Writing the Past, Writing the Self, Recollecting Deakin

Abstract

My first instinct as an institutionalised academic of some 30 years was to write this chapter like any other, with introduction, main sections, and conclusion. But as the body of the chapter began to be written it was obvious to me that this could not be a conventional piece of academic writing. What it is instead is an attempt to write the past and in the process to write the self, rather than to re-collect and relate with any degree of reliability or ‘truthfulness’ what Deakin ‘was like’.