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Creating Monsters Stewart Riddle

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Stewart Riddle · David Bright
Eileen Honan Editors

Writing with
Deleuze in
the Academy
Creating Monsters
Writing with Deleuze in the Academy
Stewart Riddle David Bright
•

Eileen Honan
Editors

Writing with Deleuze

in the Academy
Creating Monsters

123
Editors
Stewart Riddle Eileen Honan
University of Southern Queensland Fiji National University
Springfield Central, QLD, Australia Lautoka, Fiji

David Bright
Monash University
Clayton, VIC, Australia

ISBN 978-981-13-2064-4 ISBN 978-981-13-2065-1 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2065-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018951403

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018

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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
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the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
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Foreword

George Orwell (1946), in his essay, Why I Write, gave four reasons: sheer egoism,
aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purpose. In elaborating on the
last of these, Orwell described a:
desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of
society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political
bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

In spite of the impulse—and indeed imperative—to write that is visited upon all of
us, there is little guidance on how to write—well or otherwise. Generic research
texts, of the kind aimed at students and novice researchers, often barely mention
writing beyond it being mere technical exercise. In discussing research, these texts
deny both the intensely political aspect of educational research and the interwoven
nature of theory, philosophy, practices and material realities (Kuhn 1970; Schostak
2002; Punch 2005). The failure to acknowledge and engage with these interactions
means that students and novice researchers part with their cash in the hope of
gaining meaningful advice and instead find themselves unable to cope with the
series of ‘derailments’ (Schostak 2002, 5) that their research presents and enter the
‘logical graveyard where sense and nonsense fuse and meanings are loosened from
their anchorage in master narratives’ (ibid.). As a consequence, students and novice
researchers struggle to orient themselves and interpret the political context in which
they operate. Writing becomes a form of torture as students and novice researchers
force their research into the passive voice, fight with language and seek to distance
themselves from their own text.
At the same time as we fail to prepare new researchers for the frontiers of
academic writing, much of our own critical spirit, according to Latour (2004,
p. 225) has ‘run out of steam.’ Consequently, we have become like mechanical
toys, endlessly repeating the same gesture, trying to conquer territories that no
longer exist whilst being unprepared for the ‘new threats, new dangers, new tasks,
new targets’ (ibid.) that we face.

v
vi Foreword

Chapter 1 provides us with a thrilling glimpse into what is possible when writing
is actually allowed to be an act of becoming. Eileen Honan, David Bright and
Stewart Riddle have brought together a splendid group of people whom they have
incited to create monsters through their engagement with Deleuze. The fearlessness
of some of the experimentation is all the more admirable, coming as it does from
these eminent scholars. The editors have set this against a powerful critique of the
academy and the need for writing against its damaging and brutal hegemony. That
writing needs to be monstrous in order to have either effect or affect.
The contributors, in fulfilling the promise of monstrosity, have opened them-
selves up in a way that is unprecedented and in so doing make this book into the gift
that research students and novice researchers—and the rest of us—have been waiting
for. This gift includes ‘non-guidance’ from Eileen Honan following reflections on
her own ‘foolish failure’, which of course is far from the case; insights into the
agonies, as an Early Career Researcher, of both engaging with and trying to resist an
identity of an ‘academicwritingmachine’ from Stewart Riddle; an enlightening—but
terrifying—discussion of Altmetrics and the consequences of a particular kind of
reading of academic writing by Susanne Gannon. Dagmar Alexander and his col-
leagues demonstrate just how to start a collaborative writing experiment ‘in the
middle’, whilst Peter Bansel and Sheridan Linnell’s, riotously funny chapter, ‘“Terre
Chérie—Ed U.K. Shone’: A Desiring Machine for Rappin’ and Extrapolatin’ on the
Monstrosities of Academia” (Chap. 9), show us how to be both playful and serious.
Their ‘director’s introductions’ provide an important meta-narrative that focuses, in
each of the scenes, on the literary work being performed in these and is a joy.
Carolina Cbezaz-Benalcázar delivers an extremely absorbing, and again strongly
reflexive, narrative on her relationship with the English language. The ultimate gift
of this book is that it gives two fingers to the academy but also shows us how to go
on with it, without then subsequently having to cross those fingers.
Unleashing writing this bold is an exercise in political thought that, as Arendt
(2006) points out, requires practice. And that practice offers a form of training that
does not prescribe what we should think but helps us to learn how to think. This
accomplishment represents a fighting experience gained from standing one’s
ground between ‘the clashing waves of past and future’ (Arendt 2006, p. 13) and is
exemplified in Kafka’s parable:
He has two antagonists: the first presses him from behind, from the origin. The second blocks
the road ahead. He gives battle to both. To be sure, the first supports him in his fight with the
second, for he wants to push him forward, and in the same way the second supports him in his
fight with the first, since he drives him back. But it is only theoretically so. For it is not only
the two antagonists who are there, but he himself as well, and who really knows his inten-
tions? His dream, though, is that some time in an unguarded moment … he will jump out
of the fighting line and be promoted, on account of his experience of fighting, to the position
of umpire over his antagonists in their fight with each other. (Cited in Arendt 2006, p. 7).

Birmingham, UK Julie Allan

University of Birmingham
Foreword vii

References

Arendt, H. (2006). Between past and future: Eight exercises in political thought. New York:
Penguin Books.
Burke, K. (1936). Permanence and change. New York: New Republic Books.
Kuhn, T. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago, Chicago University Press.
Latour, B. (2004). Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern.
Critical Inquiry, 30, 225–248.
Orwell, G. (1946). Why I write. http://orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw.
Punch, K. (2005). Introduction to social research: Quantitative and qualitative approaches.
London: Sage Publications.
Schostak, J. (2002). Understanding, designing and conducting qualitative research in education.
Buckingham/Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Contents

1 Bringing Monsters to Life Through Encounters with Writing . . . . 1

Eileen Honan, David Bright and Stewart Riddle
2 Using Pregnant Text as a Lure for Collective Writing
and Its Monstrous Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Mirka Koro-Ljungberg, Adam T. Clark, Timothy Wells
and Jorge Sandoval
3 Unplugging from the Goldberg Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Eileen Honan
4 Becoming Monstrous: On the Limits of the Body of a Child . . . . . 45
Thekla Anastasiou, Rachel Holmes and Katherine Runswick-Cole
5 An Experiment in Writing that Flows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Stewart Riddle
6 On Being and Becoming the Monstrous Subject
of Measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Susanne Gannon
7 Signs to Be Developed: Experiments in Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
David Bright
8 An Experiment in Writing that Flows: Citationality
and Collaborative Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Dagmar Alexander, Jan Bradford, Susanne Gannon, Fiona Murray,
Naomi Partridge, Zoi Simopoulou, Jonathan Wyatt,
Corrienne McCulloch, Anthea Naylor and Lisa Williams
9 ‘Terre Chérie—Ed U. K. Shone’: A Desiring Machine for
Rappin’ and Extrapolatin’ on the Monstrosities of Academia . . . . . 119
Peter Bansel and Sheridan Linnell

ix
x Contents

10 Shifting Sands: Writing Across Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Linda Henderson
11 Falling In/Out of Languagings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Carolina Cabezas-Benalcázar
12 Composing with the Chthulucene: Desiring
a Minor Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Naomi Barnes
13 Learning to Fear the Monstrous: Klossowski
and the Immortal Adolescent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
David R. Cole
14 Afterword: Writing Monstrous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Maggie MacLure
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Editors and Contributors

About the Editors

Stewart Riddle is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Teacher Education and Early
Childhood at the University of Southern Queensland. His research interests include
social justice and equity in education, music-based research practices and research
methodologies. He also plays bass in a band called Drawn from Bees.

David Bright is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University.

David’s research interests include student and teacher identity, poststructural theory
and post-qualitative research and writing.

Dr. Eileen Honan is Professor in Educational Research at Fiji National University,

where her work centres on supporting early career academics to develop their
research capabilities. She is interested in post-qualitative research methods and
inquiry and the application of Deleuzean philosophy to the ontology and episte-
mology of educational research. She is an academic researcher and writer.

