Autopoiesis is term used in systems theory to refer to an autonomous system that contains within itself the ability to engage in the processes that sustains itself. The term was appropriated by Mark McGurl for use in a cultural studies/literary criticism-history context — most prominently in his landmark work The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing. Being a literary critic, he, of course, has to turn it into the pun “autopoetics.”

He applies it specifically to creative writing programs and writers produced by creative writing programs that create “a cultural system geared for the production of self-expressive originality” (49). McGurl specifically creates an abstract model of the “creative writing process” as composed of the interplay of three major values promoted and pedagogied by creative writing programs:

* Experience (Authenticity) Memory, Observation, “Write What You Know”

* Creativity (Freedom) Imagination, Fantasy,”Find Your Voice”

* Craft (Tradition) Revision, Concentration, “Show Don’t Tell”

I hope to write more about McGurl’s work. It’s got a lot of theory in it so it’s a bit of a slog, but he raises some interesting issues, and, more importantly in my case, he disabused me of some of the reductive notions I had in regards to creative writing programs.