Leaving

Within this article, the author presents a personal story, "Leaving," which highlights the problematic experience of opposing established practice. The tale tells of the difficulty faced by creative agency when confronted by a constraining structural hegemony. Specifically, it draws attention to the professionalization of academic life through a cult of managerialism. Although the narrative is presented without extensive framing theory allowing multiple readings, the task is sociological as opposed to literary. Consequently, following the story, a discussion of its purpose, and a rationale for engaging in creative writing as a form of academic representation, two possible, though connected, theoretical sense-making lenses are offered: Foucault's concept of the "discourse of right" through which power is both created and exercised, and Habermas's cautionary note related to the power of systematic rationality to usurp the human "lifeworld."