Contributors

Dagmar Alexander University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

Thekla Anastasiou Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
Peter Bansel Western Sydney University, Penrith, Australia
Naomi Barnes Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
Jan Bradford University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
David Bright Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

xi
xii Editors and Contributors

Carolina Cabezas-Benalcázar Monash University, Clayton, Australia

Adam T. Clark Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
David R. Cole Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia
Susanne Gannon Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia
Linda Henderson Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Rachel Holmes Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
Eileen Honan Fiji National University, Lautoka, Fiji
Mirka Koro-Ljungberg Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
Sheridan Linnell Western Sydney University, Penrith, Australia
Maggie MacLure Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
Corrienne McCulloch University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Fiona Murray University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Anthea Naylor University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Naomi Partridge University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Stewart Riddle University of Southern Queensland, Springfield Central, Australia
Katherine Runswick-Cole Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
Jorge Sandoval Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
Zoi Simopoulou University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Timothy Wells Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
Lisa Williams University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Jonathan Wyatt University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Chapter 1
Bringing Monsters to Life Through
Encounters with Writing

Eileen Honan, David Bright and Stewart Riddle

Abstract As researchers, much of our time is spent in the act of ‘writing’. The
production of research as writing is considered an essential part of our research
outputs, which are measured and policed by citation metrics and ranked journal and
publisher lists. For writing to be recognised and counted as research, it must appear
in certain outlets, each of which makes its own certain demands of what is judged to
be research. This, we fear, feeds a nonsensical academic apparatus, much like a
Goldberg machine that has taken on a life of its own, existing only to perpetuate its
own complicated systems of connections and cogs and wheels, arbitrary to the
originary desire to write and to become-writer. And this academic publishing
apparatus privileges its internal machinery, ossifying its peculiar set of connections,
trapping our writing production rather than seeking out and augmenting new and
different forms of connection between writer and text and reader. We fear that this
arrangement of parts produces us as academic writers who are inert, dead, coded,
ranked and listless numbers. And so we ask what if we were to put these nonsenses
aside and instead undertake experiments and different encounters with writing,
where the writing itself becomes our method of inquiry? Following in the pathway
created by Laurel Richardson, we investigate what monstrous creations, full of
vitality and fervour, might be made possible if we were to bypass the dead and
dismembered assemblage and instead plug ourselves directly into the spark? Would
such experiments with writing bring us to life or would our monsters simply offer us
torment rather than succour?

E. Honan (&)
Fiji National University, Lautoka, Fiji
e-mail: honan54@gmail.com
D. Bright
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
S. Riddle
University of Southern Queensland, Springfield Central, Australia

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 1

S. Riddle et al. (eds.), Writing with Deleuze in the Academy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2065-1_1
2 E. Honan et al.

On not writing an introduction

This collection is an……
In this book we attempt to……
The aim of this book is to…….
In our collective musings about the production of writing that echoes some of the
ideas of Deleuze and Guattari, breaks the boundaries of conventional academic
writing, and engages with monsters and the monstrous, we spent a lot of time
thinking about the type of writing we would like to include in a collection. We
spent a lot of time thinking about who we would want to contribute, and how we
would frame our invitations.
We did not spend a lot of time thinking about how to write an introduction to the
collection.
We did not spend a lot of time on providing a concrete context for the collection,
which apparently is what good introductions do according to one of our reviewers.
We deliberately and carefully and thoughtfully began with an unstructured piece
of writing that captured our collective thoughts about what the current restrictive
practices in academic writing are doing to the intellectual endeavours of those who
write academically.
Far from being universalising and imperialist, we felt we were presenting our
own concerns, fears, and anxieties, rather than making poorly conceived general-
isations. But just to be clear, concise, and logical, here are some important points
about this collection. If you are not interested in logic, or clear messages about what
is not included or is included, then please feel free to jump ahead to ‘The Impulse to
Write’.

On not Being Universalising and Imperialist,

and Providing a Logical Introduction

This collection is our attempt to draw together some writing that is inspired by
Deleuze and Guattari. Most of the authors are from the field of education. Most of
the authors are from Australia and the United Kingdom. Most of the authors do not
claim to be experts in writing, in monstrous writing, or in the philosophy of Deleuze
and Guattari. The authors responded to this call for contributions:
And so we ask what if we were to put these nonsenses aside and instead
undertake experiments and different encounters with writing, where the writing
itself becomes our method of inquiry? Following in the pathway created by Laurel
Richardson, we investigate what monstrous creations, full of vitality and fervour,
might be made possible if we were to bypass the dead and dismembered assem-
blage and instead plug ourselves directly into the spark? Would such experiments
with writing bring us to life or would our monsters simply offer us torment rather
than succour?
1 Bringing Monsters to Life Through Encounters with Writing 3

In this book, authors who are working with Deleuzean theories in educational
research in Australia, the United Kingdom and elsewhere, grapple with how the
academic-writing-machine might become less contained and bounded, and instead
be used to free impulses to generate different creations and different connections.
We experiment with forms of writing that challenge the boundaries of academic
language, to move beyond the strictures of the scientific method—what works and
what counts—to make language vibrate with a new intensity. We consider this
writing as vibrant, as bringing things to life, as Frankenstein did with his monster,
as Deleuze (1995, p. 141) asks us to do:
One’s always writing to bring things to life, to free life from where it’s trapped, to trace
lines of flight. The language for doing that can’t be a homogeneous system, it’s something
unstable, always heterogeneous, in which style carves differences of potential between
which things can pass, come to pass, a spark can flash and break out of language itself, to
make us see and think what was lying in the shadow around the words, things we were
hardly aware existed.

Writing in this way becomes a disruptive technology, designed to interfere with

normative practices of academic publishing apparatus that expects well-defined
research problems, methodologically collected data, rigorous analyses, clearly
stated implications, and considered recommendations. We create hybrid texts, part
academic part creative assemblages, almost-but-perhaps-not-quite recognisable as
research. Stories that blur the lines between true and untrue, re-presentation and
invention. Monstrous children that say all that research says, but result from all
sorts ‘shifting, slipping, dislocations, and hidden emissions’ (Deleuze, 1995, p. 6)
that we really enjoy.
The contributions in this book are examples of writing that hopes that something
might happen in its reading; that some new connection might be made, but that also
acknowledges the contingency of the encounter between text and reader, and the
impossibility of presuming to know what may be.
As can be seen here, we did not set up any rules or restrictions about what was
required. In our responses to those who expressed interest, we noted word length,
the style guide required by the publisher, and a timeline towards publication. We
deliberately and carefully did not police or constrain. That is what others do. That is
what we are collectively arguing against.
We are of course, aware that there are certain exclusions [the introduction
ignores the very different set of concerns of scholars from non-English speaking
countries who are trying to enter the Anglo-centric world of international academic
writing]. But this is not what we set out to do. If it was then we would have called
on the work of Deleuze and Guattari (1986) on minor literature, and writing in the
minor, which two of us have done previously in relation to doctoral students in
Australia attempting to write a thesis when English is an additional language
(Honan & Bright, 2016).
We could go on to explain all the things that this collection was not supposed to
do, and all the things that we have not included, and all the things that we sup-
posedly ignored. Instead, we would like for the writing to do the talking, to
4 E. Honan et al.

encourage our readers to dive in, to swim in the pool of monstrous writing that has
been created within the confines of the pages of this book. We encourage our
readers to come up with their own definitions of monstrous writing rather than
creating one ourselves. Muse, think, wonder, draw, write, create and respond in any
way to the work before you.
So, in all its messy and unstructured incoherence, what follows is our musings
on what it means to write monstrously.

The Impulse to Write

If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now
we are moved by every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that that word may
convey to us (Shelley, 1869).

As researchers and academics, much of our time is spent in the act of ‘writing’. The
production of research as writing is considered an essential part of our research
outputs, which are measured and policed by citation metrics alongside ranked
journal and publisher lists, according to particular historical categories. For writing
to be recognised and counted as research it must appear in certain outlets, each of
which makes its own demands of what is judged to be research. Academic writing
sits at the apex of the huge knowledge-producing machine that we have come to
call the contemporary university.
This measurement and policing of academics’ work, particularly their writing, is
assisted and supported by complex sets of rules and laws that work as boundary
riders, gates that open or close depending on obedience. Moreover, this academic
publishing apparatus privileges its internal machinery, ossifying its peculiar set of
connections, trapping writing production rather than seeking out and augmenting
new and different forms of connection between writer and text and reader.
The machinery’s cogs and wheels are oiled and smoothed through the produc-
tion of texts and materials that purport to help, but really train and constrain; guides
that are rule books, tips that become law. There is a proliferation of blogs and
books, workshops and guides, rules and tips that aim to help us in our ‘academic
writing’. Publishers and journals provide ‘style guides’, conferences require online
submissions of abstracts using strictly policed word and character counts, grant
applications require ‘language understood by the lay person’; all of which presume
a certain telos of writing—that we have finally learned how to write.
These rules and laws, like cogs and wheels, feed a nonsensical academic
apparatus, much like a Goldberg machine. The machine has taken on a life of its
own, existing only to perpetuate its own complicated systems of connections and
cogs and wheels, arbitrary to the originary desire to write and to become-writer. We
fear that this arrangement of parts produces us as academic writers who are inert,
dead, coded, ranked and listless numbers. In addition, the language created through
following the code is lifeless, restricted, and bureaucratic. We fear, reading and
writing with Deleuze (1995), that:
1 Bringing Monsters to Life Through Encounters with Writing 5

What now seems problematic is the situation in which young philosophers, but also all
young writers who are involved in creating something, find themselves. They face the threat
of being stifled from the outset. It’s become very difficult to do any work, because a whole
system of “acculturation” and anticreativity specific to the developed nations is taking
shape. It’s far worse than censorship (p. 27).

We are concerned that ‘we are being told how we must see and what we must do
when we investigate’ (Law, 2004, p. 4) in our research endeavours. Additionally, in
writing we increasingly find ourselves stifled from the outset, operating within a
problematic of acculturation and anti-creativity wherein we are urged to make
original and creative contributions through practices of writing that ‘are necessary
while at the same time necessarily limiting’ (Koro-Ljungberg & Mazzei, 2012,
p. 728). It seems to us that the affordances of academic writing as a place for
making new connections, ruptures and alliances with thought and wisdom in the
world, is increasingly in danger.
Therefore, we ask: what if we were to put these nonsenses aside and instead
undertake experiments and different encounters with writing, where the writing
itself becomes our method of inquiry? Following in the pathway suggested by
Richardson (1997), we investigate what monstrous creations, full of vitality and
fervour, might be made possible if we were to bypass the dead and dismembered
assemblage and instead plug ourselves directly into the spark? Would such
experiments with writing bring us to life or would our monsters simply offer us
torment rather than succour?

Monstrous Writing Machines

There is no doubt in our minds that we have become academicwritingmachines

(Henderson, Honan, & Loch, 2016), plugging into the universitymachine and the
publishingmachine. We are complicit to a degree in the formation and sustainment
of the assemblage that produces academic writers producing academic writing.
A little like the following perhaps:

Machines
Machinic
Everywhere it is machines
A writing machine driving other machines
Couplings and connections, disjunctions and flows
Cogs, wheels, pulleys, and levers,
Wounds, scars, ruptures and breaks
Lines of connections
Intensities
6 E. Honan et al.

Singularities
Virtual possibilities
Corporeal markings
Between present and past
Between places and spaces
Territorialized and re-territorialized
And lines of flight
This is the academicwritingmachine (Henderson et al., 2016, p. 5).

We are also subjects of a long tradition of academic discipline that desires thinking
and the creation of ideas—the production of new knowledge—while at the same
time disciplines the methods of thinking and writing that are permissible to generate
and express those ideas. Creativity and experimentation, it often seems, are not
recognised ways of creating new knowledge. The advice given to those who are
trying to enter the discipline often derides creative approaches to writing:
Knowing how to express your ideas in logical sequence and in a clear and concise manner
is critical to your success as a scholarly practitioner. The qualities of logic, precision,
clarity, directness, and brevity are also qualities of effective thinking. (Roberts, 2010,
p. 111)

This perhaps begs the question: what if we decided to remove ourselves from the
act of writing? Could it be done? Actually, it already is being done. It is a badly
kept secret that automated writing bots are used by large international corporations
and media conglomerates to construct news stories and populate social media feeds
with all kinds of facts, alternative or otherwise. There are even bots that will write
your essay or academic paper for you. You simply need to provide the topic and
your credit card details. Plug and go. Make a cup of tea. Return and your paper is
ready. Submit. Monstrous indeed? Or merely mechanical? Here, let us have a go at
removing ourselves from the machine for a moment, and handing over to the
algorithm:
heT rmnosste mrfo aauntrprules erol get a peyttr dba pra. Of seocur nabir engat,i mrgn-
midbee,is and rmdrue to nema a wfe rea ditfiflcu ot rkooevlo uBt srh’ete a ngthi or wot yuo
anc elnar rfmo hte smto r-inihaagsir rsnosemt cwhih anc elhp uoy sclsslyucuef grbin oryu
ntgriwi fsefrto kbca mrof eth edad. aWth uYo Can Lerna Form Zseibom. untporiytOp -
tohluAgh ozembis at’nc lelt mtie, hvea rbilreet heeg,niy dna ear uneyletqfr gsimnis psatr of
rehti nyat,oam heyt do evah a rkralbeame ttira that nyam of su oudlw eid to ssesps:o
oemsbiZ ear pstruoptisno. You may be too! Undoubtedly take the moment and make sure
your writing does not pass up on real chances. eSt estricali oslga so uyo ntd’o bynlild
ebusmtl oint na eilnaubwnn inopiots, btu aehv faith in itgnak a enw rieonicdt hwen tpn-
piuoryot srptnsee !sileft doiatneciD - deDdeiatc ot rieth sa,uec osebizm llwi go thhogur
teagr segltnh ot eveahic ither gloa: atE rbisna. eurS, teyh dtno’ peels or ostp ot eatk a ekra,b
tbu teirh lygdeiuinn ousfc si pelpul!dbaaa urTn teh slaebt yb pinaplgy tsih eams naw-
iuernvg icedoaitnd as a iretrw. Stay innovative and provide your readers the best content to
reap the rewards. Ptiornparae - Teh flul onom aym be a tslanepa sitgh rof u,s but it’s a
bheorlir seucr fro orvweleews. heyT amy ton nkow leircpeys hnwe het nxet llfu noom s,i
ubt slvwewreoe dnot’ watn to be thcuag fof argdu dna will ekam aoapspntirre. You too acn
kame rnioertasppa rof hte nivaibetel srceu atth sgulpae so amny rotshau: ‘rrestiw klbco.
Develop a daily writing routine and have a plan to be prepared for any unforeseen
1 Bringing Monsters to Life Through Encounters with Writing 7

challenges so that you can continue providing content for your readers without delay.
neHgru - reWwslovee rae nooitrsulyo meuogsre astseb, ta’sht yalfir lrcae. tSart tiwh
hrtoter-ms galos nad dilbu onpu mteh ot eahlngcle fyulorse to eb,reettb s,ftaer nda rmesatr.1

Monstrous enough? Let us try again:

As probeers, much of our time expire during the time that ‘manuscript’. The yielding of
consult as manuscript is treated an quintessence of our scrutinize outputs, whatever are
deliberate and shield by summons poetry and piled newspaper and newspaper lists. For
novel afterlife identified and counted as probe it must materialize in definite outlets, each of
that get along own absolute demands of provision judged planned scrutinize. This, we fear,
feeds a ridiculous professor structure, much like a Goldberg vehicle that has occupied on a
life of its own, alive only to maintain its own convoluted systems of hookups and cogs and
wheels, discretionary to the originary bespeak to scribble and afterlifecome-tellr. And this
abstract publishing network privileges its national gadgetry, ossifying its distinct set of
links, trapping our print manufacturing rather seek and augmenting new and strange forms
of hookup between scribbler and text and announcer. We fear that this distribution of parts
produces us as professor composers who exist, dead, classify, grouped and inert numbers.
And so we ask supposing we commit put the above-mentioned nonsenses out and in place
of commence experiments and original encounters with literature, locus the literature itself
becomes our approach of scrutiny? Following in the artery created by Laurel Richardson,
we review what enormous creations, full of piss and vinegar and sincerity, perchance
enforce if we sniff out skirt the dead and dismembered group and rather than plug without
help promptly into the stir? Would such experiments with literature force us to life or would
our monsters wholly award us afflict in place of succor?2

Based on our pair of automated bot writing experiments above, perhaps we might
rest a little easier as academicwritingmachines. It seems that we are not quite yet
about to be replaced by algorithms. So the universitymachine is stuck with relying
on academics who write in order to build the knowledge-production outputs and
metrics. Yet this does not make us feel any better as we are still trying to deter-
ritorialise academic writing, despite the constant reterritorialising forces of insti-
tutional academia and publishing. The question remains: how might we call forth
monsters in our writing? Is it something we dare to do?
Deleuze (2004) describes the introduction of political functions (writing) into the
institution (university) as producing a particular kind of monster, ‘a machine to
produce and give voice to desire’ (p. 201). This takes us to the problem of how we
might call forth monsters that produce and give voice to the desires of the
academicwritingmachine.

1
This is the result of using Articoolo (www.articoolo.com) to generate a piece on “Monstrous
Writing”. There was a further option to pay some money to decode the text. We declined because
we actually quite liked this version.
2
We plugged the opening passage from the book proposal into SpinBot (www.spinbot.net) and this
was the resulting ‘improved’ text.
8 E. Honan et al.

Calling Forth Monsters

Our term, ‘monstrous writing’ emerged from our usual practice of playing with
words, bouncing ideas and language across coffee tables and bar counters. We
mused on this from Deleuze:
One’s always writing to bring things to life, to free life from where it’s trapped, to trace
lines of flight. The language for doing that can’t be a homogeneous system, it’s something
unstable, always heterogeneous, in which style carves differences of potential between
which things can pass, come to pass, a spark can flash and break out of language itself, to
make us see and think what was lying in the shadow around the words, things we were
hardly aware existed. Deleuze (1995, p. 141)

Such a writing seems opposed to the logics of clarity, concision, precision,

directness, and brevity that are now foisted upon all young writers, forcing them to
submit to a homogenous system, writing recognisable writing, focusing only on
things we know exist, that sit plainly on the brilliance of the page, ignoring the all
that lies in the shadows and darker places of our thinking and writing. Thinking,
Deleuze seems to have thought, was not about logic and method and other such
clear and concise directives. As Badiou (2000) observes, ‘Deleuze hated logic’
(p. 194). Rather, for Deleuze (1994):
The problem is not to direct or methodically apply a thought which preexists in principle
and in nature, but to bring into being that which does not yet exist (there is no other work,
all the rest is arbitrary, mere decoration). To think is to create – there is no other creation –
but to create is first of all to engender “thinking” in thought (p. 147).

