Collective Biography and the Entangled Enlivening of Being

Abstract

In this paper we explore the very particular forms and productive possibilities of collaborative writing that are generated in collective biography workshops, focusing in particular on the collaborative generation of memory stories. Drawing on conceptual resources from Deleuze and Barad we work our way through the paradox of working with intensely felt evocative memories within the poststructural conceptual space of the deconstructed -of-thought. We analyze a story told in a collective biography workshop on writing, and work with it in relation to the concepts of being as emergent within the encounter, intra-action or the entanglement of agencies, the significance of matter, the movement from perception and affection to percept and affect, and diffraction as concept and practice.