Saturday, 7 July 2012

New Fugal Modes of Writing and ScholarlyPublishing

By Ruth Skilbeck

Who are the best publishers to approach in this brave new world of blended digital and print publishing?  My research into new forms and modes of  Communications media and creative writing publication continues, as I go on looking for the most suitable publishers to approach.
And as I do so, strangely the search itself is reflected in the articles that I publish and the approach of the publishers that publish my work mirrors and “articulates” ideas about new modes of writing in my articles. It’s all very fugal.
At least I am talking specifically about one article that I have written that has now been published several times by Routledge.

'Exiled Writers, Human Rights, and Social Advocacy Movements in Australia: A Critical Fugal Analysis' (Skilbeck 2010; 2011, 2012). 

Fugal modality

New forms of online scholarly publication represent variations on a theme that is reminiscently fugal, as rather than mere repetition they each are performatively replayed (republished) in different forms.  This neatly and self reflexively embodies and illustrates new or rather renewed forms and modes of writing as reflexive practice that is reminiscent of the musical fugue. I researched and wrote about this in my PhD and since then  have continued to develop my research into fugue forms and modes in literary writing  and publishing in the new digital media age.

The musical fugue is a circular form, which proceeds through the replaying of its melodic subject, in variations on the theme, potentially to infinity; which morphs into a symbolic rhetorical and creative figure in (re) inventive art works throughout modernity and post modernity- think from Romanticism to remix beats; this  form of reinventive remix is also played out in the seriality of the news media  and now most recently in new forms and modes of online (softcopy) and print media  (hardcopy) publication (Skilbeck 2007; 2008; 2009; 2010; 2011; 2012).

In my article on exiled writers I wrote about 'fugal modality' and writing from the self: “In the fugal modality of writing two theories of writing are brought together.  The first derives from the philosophical concept of modality and modal logic, and is related to the concept of de re thought as articulated in linguistic propositions, The second is derived from modal music and is related to re-writing language as creative art. How it works can be conceptualized imaginatively. It is the modality of creative psycho-linguistic re-invention in any medium of language and (potentially) infinite variation on a theme.”  (Skilbeck 2010; 2011; 2012).
Since I first wrote this, it has in itself become an example of what I am talking about. 

Re-publication in new modes and forms: fugal variations

Routledge has republished the article the passage is in, three time in the past two years. Each time, the article has been published in quite a different form and mode of publication.

The first publication is in a special issue of a leading journal  in the field Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (Vol 7, Issue 3, 2010).

The second publication was as a chapter in a hard cover book of the special issue: Cultural Studies of Rights: Critical Articulations (2011)

The third publication is (most surprisingly) a web resource, a new collection of the “most popular” Routledge Communications Studies articles published Around the World (2012).

EXILED WRITERS: ROUTLEDGE PLAYS IT AGAIN
The  Routledge publication and republication of my article on Exiled Writers is a good example. Of what I call ‘fugal modality’ as a “new” or rather re-newed  form and mode of writing and publishing. Adapting, and translating, the musical form of fugue to literary writing and publishing, in research into creative processes of writing I developed  a schema of fugue as non-representational reflexive practice, and this is ironically picked up and mirrored in the publication of the article that puts forward this very approach.
Most recently my article is re-published in the Routledge Communication Arena   http://www.communicationarena.com/.
Communication Studies Around the World

"Explore the world of communication studies with this new Routledge online resource! We've brought together key books and journal articles from and about all of the globe's regions. Start your tour now"

Next time around, I aim that the content of my article will be published as part of my monograph on the writer's fugue from whence it came.  

Watch this space.


Routledge Communication Arena   http://www.communicationarena.com/. viewed Sat July 7, 2012.

* Skilbeck, Ruth (2012) 'Exiled Writers, Human Rights and Social Advocacy Movements in Australia: a Critical Fugal Analysis,' Routledge Communications Studies Around the World, http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/explore/intcommunication.pdf.

Skilbeck, Ruth (2011) 'Exiled Writers, Human Rights and Social Advocacy Movements in Australia: a Critical Fugal Analysis,' Chapter 4 in Cultural Studies of Rights: Critical Articulations. Ed. John Nguyet Erni. 9780415677295. Release date 20 July 2011. Hard cover. Routledge.


Skilbeck, Ruth (2010). 'Exiled Writers, Human Rights, and Social Advocacy Movements in Australia: A Critical Fugal Analysis'. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Vol. 7, Issue 3, Sept 2010: 280-296

9  [A]

No comments: