Collective Biography and the Question of Difference

Abstract

This article engages with the research method of collective biography. We are particularly interested in what the question of difference brings to bear on the collective biography process. The aim of embodied writing in the collective biography process is “to tell the memory in such a way that it is vividly imaginable by others, such that those others can extend their own imaginable experience of being in the world through knowing the particularity of another” (Davies & Gannon). However, our own attempt to work with the method had us grappling with how to engage with a story that did not elicit understanding and identification but rather evoked, for some, a sense of incommensurable difference. By bringing together a poststructural concern with power relationships and a Deleuzian interest in engendering new synergies and possibilities, the article makes a theoretical contribution to new conceptual repertoires on the question of difference and its implications for feminist research.