Fragility of becoming together: renewing hope through letter writing

Abstract

Our writing departed from frustration and discomfort with how academia and society are addressing the pressing sustainability problems we face as humanity. We expressed and explored this frustration through a circle of letter writing. We are a collective of people who have relationships to the master’s program Sustainable Management at Uppsala University in Sweden. Through our readings of Kristeva and Arendt, we developed the notion of becoming together, and by writing letters to each other, we found a way to reconnect with hope. There is a sense of community and ‘real’ exploration when we write together. In offering letter writing as collective writing, we also hope to reach out to those who feel the constraints of academic writing within predefined boundaries and genres. Our goal is to explore how we can use our writing as a way of being differently in academia.