Two Men Talking: A Nomadic Inquiry into Collaborative Writing

Abstract This paper follows the authors' collective biographical inquiry into "becoming men" (Gale and Wyatt, 2008), and pursues questions about "men-ness" in their writing relationship. Drawing primarily from Deleuze, both his philosophical concepts - lines of flight, nomadic inquiry, the rhizome, and more - and his insights into his collaborations with others, the authors work together on collaborative research ventures, mostly in an ebb and flow of writings that they exchange across the ether. They write with/to each other about writing, about their respective work, about love, about loss, about subjectivities. They are aware that in the intertextuality of this writing they perform themselves. Using rhizomatic and nomadic inquiry, in this paper they explore the experience of being two men talking, asking: how is this relationship constituted? How does writing create this relationship? What - gendered, sexualized - subjectivities do they perform to/with each other?