Structural Whiteness and the Business of Creative Writing: Developing Reflexive Pedagogy

'Two decades in my academic discipline have accreted a strata of assumptions within my practices. Most of these are about knowledge: its source in me and my informants, its places and modes of production, and methods or processes for its communication. From these have grown assumptions about myself within the discipline: the extent of my expertise, and others’ expectations of it; and its relationship to other elements of my life. I take responsibility for these assumptions, however, I also understand them to be intimately connected to the cultural systems of knowledge in which I have been brought up as an Australian academic. In this discussion I contextualise how, when provoked, our discipline of creative writing reveals its local, systemic contingencies. Using my experiences within RMIT University’s Bundyi Girri program as a launching point, I reflect on the ways that non-Indigenous awareness of historically excluded sovereign knowledges provokes the discipline and how recognition of these might look through the practices of the academy. I argue that reflexivity is a tool for structural change, and that it can be focused and fostered through pedagogy. To illustrate this, I share some process notes from my own recent teaching and learning. The questions that preoccupy me are: What is the readiness of creative writing as an academic discipline towards acknowledgement of sovereign knowledges? How does working within sovereign relationships differ or distinguish itself from cultural awareness or from ‘Indigenising’ curriculum? How is my expertise and authority as a creative writing practitioner challenged by this acknowledgement?'