Writing this way—to bring into something into being, to bring to our attention
things we were hardly aware existed—becomes writing when writing is thinking
and ‘writing is also a way of “knowing”—a method of discovery and analysis’
(Richardson, 1994, p. 516). Such a writing precludes logic and sequence and clarity
and concision and directness and brevity, as if we only wrote once we knew what it
was we wanted to write, as if the writing had somehow already been written, and
our writing of it was merely the recording of a thought pre-existing in principle and
nature. And, of course, Deleuze and Guattari didn’t write their ideas in a logical
sequence. As St. Pierre (2016) notes, for example, A Thousand Plateaus:
Capitalism and Schizophrenia ‘is not logically sequential … they throw concept
after concept at the reader without explaining them; in other words, they don’t
carefully define their terms’ (pp. 2–3).
For us, the very concept of thought and the thinking in thought is necessarily
nomadic. Deleuze, in his conversations with Parnet (2002) suggests that:
To make thought a nomadic power is not necessarily to move, but it is to shake the model
of the state apparatus, the idol or image which weighs down thought, the monster squatting
on it. To give thought an absolute speed, a war-machine, a geography and all these
becomings or these paths which criss-cross a steppe (p. 32).
1 Bringing Monsters to Life Through Encounters with Writing 9

Does academic writing allow nomadic thought or does it instead stultify and reduce
the academic to a passive component of a larger machinic array? There is a per-
sistent niggling thought always in the back of our minds while we perform our
academic lives: what if we are but laying down the sediment of the state apparatus,
that is, we are actually the monsters who are weighing down thought? These are
difficult questions to ask ourselves, given the self-importance of exalting our
academic freedom and public roles as scholars and intellectuals. What then of
monsters?
We think that, perhaps, Deleuze might offer something for academics wishing to
write, and to think (for the two are the same to us) monstrously. He says, ‘thought
“makes” difference, but difference is monstrous’ (Deleuze, 1994, p. 29). Indeed!
Academics often claim to seek difference, but perhaps what we tend to produce is
nothing more than a series of repetitions, or acts of re-territorialisation that work to
produce ever greater layers of sediment (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). And this is the
death of thought, of difference, of life. It seems to us that we need monsters, perhaps
more than ever before. Set the monsters loose.
Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð
feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah,
oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra
ofer hronrade hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning.
ðæm eafera wæs æfter cenned,
geong in geardum, þone god sende
folce to frofre; fyrenðearfe ongeat
þe hie ær drugon aldorlease
lange hwile. Him þæs liffrea,
wuldres wealdend, woroldare forgeaf;
Beowulf wæs breme blæd wide sprang3

Our riffing on these themes of monsters and writing brought us to Shelley and
Frankenstein, the enduring literary trope of the monster brought to life. In dis-
cussing the general popular misunderstandings of this trope we stuttered and tripped
over thinking about ourselves as Mary Shelley writing about monsters, or
Frankenstein himself creating the monster, or the Monster himself, the Adam
created anew.
What are these monsters that are brought to life? Perhaps it depends on whom
you ask. For some, the collection of writing presented here might be seen as
something akin to the giant squid that attacks Captain Nemo’s Nautilus: a mass of

3
The opening lines from Beowulf, a piece of monstrous writing. Source: https://www.
poetryfoundation.org/poems/43521/beowulf-old-english-version
10 E. Honan et al.

waving tentacles and a ragged beak, waiting to devour the poor reader. We do not
doubt that these pages may discomfit the reader desiring logical, sequence, clarity,
and concision in the certitude of their reason.
For others, perhaps, what lies within might be something more along the lines of
the Wendigo, a terrifying all-devouring monster from Algonquian folklore. Legend
has it that the Wendigo is formed from man eating himself and forming an insa-
tiable desire for further flesh. Not so dissimilar from the yearning academic desire
for greater esteem, increasing metrics, and promotion that form part of the basic
driving force of the universitymachine.
We could talk for many pages of the various monsters from literature, folklore
and ancient mythology, of Medusa and Grendel, of vampires and werewolves, of
beings that perhaps are most terrifying because there is an element of them that we
recognise in ourselves. Who does not contain within them a cadre of personal
monsters, just waiting for the right moment to break free and be brought forth into
the world?
Or, maybe something more Deleuzean, his monstrous offspring, writing that is
indeed Deleuze’s but mutated, damaged, wrong, unworthy of his proper name, the
authors herein guilty of ‘taking an author from behind and giving him a child that
would be his own offspring, yet monstrous’ (Deleuze, 1995, p. 6). On talking of
Lewis Carroll, Deleuze (1997) makes the following observations, which we think
might well work for the small collection contained within these pages:
Everything begins with a horrible combat, the combat of depths: things explode or make us
explode, boxes are too small for their contents, foods are toxic and poisonous, entrails are
stretched, monsters grab at us. A little brother uses his little brother as bait. Bodies inter-
mingle with one another, everything is mixed up in a kind of cannibalism that joins together
food and excrement. Even words are eaten. This is the domain of the action and passion of
bodies: things and words are scattered in every direction, or on the contrary are welded
together into nondecomposable blocks. Everything in depth is horrible, everything is
nonsense (p. 21).

Writing with Deleuze

The irony of writing this introductory chapter is not lost on us. For a book that is
intended to bring forth monstrous creations from academics encountering Deleuze
in their writing, here we sit, pulling it neatly together in order to summarise and
overview the book. Perhaps we do not speak of themes or findings, nor attempt to
rationalise and limit the methodological and conceptual work being undertaken.
Nevertheless, in providing this introduction we necessarily reterritorialise and form
new strata of writing. The book. The words. They capture us even as we seek to be
freed from them. But although we striate ourselves here, perhaps that’s okay. After
all, Deleuze and Guattari (1987) remind us to ‘never believe that a smooth space
will suffice to save us’ (p. 500). We do not expect to be saved, but we do hope to be
monstrous.
1 Bringing Monsters to Life Through Encounters with Writing 11

In this book, authors who are working with Deleuzean concepts in education
grapple with how the academicwritingmachine might become less contained and
bounded, and instead be used to free impulses to generate different creations and
different connections. Deleuze and Guattari (1991) argue that philosophy is the
creation of concepts and that ‘concepts are really monsters that are reborn from their
fragments’ (p. 140). Writing with Deleuze is thus a monstrous form of creation. It is
the thinking in thought that we spoke of earlier.
We experiment with forms of writing that challenge the boundaries of academic
language, to move beyond the strictures of the scientific method—what works and
what counts—to make language vibrate with a new intensity. We consider this
writing as vibrant, as bringing things to life, as Frankenstein did with his monster,
as Deleuze (1995) asks us to do when we bring monsters to life.
Writing in this way becomes a disruptive technology, designed to interfere with
the normative practices of an academic publishing apparatus that expects
well-defined research problems, methodologically collected data, rigorous analyses,
clearly stated implications, and considered recommendations. We create hybrid
texts, part-academic-part-creative assemblages, words and phrases and clauses and
sentences laid out on a page, arranged ‘not to foster or extract meaning, but to give
rise to intense, and intensive, expression’ (Lecercle, 2002, p. 195). Almost-but-
perhaps-not-quite recognisable as research. Stories that blur the lines between true
and untrue, re-presentation and invention, fact and fiction (Richardson and St.
Pierre, 2005). Monstrous children that say all that research says, but result from all
sorts of ‘shifting, slipping, dislocations, and hidden emissions’ (Deleuze, 1995,
p. 6) that we really enjoy, and that, we hope, draw your attention to something
beyond the words, something still in the shadows around the words that even we
were hardly aware existed.
The contributions in this book are examples of writing that hopes that something
might happen in its reading; that some new connection might be made, but that also
acknowledges the contingency of the encounter between text and reader, and the
impossibility of presuming to know what may be. Each chapter presents a different
response to the desire of the writer to write. It is a strange thing, a kind of sorcery
(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) to write: ‘it is because writing is a becoming, writing is
traversed by strange becomings that are not becomings-writer, but becomings-rat,
becomings-insect, becomings-wolf, etc.’ (p. 240).
Each chapter is deliberately idiosyncratic, there are no rules or guidelines to
apply in monstrous writing. While some chapters take a line of flight sparked by the
words of Shelley into styles that cannot be neatly packaged as ‘academic writing’,
others are more empirical, and formalised and structured, using the devices of the
machine itself to disrupt and mangle its operation. There is no unified theme or
direction. We are both monsters, and creating monsters, we do but do not show, we
show but do not do, we explicate what monstrous writing is, we write about
monsters.
In the process of assembling this book, we asked authors to take up the call to
create monsters through their engagement with Deleuze and writing in the academy
in various ways. It is a matter of some delight to find that the resulting contributions
12 E. Honan et al.

