Co-Writing with Care: Ethics in/as Rehearsal

Abstract

This article offers a vision of how scholars in community-engaged research can use peer co-writing to rehearse ethical engagement as an ongoing, contingent practice woven throughout the research process. The authors position ethics as both a process of constant rehearsal and the thing they are rehearsing for. As the co-authors cared for each other as scholars and people, through both honest critique and humble support, co-writing became a rehearsal space for translating theoretical ideas of ethics and community engagement into embodied practice. They found María Puig de la Bellacasa’s formulation of knowledge products as “matters of care” influential in shaping how they understand and practise ethics. Positioning the enactment of care as the ethical standard of collaboration does the work of making research more sustainable and generative by placing value on the interpersonal relationships that make research viable and not only on the research product. It also allows them to interrogate how individual knowledges are informed by larger communities and challenges them to acknowledge how all thinking is a collaborative process.