An experiment in writing that flows: Citationality and collaborative writing

Our contribution to this collection responds through collaborative writing to the editors’ summons for writing that aspires to “free impulses to generate different creations and different connections” (p. 8). During our 2014-15 collaborative writing project at Edinburgh we – a group of faculty and students – engaged in writing and creating practices that asked us to think again about citationality. We found ourselves borrowing each other’s words and phrases to inspire new writing of our own; we took cues from each other’s breathing and sighs; we riffed off each other’s movements and gestures. Our processes were iterative, relational, affectively responsive: tightly bounded understandings of citation fail to recognise the ubiquity of the indirect citational practices in which we all are continuously involved. In this paper we draw from and inquire into these practices, thinking with Deleuze and Guattari as we become-monstrous in our collaborations. Citing all the while.