Writing the Unreadable Untext

How did this crazy article idea come about?

Twitter DM

A: Should we maybe write an article for hybridped on why the autoethnog is taking so long and not getting done? Should be fun to write and May spur us on U know Nov is #digiwrimo digital writing month.

B:Yes, let's write it. May argue ethnog IS being written but not in form anyone recognizes, but as HybridPed article. :-)

C; May I?

B: You’ve been writing an autoethnography all that this time? So, that’s what you’ve been doing …

D:  Well, I have been only hearing about this autoethnography from the swarm It is...unaware to me, being written.  So I don’t know why it hasn’t been written not do I know what has been written.  I am an outsider voice. Ignorant and lurking here by cursor not by design, lurking out of the line of attention. But the cursor and the Robin Williams clown remain. What this mean?

is there anybody out there? iicons blindly observing? Where are they here?

i-i-i-daho

i-i-i-daho

they’re living in their own Private idaho,

livin in their own Private.... idaho

Draft...swarm

Being...Becoming (draft…)

Deleuze and Guattari famously start their explanation of the rhizome in A Thousand Plateaus (1988) by fracturing the identity and unity of the authors from a coherent, identifiable two into an incoherent, rhizomatic swarm:

The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd. Here we have made use of everything that came within range, what was closest as well as farthest away. We have assigned clever pseudonyms to prevent recognition. Why have we kept our own names? Out of habit, purely out of habit. To make ourselves unrecognizable in turn. To render imperceptible, not ourselves, but what makes us act, feel, and think. Also because it's nice to talk like everybody else, to say the sun rises, when everybody knows it's only a manner of speaking. To reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I.

We are no longer ourselves. Each will know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied.   

We, too, have reached the point where we can say only i. i'm writing the autoethnography of Rhizo14. Me, too. So am i.

ireally am.

NOT i, IT.

You can see the problem. So can i. Yeah, me, too.

There is no problem there are only solutions, divisions, subtractions, multiplications, additions.

Thinking about the ethics of my cacophony of voices, and that even as iauthor something iam talking about multiple others who were part of my experience but whom i do not and cannot pretend to represent.

What to do with excluded voices?

How is it participatory research if not everyone participates?

How is it participatory research if everyone participates?

Who are we researching for? Are we not researching now?

Speak as i. Make no assumptions beyond i. iX, iY, iZ [letters stand for names]—if need be, but still i.

iLike! iLIE. iAm, iLearn, iTeach

How do all of "i" tell "my" story together? When not all of it can be made legible to others as a linear text? -No story tells all; that’s why it’s a story. It’s all a matter of perspective, as Nietzsche says.  Stories can unfold in different ways depending on where i was at the time.  A multiplicity of stories with the potential to unfold.

A research story?

A learning story?

THAT is what #rhizo14 has been to me – a contagious learning eruption.

You.Story.

fig.0 you.

The cursor which you can't see on this page is counting the seconds...

And if modern physics is correct with its uncertainty principle, Goedel’s Theorem, etc., then telling all is not even possible.

not all, not anybody, not nobody, knot nothing.  

knot somebody.

you...us(e)...knot.

Don’t think of linear text as a line but as a strand of DNA—a line certainly, but twisted around another line and almost meaningless until it begins to unpack itself—proliferate and become multiple—in the complex interactions with its environment, which intertwines around it, both unpacking themselves skilfully or unskilfully in relation to each other.

i think this is why old texts continue to echo as they intertwine and unpack, couple, with other environments, other texts. Text is a starting point, not an end point. This autoethnography is a start point, not an end point.

Those are good points...and a bad point?

I mean the end.

itell the story that ican. Any itells the story that ican. Let each ifind its space within this space and link out to other spaces (Zeega, etc.) if needed.

There is no need only desire.

And how to write a story that has no beginning or end, an unfolding one, when my feelings and thoughts change everyday?  It is a draft...

In, out, connect scribble dot.

We are left with this connection…

Love? Appropriation? Violence? Learning?

Social research should always "suffer" from this because life does not stop moving while we take a snapshot of it to analyze. And interpretation never captures all there is to know and see.

iam not just a spatial being, but a spatio-temporal being. ihere/now is not necessarily ithere/then. ideterritorialize and reterritorialize. ilooking from this angle see differently than ilooking from that angle. Rhizo14 can only be seen from a multiplicity of angles. Multiple i's/eyes. Nice pun. iwill keep it, amplify it, ride it.

& the i’s have it?

And yet i hope to make the rhizo14 experience legible to others without losing its complexity.

swarm, education, art, celebration, waste, destruction…? Swarm!

Traditional content analysis and coding divides complex narrative into discrete units and almost divorces them from context such that they lose their richness, yet you need to bring that richness back in to tell a compelling story with the thick description that makes qualitative and ethnographic research so special and meaningful.

There is no need. There is only desire.

This is the most important thing: In a Youtube video, Dave Cormier provides five steps for stepping into the MOOC rabbit hole, which includes Rhizo14:

First, you orient yourself to the MOOC by

(Then, you declare to the MOOC by

(Third, you network with the MOOC by

(Fourth, you cluster in the MOOC by

(And finally, you focus the MOOC by

(These five steps guide you safely to the bottom of the MOOC here.)

high-jacking the course to meet your own personal or professional goals: a project, a grant, research, etc.)

finding and connecting to others in the MOOC whom you find engaging in some way.)

responding through comments and replies to what others have brought to the MOOC.)

choosing your favorite net tools (blog, Twitter, chat, Facebook, etc) and adding your value to the mix for others to see.)

anchoring yourself to things that are recognizable—materials, links, times, and maybe people—so that you have some landmarks to return to when you feel lost, and at first, you will be lost.

(could we extract a few quotes from collab autoethnog and try to interweave a story of rhizo14, interweaving my voices into one story? Wouldn't it be a work of art? Even if partial?)

ilike what iam doing now. Two i's/eyes writing together. Yes! Synchronicity is fun, but asynchronicity will work, too. Yup. This is iLove.

ican lay down the HA! rhythm track while iX lays down the bass track, then other i's/eyes can add other tracks, links, riffs. Some ican do a traditional coherent bit in the middle somewhere just to struggling readers an anchor, a roller-coaster safety bar to hold onto for those who don’t want to throw up their hands.

(maybe early middle like second para needs coherence. Maybe every other para is coherent commentary in italics?) ithink so. iwill try it out. iwill be coherent when something emerges to cohere about. Other i's/eyes will enjoy this, ithink, especially iA and iB.

this is not graffiti. Please erase.

<iwasn’t sure where to add some thoughts - so iput them here - iRebecca>

Wonder if we want to talk about the necessity of mixed commitment with Rhizo - part of what makes it work for some people is the mixed level of commitment to it. When they are busy, when life gets in the way, than can easily leave, and re-emerge when they have time again. The desire to ensure voices are heard, when combined with the mixed commitment, makes writing and analyzing the autoethnography a little like herding cats [which is very rhizomatic, so let i write rhizomatic].  Somebody described Dave’s role in the course as coming to the party with a pocket full of frogs.  i challenge is to try to put the frogs back into different pockets.  That’s a reason the autoeth is so hard for i to do.  At least that’s what E might think.

There is also the fear of taking ownership over a collaborative effort. We question ‘who am i to speak on behalf of rhizo or the collaborative authoethnographic community’[because we are i, and if i don’t speak, then who will?]? That form of impostor syndrome that we all feel from time to time. i is not an imposter? Speaking on behalf of [not on behalf of. i am the community speaking, though not all of it] the community is scary from both an impostor syndrome perspective and a fear of not getting it right. As mentioned above, i can only speak to MY experience within the community. What right do i have to speak about the community in general [there is no community in general, only i]. This is part of the tension of doing collaborative work, especially at a distance when you haven’t necessarily worked together with the same people before. [i don’t think this is collaborative—it is simply imy voice]

_____________________________________________

Ok off to DM ppl. E and F replied. G replied -Well, it seems the i's/eyes/ayes have it. Sorry, i'm a sucker for bad puns. Are the i’s less visible than the I’s?

i must teach a class now. Write more later. #nanowrimo.

ILove! (i hate autocorrect! [participant]  just wrote about that recently btw). Almost midnight here. Will DM folks to ask u for access if they wanna join in, ok?

B and C :)

Forget conventional research. Let's do untexty unlinear things. Thinglinks that link to various blogposts and artefacts. Hybridped will love it. iwill do rhizomatic things.

(B adds) The problem with any kind of textual representation of an online experience is that it will almost always fall short. Our own contexts, our own reasons for being and staying or leaving or returning are vastly different. To make sense of the rhizomatic hive, as E puts it, is to settle down to bed with the chaotic element. Or maybe chaos is not the right word. There was always a method to the madness. We were pushing up against the seems of a MOOCian space, and Dave’s open-ended prompting gave us the license to not just push, but to hack, remake, revamp, and move away from whatever idea he might have had, and go where the going took us. Telling that story? How do you tell that story?

I imagine this document as a sort of snowglobe. I read through it, seeing more i’s than my eyes can handle, and think, we’re all in there together, floating around. The shaking up is the jarring of the memory. I almost feel as if I would need to go back, read my writing from that period of time, re-examine where my head was at, and then re-enter the moment. Why was I in that space at that time? Eventually, the snowglobe might settle. The pieces might fall into place. The story might get told.

<H  here> at some level in the social i’m comfortable with anyone in Rhizo speaking as me and would defend their comments as authentic and refreshingly accurate. It worries me that i’m arguing for the dispersal of self that could become group thought? Yes but trust is here that merging or scattering are honest outcomes of our participation--by being other we are not less ourselves. While it’s unavoidable that any interpretation i make is mine, in the need to be accountable and not just fictional, i’d stand by this document as authentic even before it is written on the strength of both the social and plain risk-taking foolishness.

Sunday 11/2 Quotation from: Notes Towards The Development of Critical Hope - Dismantling the Iron House

"Although classical visions of emancipation suffered from false notions of the universality of human nature and unilinear narratives historical progress, radical democratic theory acknowledges that universal struggles "have to be constructed around" particularities (123)."

Mouffe, Chantal and Laclau, Ernesto. "Hope, Passion, Politics." Mary Zournazi, ed.

Hope: New Philosophies for Change. London: Routledge, 2002.

<H out>

G  here - i’m not even happy speaking for myself, let alone for anyone else.  Serious joke - i am not the same person as i was when rhizo14 happened ;)  i’d defend anyone’s right to talk on behalf of the swarm, though.  What i am realising more and more is that a lot of so called “truths” are a matter of perspective - there’s a multiplicity of ways in which a story can unfold, and the way i might take it is probably not the way any other i would.  It’s like John Hicks’ blind men and the elephant:

“Three blind men were touching an elephant. The first blind man was holding the elephant's leg. He said, "I think an elephant is like the truck of a great tree." The second blind man disagreed. While holding the elephant's trunk he said, "I believe an elephant is like a large snake," The third blind man believed they were both wrong. "An elephant is like a great wall," he exclaimed. He was touching the elephant's side. Each blind man was convinced he was right and others were wrong without ever realizing they were all touching the same elephant. Some believe the blind men in this parable represent the major religions of the world, each in contact with the same "elephant" without knowing it.” (http://www.leaderu.com/theology/hick.html)

i think G has been reading too much Deleuze ;)

i am fed up with elephants in rooms.

Invented Citations

When We Connect, We Collaborate. By Write A. Story. Dir. Read A. Text. Adapt. Remix A. Video. Perf. World Jugglers of Text.Reflect/Connect/Direct. The Swarm, 12 Feb. 2014. Web. 2 Nov. 2014. <http://RhizoSwarm.org>.

You, Me I. "Lost in the Rhizo Swarm." Weblog post. We Call This Writing. The Swarm, 31 Oct. 2014. Web. 2 Nov. 2014. <http://RhizoSwarm.org>…

Legible Text for HybridPed Article

Nothing is complete by itself; it can only become complete through what it lacks. But what every particular thing lacks is infinite; we cannot know in advance what complement it calls for. – Jacques Derrida

How do you conduct research about the experience of participants in a connectivist MOOC? How do you describe the experience in a way that is both legible to readers and yet remains true to the chaotic nonlinear lived experiences of participants? What are the main struggles of conducting participatory research about connected learning in digital spaces? It is often fascinating to reflect and write about the complex process of research itself, and not just the product.

A group of us who participated in Dave Cormier’s #rhizo14 MOOC (started January 2014, more info in this interview conducted with Dave by [name] & [another name] ) decided we wanted to try to conduct research on participant experiences in this course. Research on cMOOCs had been conducted previously, but some of us felt that reading that research did not bring the connectivist experience to life, did not make readers understand it fully. We also felt that this research needed to be conducted in a participatory manner (“we have the tools and the opportunity to write our own story, rather than suffering someone else to write it for us” as [name], and so we followed the example of Crump, Bentley, etc. (2014? from eMOOCs conference) and decided to conduct a collaborative autoethnography. This started out as a google doc where participants in the course were invited to write their post-MOOC reflections as narratives (how many). Since then, a group of us (most of whom are authors of this article) have been having discussions across the MOOC’s facebook group, our blogs, twitter and google+ on how to best to go about taking next steps in the collaborative autoethnography.

Collaborative autoethnography about rhizomatic learning seemed appropriate, given

Deleuze and Guattari famously start their explanation of the rhizome in A Thousand Plateaus (1988) by fracturing the identity and unity of the authors from a coherent, identifiable two into an incoherent, rhizomatic swarm:

The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd. Here we have made use of everything that came within range, what was closest as well as farthest away. We have assigned clever pseudonyms to prevent recognition. Why have we kept our own names? Out of habit, purely out of habit. To make ourselves unrecognizable in turn. To render imperceptible, not ourselves, but what makes us act, feel, and think. Also because it's nice to talk like everybody else, to say the sun rises, when everybody knows it's only a manner of speaking. To reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I.

We are no longer ourselves. Each will know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied.   

(Below text is currently patchwork for what others have said that I think is legible and worth placing here - will add in connectors later)

( will plug things in according to the headings [participant] suggested, and see if i find stuff that falls outside the categories)

Methodology of research

(from my blog - will paraphrase later; keeping the grey color of text ot remind that I need to paraphrase; more stuff also here: Geist-Martin et al cite Ellis (2004, p. 30) on autoethnography, and it captures how I feel about this approach, why I wanted to do it:

“The goal is to practice an artful, poetic, and empathic social science in which readers can keep in their minds and feel in their bodies the complexities of concrete moments of lived experience”

As Geist-Martin et al say, doing collaborative autoethnography rejects the traditional approach of disembodied academic research.  AE “challenges the hegemony of objectivity or the artificial distancing of self from one’s research subjects” (Change et al p. 18), because analyzing oneself is something no other research method does.

Chang et al made me laugh because of its vagueness:

“we argue that CAE as an emerging research practice should not be limited to a particular approach or style of representation as long as it holds true to the salient aspects of methodological rigor. Rather, it should yield to the demands of the research community a it is shaped by the pragmatists of social inquiry and lends itself to the true understanding of social phenomenon”

Chang et al (p. 26):

“CAE offers us a scholarly space to hold up mirrors to each other in communal self-interrogation and to explore our subjectivity in the company of one another”

Methodology of representation of data

Authorship – identity – ethical issues

Power issues – voice – volume – appropriation – time

Participation issues

(Rhizomatic) learning

Genre – poetic – musical – zeegal – marginal etc

Performance -front-back stage

Just to give a flavour of the comments:

A
11:31 3 Nov 2014   
I so love this crazy idea - and want to join in! Sadly - somehow cannot access the original autoehtnography document anymore so have sent a request for access... I would like to cast my eyes over it again - and pull out some of the juicy bits to build in here...
    
B
14:07 3 Nov 2014   
I see you have access now. Make us solid.
  
 A
15:13 3 Nov 2014   
Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt...

C
21:40 1 Nov 2014   
if anyone recognizes the unreadable
"i"
in the margins --
hearing/here in the outsider's voices
inside the
Rhizomatic swarm --
speak then of the story ....
whisper the echoes along these lines
of linear text,
intertwine around it --
step for step into the rabbit hole
where voices are heard --
we are all inside this snow globe
awaiting the shaking out of
ideas.

(A margin poem of found words)

D
18:07 1 Nov 2014   
antics

B
21:10 30 Oct 2014   
Let's find a way to keep the marginal comments as part of the doc.

E
16:53 3 Nov 2014   
comments in the margins, at least in this document, remind me of a type of art :)

F
16:41 8 Nov 2014   
[G] had some really cool things to say on fb - I wanna add them in.
BTW to incorporate the marginal into the final paper I have a rather "simplish" idea - Write a legible article, embed this google doc within it. The Google doc as an artefact of rhizo14, the "article" as commentary on it and on doing collaborative autoethnography. What do you guys think? Will blog about it as soon as I get the chance

E
16:34 3 Nov 2014   
LOL, so true :)

C
10:03 3 Nov 2014   
Me vs Autocorrect in the margins of the page

B
14:10 3 Nov 2014   
Ahh … so auto-correct is also part of "i"? I really like that. [F] should say something about her iPad's uneven Net connection as part of the swarm. I should say that my autocorrect always changes "[F]" to "[S]". What if i quit treating that as error and work with it as part of iVoice? Recall Serres' parasite, which in French uses the third meaning of parasite as noise, more in the communications theory sense. The noise (parasite) is always there, as it is in this doc, as it is in Rhizo14. Traditional classes unnaturally work to reduce the noise, but that's where the fun is (ask the kids). That's where all the zombies are.


B

13:35 10 Nov 2014   
Well, at least i can follow the instructions.

F
19:38 1 Nov 2014   
just FYI: the discussion reached a point where we realized it makes no sense to call it "collab auto" unless every person who "authors" something out of it is involved... which means everything you publish out of it cannot refer to people who are not authoring it. If that's clear?
So there are 20+ people who wrote in the gdoc. If 10 of us are writing this article, we ONLY refer to the narratives of the 10 of us. We do NOT speak about other people. It would not be "auto" otherwise. We could later be a different collection of "we", different subset of the 20+, e.g. 5 of us, and we could write another paper. etc. But there probably should be some thing else that is less analytical that [J] and I talked about - something that just represents those narratives in a visual linkable form that is accessible to make researching it easier - but still only for those within it. Because the whole point of "auto" is to not let someone ELSE interpret your experience for you, but rather to collaborate with others to interpret your own through working with them on theirs with them present... ummm

A
11:33 3 Nov 2014   
Thanks - got that :-D - Will still give us lots to play with

B
04:14 9 Nov 2014   
Yes, an ethnography can be analysis and interpretation (kinds of tracing), but it can also be mapping, as in this doc. We are attempting, or rather, i am attempting to expand the field of investigation to include more than analysis. This doc is a nice step in that direction, don't you think?

H
09:56 1 Nov 2014   
And of course supremely editable...as in these words can ghost in and out by your sufferance, an unreadable untext.

D
17:02 1 Nov 2014   
An Unreadable intertexts.

D
17:04 1 Nov 2014   
Inattention.

D
17:04 1 Nov 2014   
In attention

D
17:04 1 Nov 2014   
ATTENTION

E
16:54 3 Nov 2014   
So you are the Cursor Lurker!

D
14:07 10 Nov 2014   
cursory lurker, curse lurker

D
16:49 1 Nov 2014   
us?

