Fictocritical Innovations. Pawel Cholewa

Canvas (2013)

       P.S. Mutual Misunderstandings of Brotherhood (2014)

       Idiocracy [Film] (2014)

       Be Careful Though. There is such a Thing as Over-organisation (Regarding Huxley’s Brave New World Revisited) (2014)

       Rushing the Order and Fate (2014)

       The Flux of Repulsion or Expulsion (2014)

       No. In Fact, I Do Not Need, I Do Not Want. (Mantra) (2014)

       Two Cents (Everyone Has an Opinion) (2013)

       ‘Irony’, Alanis Morissette and Me (2015)

       The Accumulation of Demons (2015)

       Cattle Call (2015)

       THESIS FOUR

       Solutionism: Fictocriticism and the Digital World

       CONCLUSION

       BIBLIOGRAPHY

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      I gratefully acknowledge the funding received from Central Queensland University through the UPRA Program that supported this research. I also respectfully acknowledge the expertise and guidance provided by Professor Stephen Muecke in the final stages of my PhD dissertation.

      Some sections and fragments of this book have previously been published in TEXT Journal, Idiom 23, Stoned Crows & Other Australian Icons: Prose Poems & Microfiction, Colloquy and narratorAUSTRALIA.

      Professional editor, John McAndrew, provided copyediting and proof-reading services of my PhD dissertation, according to the guidelines laid out in the University-endorsed national ‘Guidelines for Editing Research Theses’.

      Various names and identifying details and characteristics of locations, people and institutions have been altered or invented for creative, legal and confidentiality reasons.

      Book cover art/photograph “Pink Lake” courtesy of Liam Baster.

      To Wally, for stoking the flame.

      To Tris, for settling the embers.

      To friends and family, for your care, conversation, content, humour

      and patience.

      To Andrea, for being a second conscience, and for just helping me

      to be a better version of my self during much of this process.

      To God, for not existing, therein providing me the independence

      and freedom necessary to rely on more innate and tangible things.

      To all the blurred, pivotal or indirect influences.

      To the multitudinous chaotic selves manifested in these writings:

      may this work bring you some closure and a sense of unified

      peace and consolidation.

LIST OF TERMINOLOGY

      Creative self: Originator of creative folio(s)

      Analytical self: Writer of theses

      Folio(s): The (creative) fictocritical work written by the creative self

      Thesis/Theses: The theoretical analyses (of the creative work) written by the analytical self

      Section(s): A thesis and its accompanying folio

INTRODUCTION

      This book has been adapted from a doctoral dissertation submitted to CQUniversity in 2019, and conferred in the same year. The study containing the two separate elements of creative work and analytical exegesis, was positioned within the creative writing field of fictocriticism, and stems from earlier ‘experiments’ in autobiographical writing and experiences of travel and growing up in Australia as a first-generation Polish-Australian male. Touching upon episodes of diaspora, family, education, and questions of ‘self’ and ‘identity’ that have arisen as a young creative artist living in an increasingly digital age, the exegesis of this creative work is both intensely personal and clinically theoretical. The creative pieces are thinly veiled personal accounts which, in turn, provide a framework for various thematic constructions for a developing sense of self in relation to the experiences under discussion. The reason for structuring this dissertation in four theses is due to the flexible, yet “inimitable” (Gibbs 1) needs of the fictocritical genre and form and because the discussion demands some definable limitations.

      Initially, this exploration was influenced by Josie Arnold’s “The PhD in Writing Accompanied by an Exegesis” (2005), where she discusses the dichotomy between traditionalist or conservative modes of constructing a PhD, versus the more creative types of work that challenge preconceived or traditional templates of the exegesis and artefact model. This is where my interest in experimentation comes to the fore, and it offers a space where unique conceptualisations of creative/critical ‘academic’ writing are disseminated and introduced to provide new literary insights. Arnold references Nelson, Deleuze and Scrivener and their desire to ‘catastrophise’ or rebel against the type of ‘straight-jacket’ that is “the traditional thetic/exegesis” (38). This is where fictocriticism comes strongly into the equation, offering as it does, a revolutionary, experimental and metacognitive way of researching and writing in the synthesis of new and original thinking.

      To reiterate, and to properly prepare the reader for what is to come, I assert that fictocriticism deserves further academic attention and investigation, and what I believe to be the most interesting and/or challenging aspects at the cutting edge of the debate surrounding fictocriticism is its unclassifiable nature and its potential technological innovativeness. During the course of this explorative discussion, I canvas many different positions in the fictocritical debate, almost all of which are vastly interconnected (or vastly disconnected), depending on how they are examined. I contend that the central motifs, mission and contribution of this book is in its exploration of fictocriticism’s chameleonic nature and its growing (futuristic) tendency towards electronic mediums. The first three sections of this study intentionally and gradually synthesise these complex issues and build towards the overarching notion that four individual theses are needed to detail the separate folios of the emergent argument and to provide context for the creative writings. The fourth thesis coheres the various arguments.

      Fictocriticism can be described as a hybrid-style of writing that is both fictional and critical, a genre of writing that is naturally theoretical, personal or personalised and professional, (Schlunke and Brewster 393). It has been considered a ‘buzzword’, on the fringe of mainstream literature, ‘meta’ and postmodern in nature and form, format and execution or delivery. It has also been referred to as “a refusal of any