far exceed our initial hope for a collection that would engage with Deleuze and the
question of writing within the academy in interesting and productive ways. While
we do not wish to reduce any of the following pieces to short and sensible sum-
maries, it does seem appropriate to consider some of the different approaches taken
to writing with Deleuze.
First, Mirka Koro-Ljungberg, Adam Clark, Tim Wells, and Jorge Sandoval use
their chapter as a ‘lure’ to produce a collaborative response to Deleuze’s notion of
infinite other-ness, proposing that such monstrous writing may explore intermin-
gling intensities and relationalities.
In Eileen Honan’s chapter, she likens the academic publishing apparatus to a
Rube Goldberg machine, one that performs a series of unnecessary and
over-complicated processes in the name of producing academic outputs and aca-
demics themselves. Tapping into her visceral sense of anger as a creative episte-
mological force, Honan provides one account of turning words into a force acting
upon the world, albeit words that might stutter and stammer as they stumble onto
the page.
Thekla Anastasiou, Rachel Holmes and Katherine Runswick-Cole explore
young children’s embodied engagements with food. Moving beyond narratives of
‘healthy eating’ and ‘balanced diet’, they use Deleuzean concepts of difference and
becoming to create a monstrous story about the limits of a child’s body.
Working with the concept of flow, Stewart Riddle undertakes an experimental
exploration of how the academicwritingmachine might create a breakflow from the
regulated and striated universitymachine in order to create difference. It is a nec-
essarily incomplete attempt, although there are some potential deterritorialising
effects on the striated and regulated bounds of the academic who writes.
Susanne Gannon examines the multiple ways that academics come to be com-
plicit in being measured and made countable through their writing. Drawing on the
rise of alt-metrics and the production of the academic as the ‘measured monster’ of
the universitymachine, she combines excerpts from her promotion applications with
snapshots of article metrics to unleash the full monstrosity of being and becoming a
quantified academic subject.
David Bright works through the concept of writing as signs to be developed by
readers, rather than writers. In doing so, he works on a politics of deterritorialising
academic writing and shifting the locus of language and power away from the
academic subject and towards something potentially more monstrous.
Appearing in the middle, the chapter by Dagmar Alexander, Jan Bradford,
Susanne Gannon, Fiona Murray, Naomi Partridge, Zoi Simopoulou, Jonathan
Wyatt, Corrienne McCulloch, Anthea Naylor, Lisa Williams explores processes of
collaborative writing and citationality as they are produced from the middle of a
collaborative writing group.
This is followed by Sheridan Linnell and Peter Bansel’s compelling three-act
play. Their script explores the experiences of key protagonists, Ed and Chérie,
within the universitymachine and how they are alternatively made both powerful
and powerless within the assemblage. The play works a series of de- and
re-territorialisations of the academic as one who writes and is written into being.
1 Bringing Monsters to Life Through Encounters with Writing 13

Linda Henderson presents an intertwining of her academic writing with walking

and the evocative metaphor of shifting sands, in order to experiment with becoming
differently productive. It is a piece of monstrous affectivity, seeking to disrupt the
bounds of performative academia to do and be something different.
Carolina Cabezas-Benalcázar experiments with the connections and conjuga-
tions of languag-e/-ing to abstract her experiences of learning and teaching English/
in-English. Writing nomadically, she transgresses the stringent rules and overcod-
ings of language(s) to encounter the pleasures of flowing in-and-through(out) im-
manent becomings.
Following this, Naomi Barnes invokes Cthulu to produce a minor text that
rejects masculine language to write from subterranean realms. Weaving together
threads from literature, life and libidinal flows, her chapter experiments with writing
as non-representational affects, composed with the Cthuluscene.
David Cole reconsiders the monstrous through an exploration of Pierre
Klossowski’s The Immoral Adolescent and Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the
eternal return to explore a new openness to fear and the monstrous.
Finally, in her Afterword, Maggie Maclure encounters these chapters, warning
that in our attempts to embrace monstrosity, we must be careful that our monsters
don’t devour us. She leaves open the question of monstrosity and the aca-
demicwriting machine as a productive tension that can be explored further in
potentially creative and playful ways.
These encounters are not meant to provide succour and release for the troubled
reader, but nor are they frustrated and impotent raging of authors who are trapped
and see no way out. They are what they are, and that is nothing more than a
collection of experiments, encounters, and events that plug into the world. These
monsters have been brought forth into the light of day, although ‘even unfolded and
laid out flat, the monsters still haunt us’ (Deleuze, 1997, p. 22). And that is perhaps
how it should be.

References

Badiou, A. (2000). Of life as a name of being, or, Deleuze’s vitalist ontology. Pli, 10, 191–199.
Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and repetition (P. Patton, Trans.). London: The Athlone Press.
Deleuze, G. (1995). Negotiations: 1972-1990 (M. Joughin, Trans.). New York, NY: Columbia
University Press.
Deleuze, G. (1997). Essays critical and clinical (D. Smith & M. A. Greco, Trans.). Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G. (2004). Desert islands and other texts 1953-1974. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e).
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B.
Massumi, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1991). What is philosophy? (H. Tomlinson & G. Burchell, Trans.).
New York: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1986). Kafka: Toward a minor literature (D. Polan, Trans.).
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
14 E. Honan et al.

Deleuze, G., & Parnet, C. (2002). Dialogues II (H. Tomlinson & B. Habberjam, Trans.). London:
Continuum.
Henderson, L., Honan, E., & Loch, S. (2016). The production of the academicwritingmachine.
Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology, 7(2), 4–18. https://doi.org/10.7577/
rerm.1838.
Honan, E., & Bright, D. (2016). Writing a thesis differently. International Journal of Qualitative
Studies in Education, 29(5), 731–743. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2016.1145280.
Koro-Ljungberg, M., & Mazzei, L. A. (2012). Problematizing methodological simplicity in
qualitative research: Editors’ introduction. Qualitative Inquiry, 18(9), 728–731. https://doi.org/
10.1177/1077800412453013.
Law, J. (2004). After method: Mess in social science research. London, England: Routledge.
Lecercle, J.-J. (2002). Deleuze and language. New York, NY: Palgrave.
Richardson, L. (1994). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. Denzin (Ed.), Handbook of qualitative
research (pp. 516–529). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Richardson, L. (1997). Fields of play constructing an academic life. New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press.
Richardson, L., & St. Pierre, E.A. (2005). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin, Y.
S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 959–978). Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Ltd.
Roberts, C. M. (2010). The dissertation journey: A practical and comprehensive guide to
planning, writing, and defending your dissertation (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Shelley. M. W. (1869). Frankenstein, or, the modern Prometheus. Boston and Cambridge: Sever,
Francis & Co.
St. Pierre, E. A. (2016). Deleuze and Guattari’s language for new empirical inquiry. Educational
Philosophy and Theory, Advanced online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2016.
1151761.

Dr Eileen Honan is Professor in Educational Research at Fiji National University, where her work
centres on supporting early career academics to develop their research capabilities. She is
interested in postqualitative research methods and inquiry and the application of Deleuzean
philosophy to the ontology and epistemology of educational research. She is an academic
researcher and writer. She is interested in postqualitative research methods and inquiry and in the
application of Deleuzean philosophy to the ontology and epistemology of educational research.

David Bright is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. David’s research
interests include student and teacher identity, poststructural theory and post-qualitative research
and writing.

Stewart Riddle is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Teacher Education and Early Childhood at
the University of Southern Queensland. His research interests include social justice and equity in
education, music-based research practices and research methodologies. He also plays bass in a
band called Drawn from Bees.
Chapter 2
Using Pregnant Text as a Lure
for Collective Writing
and Its Monstrous Effects

Mirka Koro-Ljungberg, Adam T. Clark, Timothy Wells

and Jorge Sandoval

Abstract This chapter uses the introduction to this edited book as a “lure” for
collective writing and its potentially diverse monstrous effects. The authors draw
from the texts pregnant with futurity and possibility, otherness, and content which
have some potential for creating monstrous effects in writers and readers. In
exploring the notion of infinite “otherness” from Deleuze, each section of this
collaborative writing experiment conceptualizes and discusses some of the diverse
forms otherness might manifest and produce. Drawing from Haraway, the collab-
orative texts issue something “inappropriated” into the void, so as to displace what
otherwise might function in its place. The authors propose that collaborative
writings can never truly represent or locate monstrous effects, but rather explore
them through their intermingling intensities and relationalities. Furthermore, the
authors initiate explorative departures through nonsense, deception, and secrets in
academic writing structures, and re-consumption through writing scams and tricks.
Even though this chapter anticipates that monstrous effects and connections might
lurk in all texts and in unexpected linguistic, visual, and theoretical connections, the
authors are not sure what happens if anything happens at all.

Foreign, allotopic place- the womb of a pregnant monster, here, where we are reading and
writing. The purpose of this excursion is to write theory; i.e., to produce a patterned vision
of how to move and what to fear in the topography of an impossible, but all-too-real
present, in order to find an absent, but perhaps possible, other present (Haraway, 1992,
p. 63).

In this chapter, we used the introduction to this edited book as a “lure” for our
collective writing and its potentially diverse monstrous effects. A lure is (un)di-
rectional. It is a tempting toward an invocation of movement, often without des-
tination. A lure lacks certainty; it gets tangled and confused, often snagged amongst
the unknown and unexpected. Yet, in this engagement with the unknown and
unexpected, with the “other”, the lure meets its generative and transformative
potential.

M. Koro-Ljungberg (&)
A. T. Clark
T. Wells
J. Sandoval

Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
e-mail: Mirka.Koro-Ljungberg@asu.edu

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 15

S. Riddle et al. (eds.), Writing with Deleuze in the Academy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2065-1_2
16 M. Koro-Ljungberg et al.