E
16:59 3 Nov 2014   
I think framing is an issue here. If it's an autoethnog then people who participated in the original story sharing needs to participate. If they don't then it's not an auto-enthog. So some voices don't get heard. Is this a problem? Perhaps it is, but maybe it is not. Who is harmed or mis-represented if their voice isn't included? If they don't wish their voice to be included, does the group have the right to force the matter? open ended questions :)

F
16:52 8 Nov 2014   
Those are kind of the questions that are paralyzing me. I think it can be "autoethnog" as long as all authors of the text are the ones whose narratives get in. What makes it tricky is that it no longer becomes an "autoethnog OF rhizo14" but an "autoethnog of a SUBSET of rhizo14ers" - right?
It is impossible to represent the voice that does not want to participate in the autoethnog (unless you re-represent them, not using their own narrative and interpretation); also, what if someone wanted to participate but got sidelined by mistake? Thinking of someone in particular.
So this is possibly as some people would say a rhizo14 collab autoethnog of SOME of the people in some sort of "inner circle" of "clique" trying to describe our positive experiences of rhizo14. Not saying others have same experience , but sharing our own in the hope it will be of benefit to others to see it from our perspective(S)?

D
14:04 10 Nov 2014   
iagree

E
17:01 3 Nov 2014   
Do many smaller "i"s tell a story? I think they do. Is it the job of the group to refine and represent the collective? Or should the reader draw their own conclusions (see Veletsianos's collected stories of student writings on the MOOCs that they took)

F
16:59 8 Nov 2014   
yes, I liked the idea of Velestianos' book, but see what we are doing as very different. What do you think? I'm trying to put my finger on the main points of difference (so many?)
Although... we could end up doing a small book of people's narratives followed by excerpts from their blogposts across rhizo14 and beyond (each person would write their own chapter) - what an awesome idea ;)

And then whoever wanted to collaborate from the chapter-authors could work as a "we" to do some interpretation and call it collab autoethnog

B    

04:04 9 Nov 2014   
I can write a chapter. I've already written several.

J
12:54 10 Nov 2014   
I am Reading Deleuze's "The Fold" at the moment. He's big on folds.

D
12:56 10 Nov 2014   
Are we in the fold? I always considered myself a lost sheep.

D
14:14 10 Nov 2014   
baaa baaa baaa
tout est baaa baaa

J
14:39 10 Nov 2014   
We had joy we had fun, we had rhizomes in the sun

D
12:57 10 Nov 2014   
silence is so uncomfortable

B
13:28 10 Nov 2014   
Silence is so noisy.

D
14:03 10 Nov 2014   
shhh

F
17:00 8 Nov 2014   
err good point?

B
03:49 9 Nov 2014   
Yes, i think it is a good point, so let's not worry too much about what is left out. Let's focus on what is here. It's the value that we can add, admitting up front that we cannot bring all value—just bringing what we have.

D
14:06 10 Nov 2014   
how do i know what is left out as it is by default included by being left out

J
12:56 10 Nov 2014   
This is EXACTLY what I have been reading about for the past couple of weeks. Deleuze talks about folds unfolding, like fractals or DNA

B
13:32 10 Nov 2014   
Yes, i am doing Deleuze here. This is Deleuze embodied and expressed.

F

17:02 8 Nov 2014   
This whole exercise of this untext we wrote collaboratively is a good example of an ill-structured prompt and the kind of creative chaos it can produce...

B
03:50 9 Nov 2014   
Yes, so why can't this stand on its own merits? Do we need to frame it with something more legible?

B
03:34 10 Nov 2014   
Some of this is most serious, some not, but the whole thing is serious. Kinda like Rhizo14, I think.

D
17:52 1 Nov 2014   
The margin.

F
18:58 31 Oct 2014   
Hoping [H] and [D] would be willing to dig up a sample that advances the narrative of this article, even if not produced by them, we can cite and get permission from creators

G

5:36 3 Nov 2014   
A sample [F]?

F
17:03 8 Nov 2014   
[G]?

B
03:44 9 Nov 2014   
i think a sample [name] works nicely here. In the hip-hop world, being sampled is a compliment.

F
17:02 8 Nov 2014   
can someone at some point explain to me this whole "desire" thing?

B
03:50 9 Nov 2014   
Hmm … I thought I did that. Maybe a post is in order. OR look a few comments below. Desire is a deleuzional concept.

