterizing writing groups as a method for writing more, a better objective is to create  knowledge experiments: spaces where students are allowed and encouraged to engage more fully in  the unwritten conversations and processes that enrich and enable the written products that already  demand much of their attention (p. 134).   It is at this point that I should again warn potential readers looking for easy morals and readymade solutions to the patterns Thesen so ably critiques in this book. After all, Thesen does not want  to do business in the knowledge supermarket as traditionally conceived (p. 132). She is critical of the  tendency within social sciences to create abstract representations of deeply emotional and relational  stories, and she resists taking an empirical or distanced analysis of her personal involvement in this  circle.  Like  the  philosopher  Donna  Haraway,  Thesen  describes  her  work  as  an  imperfect  effort  to  replace the illusion of objectivity in the sciences with the embodied perspectives we 6ind ourselves  reliving  when  we  write  academic  stories  (p.  58).  Rather  than  standing  outside  the  circle  as  an  objective observer, Thesen writes to include the reader as a subjective participant. At times, readers  may  feel  frustrated  by  these  frequent  departures  from  scienti6ic  conventions  and  may  even  resist  Thesen  s more personal, re6lective recollections that deliberately call the so-called objectivity of her  analysis into question. Skeptics who cling to the ideals of a singularly transparent or unambiguous  past will be disappointed. For at least those readers, the book is decidedly not a scienti6ic retelling of  events.    Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie  Volume 35, 2025  http://journals.sfu.ca/dwr  45   To  illustrate  this  point,  it  is  worth  re6lecting  on  how  the  emotions  involved  in  remembering  in6luence our perception of the past. For example, upon concluding the book, I try to relive my own  history as a student and novice scholar. Would I have written more, or at least more effectively, had I  tried to spend less time wrestling with words on my own, and more time actively participating in  other ways of creating and sharing knowledges with others (or at least, would this have enabled me  to come to terms with the limitations of my   own   knowledge)? Suddenly, I remember the countless  hours where I stopped writing in a different light. I remember what I was doing when I managed to  actually forget about writing. The best memories are the ones where I am lost in conversation with  others in reading groups, in seminars, in workshops, and even in the writing centre. I remember hours  spent reading, listening, and wondering. But most importantly, I remember laughter. Scholarship in  these  moments  came  alive,  and  knowledge  became  fun.  Perhaps  Thesen  is  right:  I  cannot  be  sure  where my writing ends and where knowledge begins. Memory plays tricks on us (p. 128). But I have  become more convinced of at least one thing I had forgotten: these hours are never wasted.         Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie  Volume 35, 2025  http://journals.sfu.ca/dwr  References Thesen, L. (2024). Knowledge-making from a postgraduate writers   circle: A southern re&gt;lectory.   Multilingual Matters.        46

## Références

Lucia Thesen (2024). Knowledge-making From a Postgraduate Writers’ Circle: A Southern Reflectory. Multilingual Matters.