Weeks later, I sit at my temporary desk – a borrowed kitchen table with one leaf folded down – in my new study that used to be a kitchen. But different as each discipline might be from the others – the colours of the walls, the style of the frames and how they are arranged – there’s a common strand that runs through: we write. Customs and practices woven into a rich tapestry of enquiry and knowledge questions and answers interlaced threads taken up from the writings of the serious, scholarly faces peering down from their frames. Academic disciplines are like this: bustling, tightly knit communities, space at a premium. Even the rickety tables in the middle, little inhospitable islands buffeted by passing elbows and rucksacks, are full. Anyone can find their place among them, bending or stretching to frame a new face in one of the pitted art deco mirrors. Often there is no space in my favourite café with its walls of textured teal, thronged with faces that may have meant something once to people who’ve long since donated the quirky paintings and photos to a charity shop. That’s how we’ll wind up this war, if we’re allowed: unsnarling it by sending embassies, now this way, now that way (Lysistrata). We hold it this way, and carefully wind out the strands on our spindles, now this way, now that way. It’s rather like a ball of yarn when it gets tangled up. Image Credit: ‘Gray’s General Store, Embroidery’ by kelly licensed under CC BY SA 2.0 Woven into the Fabric of the Text: Subversive Material Metaphors in Academic Writing If you would like to contribute to the series, please contact the Managing Editor of LSE Review of Books, Dr Rosemary Deller, at. This essay is part of a series examining the material cultures of academic research, reading and writing. In this feature essay, Katie Collins proposes that we shift our thinking about academic writing from building metaphors – the language of frameworks, foundations and buttresses – to stitching, sewing and piecing. Needlecraft metaphors offer another way of thinking about the creative and generative practice of academic writing as decentred, able to accommodate multiple sources and with greater space for the feminine voice.
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