Creativecritical writing as methodology

The traditional view of theory as necessarily distinct from creativity has become increasingly unsatisfactory. In response to such dissatisfaction writers and scholars such as Maggie Nelson, Christina Sharpe, Michael Taussig, Saidiya Hartman, McKenzie Wark, Stephen Muecke, Joan Rettalack and others have introduced into the theoretical field qualities associated with creative writing – including, anecdote, memory, poetics and play. In doing so they have expanded the boundaries of what counts as theory and why. In Depression: a public feeling, literary and affect theorist Ann Cvetkovich argues for her use of memoir as a research methodology. She writes: “While I could have written a critical essay that analysed the genre [of depression memoirs], the results seemed rather predictable” (2012, p. 78). This article takes up Cvetkovitch’s desire for a mode “beyond” the predictable to argue that creativecritical writing might be better understood as a methodology than as a genre of writing. It claims the most radical aspect of the creativecritical mode is not so much the refusal of the critical/creative, nonfiction/fiction, objective/personal binaries, as what the doing of the refusal surfaces and therefore demands of the writer.