D
18:13 1 Nov 2014   
people suffer

F
19:00 31 Oct 2014   
It would be cool to always use lowercase "i" in the article for several reasons:
1. It is like bell hooks does... A way of being sort of less... Making the "I" less arrogant
2. It fits well with the i[name] i[another name]  thing
3. It emphasizes that we are not talking about "I" as used in regular English but that we actually mean something different by it. An "i" that is really a multiplicity and not one clear "I". If that makes sense?

B
20:30 31 Oct 2014   
i like this — new i's, eyes, ayes.
Show all 4 replies

G

20:39 1 Nov 2014   
declaring ourselves contradictory and incomplete we are less obliged to "making sense" but present and real. for instance i might declare myself the authoritative miss-interpretation of [J] and she could issue denials to create a kind of human noise space. The one thing I worry about is the appearance that we are irresponsible and fooling around. Being also individuals and subject to the rules of responsible voices (not sure of the right word) matters.

C
09:54 1 Nov 2014   
Not just legible. Surface-able. Visible. A track of sorts to what went on, as far we one can tell. Much went on beyond the field of vision, too, I/we are sure.

B
04:07 9 Nov 2014   
AK, we are working on a swarm meaning: not individual or group, not a unity at all. This is different and exciting. Let's ride this waves (plural on purpose)

B
04:11 9 Nov 2014   
[F], you are understanding Deleuze and Guattari without reading them. Well done. Both singular and plural, multiple, rhizomatic. Nice.
    

F
19:41 1 Nov 2014   
LOVE IT, love this swarm thing!!!

F
20:00 1 Nov 2014   
Can I actually admit I am not sure what you mean when you say desire and am always distracted by the sexual connotations of the word? sorry...
Show all 3 replies

J
13:00 10 Nov 2014   
It's what Plato calls the appetitive part of the soul. He thinks desire is unthinking urges. Stuff like hunger, thirst. Really not sure I agree with him,but.

B
13:37 10 Nov 2014   
Yes, Deleuze seems to agree that most of desire lies far below the surface of consciousness in the depths of the river. We see only the ripples on top.

F
17:07 8 Nov 2014   
I'm not sure who wrote this but it gets my hackles up for someone to declare sthg as "the most important thing" - it may be most important to THEM but it was not to me - nor do I think rhizo14 actually led us to do that? I'm not sure...

B
03:54 9 Nov 2014   
uhh… please feel free to edit it, take it out.

F
19:02 11 Nov 2014   
nah, keeping it - see if you want to play that game later?

F
19:02 31 Oct 2014   
Just so others know, all of the above was B and myself writing simultaneously yday, interleaved and interweaved and influencing each other's prose as we wrote and sometimes mistakenly overwrote each other. After a while, I went to bed so pretty soon everything i read will be new to me...

C
09:57 1 Nov 2014   
And as I am writing this morning, I see [H] writing alongside me in the text. Literally. Hey [H]!

C
09:55 1 Nov 2014   
right now, the horn section is rocking as a choral unit, bringing some off-rhythm kicks to your bass and drums.

F
17:09 8 Nov 2014   
we could highlight the "coherent" parts in some color or something (they're very few and far between btw)

B
13:58 9 Nov 2014   
Yes, we could provide all the coherence as authors, though it still would not be a very colorful document, but why should we? I want to leave more room for the reader to bring their own coherence to this document. After all, that is what Rhizo14 did: demanded that the community brought the coherence. Guess what? We did.

E
20:40 3 Nov 2014   
representation of the rhizome? :)
 

F
19:04 31 Oct 2014   
Good point, [name]! Maybe each one of is could write insight into why we feel it does not get done. Life definitely got in your way more than is routine for most people.
And the point of herding cats you make is much more challenging online of course. I just realized that while u and i have heard/seen each other speak we never "talked" properly. I feel like calling you now. I think i will!

B
03:56 9 Nov 2014   
iname is correct: the map is not the territory. But the map is all that we can produce. The map produce the world we inhabit, but it is not the world. This is the tension we live.

