Telling Transitions: Space, Materiality, and Ethical Practices in a Collaborative Writing Workshop

Abstract

Based in an analysis of a writing workshop which explored students’ transition to higher education, this article puts to work theorizations of space by Massey, materiality by Barad, narrative by Cavarero, and ethics by Arendt to propose an innovative conceptualization of collaborative writing practices. The article proposes an understanding of the space of collaborative writing as a multiplicity of relations, negotiations, and practices; it considers what is to be gained from considering collaborative writing in relation to posthumanist concerns about the mattering of matter; and it illuminates how collaborative writing, when understood as the emergence of narratable selves, is a profoundly ethical practice.

Telling Transitions July 2014