Working at the wonder: Collaborative writing as method of inquiry

This paper offers a discussion concerning the future of collaborative writing as a method of inquiry. Taking the form of a dialogic exchange, we take up Isabelle Stengers’ notion of ‘wonder’ as a creative and political lens through which to consider the disruptive, radical and productive methodological capacity that collaborative writing as a research method potentially offers. Working particularly with Deleuze and Guattari, we argue that language in collaborative writing practices is deeply entangled with complex materialist practice; and through engagements with these ‘matterings’ we make sense of collaborative writing as immanent event. We discuss – and experience – the challenges that collaborative writing has for research and this paper pushes at established categories, works against the fixities of conventional theory construction, contests the humanist and phenomenological proclivities that arguably limit the process and effectiveness of collaborative writing as method of inquiry, and wonders at the immensities that are possible.