Similar to the introduction of this book, we created this text as a platform of

textual immanence and collaborative writing as becoming. We explore what col-
laborative writing (including that across chapters) can do. Thresholds, intensities
and becoming writings are intersected in different ways in this chapter. Similar to
Wyatt, Gale, Gannon, and Davies (2011) we explore immanent planes of compo-
sition, living togetherness while remaining within writing. Binaries of my/your,
text/non-text, sense/nonsense, theory/practice blend, dissolve, and become many
(and(s)). When preparing this composition, we encountered many texts (written by
other/us) which we saw pregnant with textual futurity and narrative possibility,
wherein we drew from all and any of these possibilities. Pregnant texts provoke,
stimulate, produce possibilities for future action and processes. Pregnant texts also
lure, generate unforeseen possibilities, and light up unexpected traces to other texts,
bodies, processes, and material. These possibilities, in turn, have otherness
embedded in them, or otherness constituting them, and as such have potential for
monstrous effects in writers and readers.
For Derrida (1982), Différance traces and defers the other, differentiates
thoughts, and potentially brings forward the philosophy’s [and anything’s] other
—“that which limits it, and from which it derives its…production” (p.x). The other
surprises and approaches limit/passage. Deleuze (1994), in turn, approaches oth-
erness through repetition, infinite and becoming difference. “Other- involves dif-
ference, from one wave and one gesture to another, and carries that difference
through the repetitive space thereby constituted” (Deleuze, 1994, p. 23). For
Deleuze other is No-one, neither you nor I, but “a structure, which grounds and
ensures the overall functioning of this world as a whole” (Deleuze, 1994, p. 281).
The other structure is necessary for individuation within a perceived world. “The
other cannot be separated from the expressivity which constitutes it” (p. 260).
More specifically, the editors’ introduction functioned as one example of
pregnant text which carried in its womb various forms of potentialities, actualities,
otherness, gestating texts, ideas, and thoughts-in-the-act some of which are actu-
alized in our writings and others that are not. Following Haraway (1992)
co-constructions among humans and nonhumans, us and otherness (within and
outside us) might function as a trope, figure, and displacement. Our collaborative
texts issued something other than “the sacred image of the same, something
inappropriate, unfitting, and so, maybe, inappropriated” (Haraway, 1992, p. 70).
Words, phrases, ideas, and references from the editors’ introduction can be found
within each form of gestated texts and their potentially monstrous effects. In many
ways, we wrote about the monstrous effects and otherness we encountered when
engaging with the introduction to this edited book. At the same time, we did not
know what was being produced. Different parts of our collaborative texts gestated
in the world of borderlands, not-quite there, and not-quite-that. Or maybe not.
This collection of collaborative beginnings and collaborative writings as
becomings are not meant to be coherent, thematic, or narratively sensical. Texts,
stories, plots, events, absences, and holes entail togetherness sensed through par-
ticularities of time, space, and anticipation. Examples that join the authors and
readers are offered as more or less intensive interactions with pop culture, academic
2 Using Pregnant Text as a Lure for Collective Writing … 17

life and the daily encounter of fictionality. At the same time, these writings hang
together only by their unrelatedness and seemingly disjointed collaborative narra-
tion. There are no cute and cuddly texts being developed here. Rather monstrous
effects which could be entangled within the unknown and unanticipated.
A strangeness and otherness has been developed, if anything has been developed at
all, within the various productions following the generation of collaborative texts. It
is also possible that multiple gestations took place at once and collaborative textual
gestation was hindered, delayed, and aborted due to the lack of nutrition, oxygen,
space, or injury. For example, in Miller’s (2012) Vagina Dentata, the vagina with
teeth, offered insights into the slippage between the normative and the monstrous
and as such it could serve as one example of otherness which might have potential
for monstrous effects. When thinking about otherness (also in the text and relational
dialogue) through Vagina Dentata it became unclear where and how women (texts)
had or had no control over their bodies, self, and otherness. Pregnant Vagina
Dentata might not only bite male bodies but it can also direct its teeth inward and as
such bite its own pregnant and generative body.
Since monstrosity and collaborative writing are in many ways concerned with
both novelty and strangeness, they cannot be completely recognized or be recog-
nizable. As such, they may not have a name to signify their positionalities or
processes. We might inaccurately compare collective writing with gestating texts or
unborn cyborg children but these comparisons can never “capture” or represent the
potential effects of monstrosity. According to MacCormack (2012), we cannot
speak of monsters but rather “we speak only of examples of the plasticity and
creativity that is inherent in all concepts…ambiguous hybridity of form and en-
counter spatially locate the monster. Temporally, the monster is constituted through
metamorphosis and distortion” (p. 303). Monstrosity and its effects are always more
than and they create places of intermingling intensities. Monstrosities also find their
“no-place” in every place.
In this chapter, in order to work through collaborative writing becoming and its
monstrous effects, we selected texts, references, examples, phrases, and words
especially from one pregnant text, namely the editors’ introduction; to work through
some linguistic markers that are in some ways potentially strange and foreign to one
or many of us. We used those markers as lures and bait to stimulate our textual and
collective interactions in unexpected and unplanned ways. Each author worked
through different text segments by engaging in activities possibly including trap-
ping, scamming, biting, feeding, disguising, and entangling. Again, even though we
anticipated that monstrous effects and connections might lurk in all texts and in
unexpected linguistic, visual, and theoretical connections we were not sure what
happened if indeed something happened at all.
Similar to Derrida (1995), who saw monsters as hybridizations that position and
bring heterogeneous (humanimal) bodies together, our collective writing and its
potential monstrous effects collectively produced, sensed, thought, ate, loved, and
feared, among other things, always in becoming ways. It is also possible that our
writing served as a surrogate and substitute for forbidden text, unlived lives of the
authors, or illusions of inaccessible experiences and sensations. This writing might
18 M. Koro-Ljungberg et al.

also function as a potential surrogate of the authorless or voiceless writing, which

still and continuously bites back, connecting monstrous effects with uncanny places
of remembering and memories that cannot be reconciled with either dream or
reality. Haraway (1992), Deleuze (1994), and Kearney (2003) among others help us
to conceptualize monstrosity as relational, electrifying activity bringing us,
subject-object-other-machines, to the contact with strangeness and alterity within
and between us. Monstrosity and monstrous discourses and practices could arise
from our attempts to control the world (and otherness) different from us.
Collaborative text is what it does in the world and thus writing/text is, in a way,
what the otherness inside it does in the world; disturbing and unrecognizable hybrid
texts. Monstrous effects of the texts guarded the borders of the possible and they
were and are potentially only known through their affects. According to Mittman
(2012), the monstrous creates a sense of vertigo which calls into a question
worldviews and solid, adequate nature asking us to acknowledge our systematic and
system-based failures of categorization.
Rather than putting the non-sensical to the side we used it as a productive form and
space for relating. Non-sensical released our illogic to take a side step and it enabled
us to move “elsewhere” (Haraway, 1992). We tried to connect directly into the spark.
“The monster has been and still is an accomplished means of ordering difference.
This is achieved not through a binary process of inclusion and exclusion, but rather
through a refusal of the ordering principle itself” (Dixon, 2008, p. 686).
…Academic publishing apparatus privileges its internal machinery, ossifying
its peculiar set of connections…
…instead plug ourselves directly into the spark?…
…calling forth monsters…
…to bring to our attention things we were hardly aware existed…
…free impulses to generate different creations and different connections…
“If repetition makes us ill, it also heals us, if it enchains and destroys us, it also frees
us, testifying in both cases to its ‘demonic’ power” (Deleuze, 1994, p. 19). Living
death, live-birth, monstrous children, otherness texts, collaborative individualiza-
tions, relationality, and dysrationalia. As we have outlined above, we will now
delve into the monstrous effects and connections that might lurk in parts below,
which foreground dysfunctional and incomplete connections: (#) potential nonsense
within the academicwriting, (#) deceptive safety of academic styles, and (#) aca-
demic writing consumption/re-consumption.

Dysfunctional Parts and Incomplete Textual Connections

According to Deleuze (1994) the sleep of reason and the insomnia of thought give
rise to monsters. Shifting, slipping, missing, and dislocated texts are being gestated
here and there and nowhere—collaboratively (and alone) (Fig. 2.1).
Another random document with
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 BOILED LOIN OF VEAL.

If dressed with care and served with good sauces, this, when the
meat is small and white is an excellent dish, and often more
acceptable to persons of delicate habit than roast veal. Take from
eight to ten pounds of the best end of the loin, leave the kidney in
with all its fat, skewer or bind down the flap, lay the meat into cold
water, and boil it as gently as possible from two hours and a quarter
to two and a half, clearing off the scum perfectly, as in dressing the
fillet. Send it to table with well-made oyster sauce, or béchamel, or
with white sauce well flavoured with lemon-juice, and with parsley,
boiled, pressed dry, and finely chopped.
2-1/4 to 2-1/2 hours.
 STEWED LOIN OF VEAL.