C
09:56 1 Nov 2014   
This seems to me to be the heart of what you are writing here, and why it is so difficult. You are trying to represent my experience in Rhizo14 for me, and you are you, not me. How can you reach out so that I can lend you my voice? That's the heart of it.

D
20:19 1 Nov 2014   
that's your voice?

G
05:53 3 Nov 2014   
B, the "i" thing is fine with me. In a way it reduces the need to exhibit an agreement, judgement or conclusion--things that Ii feel are blocking us/me/i. Added something below.

C  
20:44 3 Nov 2014   
In previous projects I've worked on with others there is also the sense that Idea "X" is so-and-so's initial idea, so there must be a frame in which they are viewing this project. We can certainly contribute and augment this project, but there is at least an initial plan. With the AE it seems a bit like there is no captain at the helm, and a reluctance to step up to the helm, for whatever reason that may be :)
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F
19:07 11 Nov 2014   
that would be me, right? (sorry, I know you don't have edit rights to this doc anymore, but I've blogged about my reluctance to step in and lead)

F
19:56 31 Oct 2014   
Exactly right,[name]

Which is why, really, a collab autoethnog is only collab if the ppl who write narratives in it are the ones who write the ethnog research aspect of it as well. For a regular article it can never be everyone. For some other creative solution it might be, w varying degrees of commitment and participation. If that makes sense.
But this article is about bringing those issues up. Why they make it hard to finish it up

D
18:02 1 Nov 2014   
YES [F].

K
02:03 10 Nov 2014   
I see the MOOC and challenge the MOOC ... reminded of a peer review comment that #rhizo14 wasn't a MOOC because it didn't look like anything the reviewer had seen - but the reviewers view was shallow ... missing much of the MOOC history and context ...

B
03:36 10 Nov 2014   
This is a rhizomatic MOOC writ small, don't you think?

F
19:09 11 Nov 2014   
ha! Good point [K] - reviewer didn't know what the heck we were about - which is kind of the point? How do we represent this in way that people who have never heard or experienced it can imagine and understand it?

D
18:04 1 Nov 2014   
And then you would know that the moment is past.

D
18:05 1 Nov 2014   
A story is told.

F
17:15 8 Nov 2014   
[G],  "by being other we are not less ourselves" - wow, so poetic. Not sure what it means, though!!!

B
04:09 9 Nov 2014   
This is the heart of the swarm voice: both I and i, not individual and not group, no unity at all. This is a new voice. Let's explore it.
    

G
18:36 9 Nov 2014   
Agree with Bakhtin that whatever dimensionality existing in myself comes from contact with others. Awareness of other surpasses awareness of self. It brings the world to us and says: "this is what it is--you belong here and not inside your head." Self is too small to hold a whole person but does act a a kind of vessel to travel in. [F],  I'm not entirely sure what "not less ourselves" tells me about myself. Maybe an insistence on not being taken for a singularity or the appearance of a fully autonomous individual. Unfairly to others some of this thinking comes from my own private experience of illness and losing a presence in the world--not "being" anymore. And maybe that's too heavy a metaphor for how we somehow maintain the difference and uniqueness that diversity demands while still being able to work together? Am I clear on this??? Nope.

D
14:21 10 Nov 2014   
that has no truck with ielephant
    

F
17:19 8 Nov 2014   
haha I have to ask why!!!

B
03:42 9 Nov 2014   
Hmm … to play with the conventions that demand authority from a single I rather than from a swarm i?
  

K
02:02 10 Nov 2014   
Do we want to add twitter handles or some such thing to the name?

B
03:35 10 Nov 2014   
I will add mine.

E
18:50 26 Mar
Add: “[email] ”

D
12:59 10 Nov 2014   
They are made here in effigy

B
13:33 10 Nov 2014   
i carry them with me. They cannot avoid being here if they are i.

D
14:03 10 Nov 2014   
iffigy

J
13:04 10 Nov 2014   
I made it - late to the party, as ever. I was reading Deleuze!

B
13:34 10 Nov 2014   
This is being Deleuze.

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