Conclusion: Writing for Reflexivity and Breaking Writing Rules

Joining an inter-disciplinary body of work that seeks to politicise the craft of academic writing, the premise of this forum is that the norms of “good academic writing”structure the kind of knowledge that can be produced and thus the kind of goals academic writing can achieve. While taking aim at the hegemony of Anglo-American norms in particular, the forum’s argument pertains to any context whereby one set of norms monopolises what “good writing” entails.. It is a call for writing pluralism then, but it is also much more than that. Rather than calling for letting 1000 writing styles bloom, the forum endeavours to systematically develop strategies to help readers’ on their reflexive journey: what the forum terms “writing for reflexivity”. Indeed, for all the guides on fostering reflexivity in the researcher, there are far fewer interrogating how our writing practices may encourage or discourage reflexivity in our readers. Taking stock of the forum’s efforts, this conclusion discusses how the contributors bend and break prevailing norms and with what consequences for generating reflexivity in the reader. Second, it identifies a strategy of writing for reflexivity that is latent in the forum: cultivating humility in the authorial voice. Finally, the conclusion warns against seeing Anglo-American norms as a coherent whole that stands in opposition to writing for reflexivity, but heterogenous set of techniques, each of which can work in combination with radical departures from those same norms in the aid of writing for reflexivity.