Smuggling creativity into the classroom

This chapter moves through the criticism seminar and the writing workshop while combining Jacques Derrida’s Différance (1968) and Anne Frank’s Diary (1990) in order to problematize the divide between critical and creative writing. The author likewise works to undo the artificial and elitist boundaries between institutional directives and practical outcomes, in what Indigo Perry refers to as ‘letting go of boundaries in our course design, teaching, and assessment’ (qtd in Donnelly & Harper 2013: xxiv). This essay educes Derridean ‘Structure, Sign, and Play’ (1966) in the form of a ‘Letter to a Friend’ prompt that underpins classroom-specific activities, such as (i) exit or entrance papers (or Low-stakes writing) in the university classroom as well as (ii) collaborative found-poems (or Projective Poetry) in the creative writing workshop, as methods of reframing ‘literary and critical writing as complementary practices,’ to return to Perry. Championed in the essay is a decolonial mode of instruction applied in Hong Kong and around the region that proves to be at once socioculturally responsive, academically rigorous, personally cathartic, and (reading) audience aware.