I've just read a very interesting note by Elizabeth Powell, Writing to Reflect: Mindful leadership in the face of change on reflective writing and how it can help managers in leading change efforts. More deeply, what this note points to is the reflective power of writing, or writing as a process to reflect (what we define as the reflecting mechanism). Similarly to us, she argues that writing matters as a process or a practice: "The process of writing, and particularly reflective writing, has an extraordinary capacity to aid creative and critical thinking and deal with complex emotions".
In our book, through analyses of past and current written exchanges, we unpack the mechanisms of writing which supports creative and critical thinking, articulating and managing emotions and building communities.
Powell's note focuses on providing practical tips to develop reflective writing, in particular in a world of digital media and information overload and shows how it can help managers in developing and implementing change programs. For example, she claims that by writing down "the whole story", managers can then figure out what are the problems to solve and develop new solutions and stronger arguments to convince their peers and employees. Reflective writing for Powell is more like a diary mode of writing; yet, the audience (or what we call the addressing mechanism) is presupposed.
The shifting nature of texts
ReplyDeleteReading Anne-Laure Fayard’s last blog entry, I learned the term “addressing mechanism” which, if I understand it correctly, could be translated in my environment (French studies) as the reader(s) of a text. Yet the very term “mechanism” is in fact particularly apt in translating the network of addressees in the work and correspondence of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
During their entirely life Sartre and Beauvoir established what they named a federative world that is a world common to both, yet a world in which they retained their very own existence and personality. A world, to say it rapidly, in which you can experience the other, be the other, establish a “we” while not losing the “I”. A lot can be said about the pitfalls of such a project but, to come back to the subject of writing and sharing, it might be interesting to take a look at a particular time in Sartre and Beauvoir’s life during the war.
Sartre has been drafted, Beauvoir is in Paris within their circle of friends. Both of them at the time are writing novels, which rely heavily on their personal life. They write to one another almost daily and also sustain correspondence with other friends or lovers. Moreover, they both write their own diary, which they exchange for mutual reading. In other words, one can find the narration of a particular event or the evolution of a thought in various forms depending on the time it was written and whom it was addressed to. What is most interesting is the fact that one cannot decide that the letter is systematically superior to the philosophical entry or the fictional account or vice versa. At one point in this network of reiterations (mechanism), something happens and the reader comes across the perfection of a thought.
It is tempting to think that it is precisely because the text is not quite what it seems to be that it manages to achieve more - to say more/go further - than others. The entry diary is not an intimate exercise as Sartre and Beauvoir shared them. Their personal letters circulate within friends and lovers, and one might think that Sartre, at least, knew at that point they would be made public later in his life. Can we speculate on the fact that the shifting nature of a text is what might allow for his richness but that there are no recipes for success in communication?
Catherine Poisson - Wesleyan University