https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418809134
Qualitative Inquiry
1–9
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1077800418809134
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Original Article
We are a group of Polish evocative autoethnographers who
have been cooperating on various autoethnographic projects
for several years. We write suggestive autoethnography as a
form of resistance to the neoliberal university, reification and
reduction, measurement, control, and isolation (Poulos, 2017).
We write evocatively because experience is not a “dead thing”
viewed from the perspective of an isolated subject but some-
thing that is being felt and something that one is affected by
(Manning, 2016; Massumi, 2011; Stengers, 2011; Whitehead,
1978). Writing the autoethnography, we created cracks in
which we were able to develop a different way of thinking
about science, existence, education . . . Our writing: to experi-
ence something different, become different and become the
other. We were able to open (oneself) to the flows of being—
where writing itself, meeting others itself became a kind of
realization of dreams contained in words. At the same time,
like guerrillas, we sabotaged the activities of the university
machine. Working with our experiences, mainly educational
ones, allowed for a better understanding, sometimes identify-
ing actors whom we had no idea about, but who (co-)created
“our I / we”; our better being: to feel and flow along the line of
flight . . . —until the next intersection of production—and
again . . .
1
“Working with our experiences, mainly educational
ones, allowed for a better understanding, sometimes identify-
ing actors whom we had no idea about, but who (co-)created
“our I / we”. Assembagges of bodies who (co-)created our
better being in the processes: feeling and flowing along the line
of flight - . . . —until the next intersection of production— and
again . . .”.
Now, we decided to write about the experience of col-
lective writing following the call of Lucinda McKinght,
Owen Bullock, and Rubby Todd (2017) for collective writ-
ing as inquiry. The idea seemed quite simple: By referring
to the previous events related to the writing of co-autoeth-
nography and the event of current writing, we wanted to
grasp what it is and what it does to us. It turned out to be
much more difficult than we had thought. At present, after
almost 6-month work on the article, we are close to the
statement that the project we have undertaken is impossi-
ble. The question arose whether we had reached the limit,
or perhaps one of many limits, of language and research.
It was crucial for our project that, in our opinion, co-auto-
ethnography should be implemented to write about the experi-
ences of co-autoethnographic writing. We believe that this is a
privileged method when it comes to dealing with the multi-
form and multidimensional experience of collective writing.
809134QIX XX X 10.1177/1077800418809134Qualitative InquiryPlawski et al.
research-article 2018
1
University of Szczecin, Poland
Corresponding Author:
Oskar Szwabowski, Institute of Pedagogy, University of Szczecin,
Ogińskiego, 16/17, Szczecin 71-003, Poland.
Email: o.szwabowski@gmail.com
Friendly Writing as Non-inquiry:
The Problems of Collective
Autoethnographic Writing About
Collective Autoethnographic Writing
Marcin Plawski
1
, Oskar Szwabowski
1
, Colette Szczepaniak
1
,
and Paulina Wężniejewska
1
Abstract
We are a group of evocative autoethnographers who have been cooperating on various autoethnographic projects
for several years. In the article, we deal with the problem related to the realization of a project concerning collective
autoethnographic writing. The idea seemed quite simple: By referring to the previous events related to the writing of
collective autoethnography and the event of current writing, we wanted to grasp what it is and what it does to us. It turned
out to be much more difficult than we had thought. Our attempt to tell a story about the experience of experiencing
collective autoethnographic writing was questioned during the process of writing. We started asking ourselves why our
project had been falling apart. Did we experience something unspoken? This article is an insight into the unspoken matter.
We are posing a question about reconsidering the inquiry of collective writing in the spirit of evocative autoethnography.
Keywords
writing as method of inquiry, methods of inquiry, autoethnography, ethnographies, methodologies, collective writing