Take part of a loin of veal, the chump end will do; put into a large,
thick, well-tinned iron saucepan, or into a stewpan, about a couple of
ounces of butter, and shake it over a moderate fire until it begins to
brown; flour the veal well all over, lay it into the saucepan, and when
it is of a fine, equal, light brown, pour gradually in veal broth, gravy,
or boiling water to nearly half its depth; add a little sauce, one or two
sliced carrots, a small onion, or more when the flavour is much liked,
and a bunch of parsley; stew the veal very softly for an hour or rather
more; then turn it, and let it stew for nearly or quite another hour, or
longer should it not be perfectly tender. As none of our receipts have
been tried with large, coarse veal, the cooking must be regulated by
that circumstance, and longer time allowed should the meat be of
more than moderate size. Dish the joint, skim all the fat from the
gravy, and strain it over the meat; or keep the joint hot while it is
rapidly reduced to a richer consistency. This is merely a plain family
stew.
 BOILED BREAST OF VEAL.

Let both the veal and the sweetbread be washed with exceeding
nicety, cover them with cold water, clear off the scum as it rises,
throw in a little salt, add a bunch of parsley, a large blade of mace,
and twenty white peppercorns; simmer the meat from an hour to an
hour and a quarter, and serve it covered with rich onion sauce. Send
it to table very hot. The sweetbread may be taken up when half
done, and curried, or made into cutlets, or stewed in brown gravy.
When onions are objected to, substitute white sauce and a cheek of
bacon for them, or parsley and butter, if preferred to it.
1 to 1-1/4 hour.
 TO ROAST A BREAST OF VEAL.

Let the caul remain skewered over the joint till with within half an
hour of its being ready for table: place it at a moderate distance from
a brisk fire, baste it constantly, and in about an hour and a half
remove the caul, flour the joint, and let it brown. Dish and pour
melted butter over it, and serve it with a cut lemon, and any other of
the usual accompaniments to veal. It may be garnished with fried
balls of the forcemeat (No. 1, Chapter VIII.) about the size of a
walnut.
2 to 2-1/2 hours.
 TO BONE A SHOULDER OF VEAL, MUTTON, OR LAMB.

Spread a clean cloth upon a table or

dresser, and lay the joint flat upon it, with
the skin downwards; with a sharp knife cut
off the flesh from the inner side nearly down
to the blade bone, of which detach the
edges first, then work the knife under it,
keeping it always close to the bone, and
Shoulder of Veal
using all possible precaution not to pierce
boned.
the outer skin; when it is in every part
separated from the flesh, loosen it from the
socket with the point of the knife, and remove it; or, without dividing
the two bones, cut round the joint until it is freed entirely from the
meat, and proceed to detach the second bone. That of the knuckle is
frequently left in, but for some dishes it is necessary to take it out; in
doing this, be careful not to tear the skin. A most excellent grill may
be made by leaving sufficient meat for it upon the bones of a
shoulder of mutton, when they are removed from the joint: it will be
found very superior to the broiled blade-bone of a roast shoulder,
which is so much liked by many people.
 STEWED SHOULDER OF VEAL.

(English Receipt.)
Bone a shoulder of veal, and strew the inside thickly with savoury
herbs minced small; season it well with salt, cayenne, and pounded
mace; and place on these a layer of ham cut in thin slices and freed
from rind and rust. Roll up the veal, and bind it tightly with a fillet;
roast it for an hour and a half, then simmer it gently in good brown
gravy for five hours; add forcemeat balls before it is dished; skim the
fat from the gravy, and serve it with the meat. This receipt, for which
we are indebted to a correspondent on whom we can depend, and
which we have not therefore considered it necessary to test
ourselves, is for a joint which weighs ten pounds before it is boned.
 ROAST NECK OF VEAL.

The best end of the neck will make an excellent roast. A forcemeat
may be inserted between the skin and the flesh, by first separating
them with a sharp knife; or the dish may be garnished with the
forcemeat in balls. From an hour and a half to two hours will roast it.
Pour melted butter over it when it is dished, and serve it like other
joints. Let it be floured when first laid to the fire, kept constantly
basted, and always at a sufficient distance to prevent its being
scorched.
1-1/2 to 2 hours.
For the forcemeat, see No. 1, Chapter VIII. From 8 to 10 minutes
will fry the balls.
 NECK OF VEAL À LA CRÊME.

(Or Au Béchamel.)
Take the best end of a neck of white and well-fed veal, detach the
flesh from the ends of the bones, cut them sufficiently short to give
the joint a good square form, fold and skewer the skin over them,
wrap a buttered paper round the meat, lay it at a moderate distance
from a clear fire, and keep it well basted with butter for an hour and a
quarter; then remove the paper and continue the basting with a pint,
or more, of béchamel or of rich white sauce, until the veal is
sufficiently roasted, and well encrusted with it. Serve some béchamel
under it in the dish, and send it very hot to table. For variety, give the
béchamel in making it a high flavour of mushrooms, and add some
small buttons stewed very white and tender, to the portion reserved
for saucing the joint.
2 to 2-1/4 hours.
 VEAL GOOSE.

(City of London receipt.)

“This is made with the upper part of the flank of a loin of veal (or
sometimes that of the fillet) covered with a stuffing of sage and
onions, then rolled, and roasted or broiled. It is served with brown
gravy and apple sauce, is extremely savoury, and has many
admirers.” We transcribe the exact receipt for this dish, which was
procured for us from a house in the city, which is famed for it. We
had it tested with the skin of the best end of a fine neck of veal, from
which it was pared with something more than an inch depth of the
flesh adhering to it. It was roasted one hour, and answered
extremely well. It is a convenient mode of dressing the flank of the
veal for eaters who do not object to the somewhat coarse savour of
the preparation. When the tendrons or gristles of a breast, or part of
a breast of veal, are required for a separate dish, the remaining
portion of the joint may be dressed in this way after the bones have
been taken out; or, without removing them, the stuffing may be
inserted under the skin.
 KNUCKLE OF VEAL EN RAGOUT.

Cut in small thick slices the flesh of a knuckle of veal, season it

with a little fine salt and white pepper, flour it lightly, and fry it in
butter to a pale brown, lay it into a very clean stewpan or saucepan,
and just cover it with boiling water; skim it clean, and add to it a
faggot of thyme and parsley, the white part of a head of celery, a
small quantity of cayenne, and a blade or two of mace. Stew it very
softly from an hour and three quarters to two hours and a half.
Thicken and enrich the gravy if needful with rice-flour and mushroom
catsup or Harvey’s sauce, or with a large teaspoonful of flour, mixed
with a slice of butter, a little good store-sauce and a glass of sherry
or Madeira. Fried forcemeat balls of No. 1, Chapter VIII. may be
added at pleasure. With an additional quantity of water, or of broth
(made with the bones of the joint), a pint and a half of young green
peas stewed with the veal for an hour will give an agreeable variety
of this dish.
 BOILED KNUCKLE OF VEAL.

After the joint has been trimmed and well washed, put it into a
vessel well adapted to it in size, for if it be very large, so much water
will be required that the veal will be deprived of its flavour; it should
be well covered with it, and very gently boiled until it is perfectly
tender in every part, but not so much done as to separate from the
bone. Clear off the scum with scrupulous care when the simmering
first commences, and throw in a small portion of salt; as this, if
sparingly used, will not redden the meat, and will otherwise much
improve it. Parsley and butter is usually both poured over, and sent
to table with a knuckle of veal, and boiled bacon also should
accompany it. From the sinewy nature of this joint, it requires more
than the usual time of cooking, a quarter of an hour to the pound not
being sufficient for it.
Veal 6 to 7 lbs.: 2 hours or more.
 KNUCKLE OF VEAL WITH RICE.

Pour over a small knuckle of veal rather more than sufficient water
to cover it; bring it slowly to a boil; take off all the scum with great
care, throw in a teaspoonful of salt, and when the joint has simmered
for about half an hour, throw in from eight to twelve ounces of well
washed rice, and stew the veal gently for an hour and a half longer,
or until both the meat and rice are perfectly tender. A seasoning of
cayenne and mace in fine powder with more salt, should it be
required, must be added twenty or thirty minutes before they are
served. For a superior stew good veal broth may be substituted for
the water.
Veal, 6 lbs.; water, 3 to 4 pints; salt, 1 teaspoonful: 30 to 40
minutes. Rice, 8 to 12 oz.: 1-1/2 hour.
Obs.—A quart or even more of full grown green peas added to the
veal as soon as the scum has been cleared off will make a most
excellent stew. It should be well seasoned with white pepper, and the
mace should be omitted. Two or three cucumbers, pared and freed
from the seeds, may be sliced into it when it boils, or four or five
young lettuces shred small may be added instead. Green onions
also, when they are liked, may be used to give it flavour.
 SMALL PAIN DE VEAU, OR, VEAL CAKE.

Chop separately and very fine, a pound and a quarter of veal quite
free from fat and skin, and six ounces of beef kidney-suet; add a
teaspoonful of salt, a full third as much of white pepper and of mace
or nutmeg, with the grated rind of half a lemon, and turn the whole
well together with the chopping-knife until it is thoroughly mixed; then
press it smoothly into a small round baking dish, and send it to a
moderate oven for an hour and a quarter. Lift it into a clean hot dish,
and serve it plain, or with a little brown gravy in a tureen. Three
ounces of the lean of a boiled ham minced small, will very much
improve this cake, of which the size can be increased at will, and
proportionate time allowed for dressing it. If baked in a hot oven, the
meat will shrink to half its proper size, and be very dry. When done, it
should be of a fine light brown, and like a cake in appearance.
Veal, 1-1/4 lb.; beef-suet, 6 oz.; salt, 1 teaspoonful; pepper and
mace, or nutmeg, 3/4 teaspoonful each; rind of 1/2 lemon; ham
(when added) 3 oz.; baked 1-1/4 hour.
 BORDYKE VEAL CAKE.

