Odds and Ends

Abstract

In this paper I reflect on the odds and ends of research–that is to say, the fragments of notes, the miscellanea of drafts, the offcuts of applications, the keepsakes of fieldwork; in short, the archival remains of unfinished research. Through a discussion of failure, loss, the incomplete, and the abandoned, the paper poses questions about the threshold of endings. At what point does something fall by the wayside, never to be returned to? More pragmatically, what might we do with our “loss libraries”? And how might we pick up or return to those concepts, field-sites, or collaborators that we once shared, however temporarily, a trajectory with?.