A Philosophical Inquiry into Subject English and Creative Writing by Oli Belas
Book cover for Belas (2023). Taken from the Routledge catalogue.
Routledge, 2023.
ISBN: 9780367487362, Hbk.
ISBN: 9781032374581, Pbk.
ISBN: 9781003042617, eBook.
RRP: £125.00 / £38.99 / £35.09, 156pp.
Oli Belas’s new book offers an intelligent and lively account of school-level English in the UK, and the need to rethink its core approaches and philosophies. A Philosophical Inquiry is animated by its central argument to recentre the practice of writing in all educational contexts, but especially for students at second level. As Belas thoughtfully outlines, writing is not just reportage but is a key educational tool; it is a mode of thinking through which the young person can find empowerment, expression, and joy. Writes Belas with characteristic understatement: ‘Writing is overlooked in schooled English, and it would be a good idea if this were not the case” (p. 12). He therefore advocates for a “writerly shift”, “a call for students to be able to dwell and play in language” (p. 24).
The contribution of this book is profound. Not only is it written by an experienced second-level teacher who is impressively versed in the curricular and social issues at play, but it is continuously underpinned by a scholarly expertise ranging from empirical educational research to critical theory to philosophy of education. Belas’s range and depth here is striking, as is his ability to stay very much in control of an understandably unwieldy set of issues.
Belas’s book has much to say to teachers of English at primary and second level, but it is in conversation also with practices of reading and writing as they are imagined in the university context. He is particularly good on the distinction between “writing up” and “writing through”, and the importance to academic researchers of imagining their work in terms of the latter rather than the former. To this extent, his final chapter entitled “Thinking as a Kind of Writing, Writing as a Kind of Philosophy; or, on Lightbulb Moments”, is a particular gift to any of us who have struggled with our writing as students and researchers in academia, and who perhaps still wonder whether we can recover the joy from our earlier writing and reading biographies.
Belas writes with notable flair, and his discussions move lightly from Analytic Philosophy to Phenomenology to Literary Criticism. Indeed, the author’s trust in and commitment to his own voice is a notable feature and strength of this book. A Philosophical Inquiry is itself an act of creative writing. It proceeds in a spirit of experiment and self-exploration. Performing its own core theme, the book deliberately wrestles with its own attempts to bring thought to language via writing. It therefore achieves an intimacy and insight not always available in academic writing, and gently encourages its reader to re-think their own writerly practice.
In sum: this is a gem of a book. It is comprehensive, imaginative, scholarly, incisive, and fun. In A Philosophical Inquiry, Belas’s advocacy for writing as practice – his call that in the teaching of English we re-centre the person as well as the text and thus recalibrate what the study of this subject is actually for – is given impressive clarity and urgency through his own achievement of this wonderfully writerly and provocative piece of work. Belas writes that there is “something akin to magic in our most profound encounters with literature” (p. 13). This reviewer is certainly still under the spell of this surprising and gorgeous book.
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