Cirrus@Austlit

'This paper explores the complexity of collaborative authorship in the humanities, proposing the string figure as a dexterous model with which to map connections amongst a broad network of contributors. Drawing on the recent work of Donna Haraway, in addition to post-structuralist thinkers like Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, string figures (eg cat’s cradle) are rendered as adequately supple and striated to the diagramming of creative synergy. To this end the authors deploy fictocritical and experimental writing techniques, as well as images, probing the complexities of joint composition. Their text takes on the shape of a string game passed back and forth across a motley crew of agents and actors.' (Publication abstract)