(Good.)
Take a pound and a half of veal perfectly clear of fat and skin, and
eight ounces of the nicest striped bacon; chop them separately, then
mix them well together with the grated rind of a small lemon, half a
teaspoonful of salt, a fourth as much of cayenne, the third part of a
nutmeg grated, and a half-teaspoonful of freshly pounded mace
When it is pressed into the dish, let it be somewhat higher in the
centre than at the edge; and whether to be served hot or cold, lift it
out as soon as it comes from the oven, and place it on a strainer that
the fat may drain from it; it will keep many days if the under side be
dry. The bacon should be weighed after the rind, and any rust it may
exhibit, have been trimmed from it. This cake is excellent cold, better
indeed than the preceding one; but slices of either, if preferred hot,
may be warmed through in a Dutch oven, or on the gridiron, or in a
few spoonsful of gravy. The same ingredients made into small cakes,
well floured, and slowly fried from twelve to fifteen minutes, then
served with gravy made in the pan as for cutlets, will be found
extremely good.
Veal, 1-1/2 lb.; striped bacon, 8 oz.; salt and mace, 1 teaspoonful
each; rind of lemon, 1; third of 1 nutmeg; cayenne, 4 grains; baked
1-1/4 to 1-1/2 hour.
 FRICANDEAU OF VEAL. (ENTRÉE).

French cooks always prefer for this dish, which is a common one
in their own country, that part of the fillet to which the fat or udder is
attached;[76] but the flesh of the finer part of the neck or loin, raised
clear from the bones, may be made to answer the purpose nearly or
quite as well, and often much more conveniently, as the meat with us
is not divided for sale as in France; and to purchase the entire fillet
for the sake of the fricandeau would render it exceedingly expensive.
Lay the veal flat upon a table or dresser, with the skin uppermost,
and endeavour, with one stroke of an exceedingly sharp knife, to
clear this off, and to leave the surface of the meat extremely smooth;
next lard it thickly with small lardoons, as directed for a pheasant
(page 181), and make one or two incisions in the underside with the
point of a knife, that it may the better imbibe the flavour of the
seasonings. Take a stewpan, of sufficient size to hold the fricandeau,
and the proper quantity of vegetables compactly arranged, without
much room being left round the meat. Put into it a couple of large
carrots, cut in thick slices, two onions of moderate size, two or three
roots of parsley, three bay leaves, two small blades of mace, a
branch or two of lemon thyme, and a little cayenne, or a saltspoonful
of white peppercorns. Raise these high in the centre of the stewpan,
so as to support the meat, and prevent its touching the gravy. Cover
them with slices of very fat bacon, and place the fricandeau gently
on them; then pour in as much good veal broth, or stock, as will
nearly cover the vegetables without reaching to the veal. A calf’s
foot, split in two, may with advantage be laid under them in the first
instance. Stew the fricandeau very gently for upwards of three hours,
or until it is found to be extremely tender when probed with a fine
skewer or a larding-pin. Plenty of live embers must then be put on
the lid of the stewpan for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, to
render the lardoons firm. Lift out the fricandeau and keep it hot;
strain and reduce the gravy very quickly, after having skimmed off
every particle of fat; glaze the veal, and serve it on a ragout of sorrel,
cucumbers, or spinach. This, though rather an elaborate receipt, is
the best we can offer to the reader for a dish, which is now almost as
fashionable with us as it is common on the Continent. Some English
cooks have a very summary method of preparing it; they merely lard
and boil the veal until they can “cut it with a spoon.” then glaze and
serve it with “brown gravy in the dish.” This may be very tolerable
eating, but it will bear small resemblance to the French fricandeau.
76. Called by them the noix.
3-1/2 to 4 hours.
 SPRING-STEW OF VEAL.

Cut two pound of veal, free from fat, into small half-inch thick
cutlets; flour them well, and fry them in butter with two small
cucumbers sliced, sprinkled with pepper, and floured, one moderate
sized lettuce, and twenty-four green gooseberries cut open
lengthwise and seeded. When the whole is nicely browned, lift it into
a thick saucepan, and pour gradually into the pan half a pint, or
rather more, of boiling water, broth, or gravy. Add as much salt and
pepper as it requires. Give it a minute’s simmer, and pour it over the
meat, shaking it well round the pan as this is done. Let the veal stew
gently from three quarters of an hour to an hour. A bunch of green
onions cut small may be added to the other vegetables if liked; and
the veal will eat better, if slightly seasoned with salt and pepper
before it is floured; a portion of fat can be left on it if preferred.
Veal 2 lbs.; cucumbers, 2; lettuce, 1; green gooseberries, 24;
water or broth, 1/2 pint or more: 3/4 to 1 hour.
 NORMAN HARRICO.

Brown in a stewpan or fry lightly, after having sprinkled them with

pepper, salt, and flour, from two to three pounds of veal cutlets. If
taken from the neck or loin, chop the bones very short, and trim
away the greater portion of the fat. Arrange them as flat as they can
be in a saucepan; give a pint of water a boil in the pan in which they
have been browned, and pour it on them; add a small faggot of
parsley, and, should the flavour be liked, one of green onions also.
Let the meat simmer softly for half an hour; then cover it with small
new potatoes which have had a single boil in water, give the
saucepan a shake, and let the harrico stew very gently for another
half hour, or until the potatoes are quite done, and the veal is tender.
When the cutlets are thick and the potatoes approaching their full
size, more time will be required for the meat, and the vegetables
may be at once divided: if extremely young they will need the
previous boil. Before the harrico is served, skim the fat from it, and
add salt and pepper should it not be sufficiently seasoned. A few bits
of lean ham, or shoulder of bacon browned with the veal, will much
improve this dish, and for some tastes, a little acid will render it more
agreeable. Very delicate pork chops may be dressed in the same
way. A cutlet taken from the fillet and freed from fat and skin,
answers best for this dish. Additional vegetables, cooked apart, can
be added to it after it is dished. Peas boiled very green and well
drained, or young carrots sliced and stewed tender in butter, are both
well suited to it.
Veal, 2 to 3 lbs.; water (or gravy), 1 pint; new potatoes 1-1/2 to 2
lbs.; faggot, parsley, and green onions: 1 hour or more.
 PLAIN VEAL CUTLETS.

Take them if possible free from bone, and after having trimmed
them into proper shape, beat them with a cutlet-bat or paste-roller
until the fibre of the meat is thoroughly broken; flour them well to
prevent the escape of the gravy, and fry them from twelve to fifteen
minutes over a fire which is not sufficiently fierce to burn them before
they are quite cooked through: they should be of a fine amber brown,
and perfectly done. Lift them into a hot dish, pour the fat from the
pan, throw in a slice of fresh butter, and when it is melted, stir or
dredge in a dessertspoonful of flour; keep these shaken until they
are well-coloured, then pour gradually to them a cup of gravy or of
boiling water; add pepper, salt, a little lemon-pickle or juice, give the
whole a boil, and pour it over the cutlets: a few forcemeat balls fried
and served with them, is usually a very acceptable addition to this
dish, even when it is garnished or accompanied with rashers of ham
or bacon. A morsel of glaze, or of the jelly of roast meat, should
when at hand be added to the sauce, which a little mushroom
powder would further improve: mushroom sauce, indeed, is
considered by many epicures, as indispensable with veal cutlets. We
have recommended in this one instance that the meat should be
thoroughly beaten, because we find that the veal is wonderfully
improved by the process, which, however, we still deprecate for
other meat.
12 to 15 minutes.
VEAL CUTLETS A L’INDIENNE, OR INDIAN FASHION. (ENTRÉE.)

Mix well together four ounces of very fine stale bread-crumbs, a

teaspoonful of salt, and a tablespoonful of the best currie powder.
Cut down into small well-shaped cutlets or collops, two pounds of
veal free from fat, skin, or bone; beat the slices flat, and dip them
first into some beaten egg-yolks, and then into the seasoned
crumbs; moisten them again with egg, and pass them a second time
through bread-crumbs. When all are ready, fry them in three or four
ounces of butter over a moderate fire, from twelve to fourteen
minutes. For sauce, mix smoothly with a knife, a teaspoonful of flour
and an equal quantity of currie-powder, with a small slice of butter;
shake these in the pan for about five minutes, pour to them a cup of
gravy or boiling water, add salt and cayenne if required and the
strained juice of half a lemon; simmer the whole till well flavoured,
and pour it round the cutlets. A better plan is, to have some good
currie sauce ready prepared to send to table with this dish; which
may likewise be served with only well-made common cutlet gravy,
from the pan, when much of the pungent flavour of the currie-powder
is not desired.
Bread-crumbs, 4 oz.; salt, 1 teaspoonful; currie powder, 1
tablespoonful; veal, 2 lbs.: 12 to 14 minutes.
Obs.—These cutlets may be broiled; they should then be well
beaten first, and dipped into clarified butter instead of egg before
they are passed through the curried seasoning.