Hamartia and Other Tragedies

One of the perks of being a Fellow is membership of an organisation named NAWE - the National Association of Writers in Education. I just got my first mailing from them and have been having a look at it.

Well, I must say, this looks interesting: "Hamartia and Other Tragedies: Mimesis, Memesis and the Pitfalls of Summatively Assessing Creative Practice."

Yes, my jaw dropped when I read that too. And no, I haven't got the faintest idea what it means. What's more - and curiously, for someone who is passionately interested in words - I haven't the least inclination to look it up either.

Of course I dare say there may be a level of irony in all this and perhaps the author was poking fun at this sort of language - in which case, I apologise to him or her unreservedly. But I don't know, and I'm almost afraid to find out.

Now, it may apppear that I'm setting out to complain or at least mock this academic style of writing so perhaps I should say now that I'm not. Every industry has its own language (I'm a lawyer, I should know!) and there's no reason why university teachers should be any different.  But it neatly illustrates the curious position I'm going to find myself in come Monday. I've spent much of my career, in fact arguably all of it, trying to explain complicated things to all sorts of people in terms they can understand. Moreover, I suspect a part of my job will consist of helping students to do much the same - to put across what they are trying to say in terms that make sense to me, other people and critically to the students themselves. Time will tell whether I'm right about that, but perhaps it's why a writer rather than an academic is asked to this work. A head full of jargon is no substitute for actually knowing what you're talking about.

I certainly won't be encouraging them to use words like "Mimesis"! Well, not unless I've looked it up first...