Riding the Waves of Collaborative-Writing-as-Inquiry: Some Ontological Creative Detours

Abstract

We, as the two of us as well as in other assemblages, have been writing collaboratively (about collaborative writing) for over ten years. Most recently, we have been exploring the idea of our writing together as a process of 'writing to it': how, whatever it is we are seeking to examine or explore, 'writing to it' is what leads to new experimentations and productive writing practices. In this chapter, we take the notion of 'writing to it’ further in picking up this book’s necessary and urgent call for finding ways to resist the hegemony of ‘conventional’ academic writing. Through writing both with and against notions of ‘creativity’ and ‘detours’, we bring the two together as we seek to reconceptualise creative detours even as we follow them; or—better—as they take us with them. We write our collaborative way into an ontological reconfiguring of creative detours. We began writing this chapter through our familiar between-the-twos, each in turn exchanging attachments via email; and we then 'played' with the texts. This 'playing' involved reordering, splicing, and adapting them, searching for how the texts spoke to one another; to, through, past, with, between and beyond each other, seeking connections, dissonances, echoes, and refrains. This processual engagement involved a creative collaborative series of turning and returning to the texts, suggesting lines of flight, taking detours, always moving the work in different directions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)