Abstract
This article describes a collaborative writing strategy when you are alone. It is the story of how I came to bring Phineas, the protagonist in A. S. Byatt’s The Biographer’s Tale, into my writing process as a third voice in my dialogue with my data. It is a self-reflective text that shows how co-writers are always present, even when you might feel that you are writing all alone. In The Biographer’s Tale, the academic Phineas renounces his post-structural dissertation project in literature to search for “things” and “facts.” He decides to write a biography. However, Phineas discovers that “facts” are slippery and not easily “pieced together.” Phineas writes about his struggles, and so do I. Through co-writing with Phineas, I gradually found a voice of experience, which helped me to transforming my ethnographic data into research texts.
Original language | English |
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Journal | Cultural Studies - Critical Methodologies |
Volume | 14 |
Issue number | 4 |
Pages (from-to) | 351-360 |
Number of pages | 10 |
ISSN | 1532-7086 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2014 |
Keywords
- co-writing
- literature
- ethnography
- categorization
- researcher voice