Collaborative Fragmentation: Matrixial Experiments in Writing-as-Encounter
摘要
Bracha Ettinger’s concept of metramorphosis is defined as a process of change in borderlines and thresholds between being and absence, memory and oblivion, I and non-I. Throughout the re-attuning of distance(s)-in-proximity, metramorphosis creates and is constantly re-created within matrixial interlacing effects of relations-without-relating and separation-in-jointness, in-between presence and absence. The transformative quality posited by Ettinger’s matrixial theory resonates with the work of many queer, anti-racist, black feminists, theorists, literary writers and activists who have similarly troubled universalistic theorisations of subjectivity grounded on colonial and cisheteropatriarchal normativities. In this chapter, we are interested in investigating the points of connection, friction and creative potentiality running through these theories and writing practices. To this end, we offer a dialogical reading of Ettingerian matrixial theory by thinking with and through queer and anti-racist theories and practices that focus on undoing and unbecoming. We aim to emphasise the moments of creative disruption that inhabit collaborative practices in academia and use this disruption as a creative means and a research methodology. Our assumption is that concepts such as undoing, unbecoming, severality, borderlinking and fragmentation can also be used as notional compasses for the generation of new practices and methodologies of reading, writing, researching and relating.