Writing embodied generosity

This writing-story showcases the possibilities of shaking off limiting conventions and finding one's own way to academic writing. Pauliina had conducted fieldwork on “embodied facilitations,” through methods from dance and movement therapy, in three organizations. She then analyzed her material through thematic coding. This procedure, based on the logic of reduction, removed the diversity of embodied movements that were essential to her and the research participants. In searching for an alternative, we read Cixous' work on “generosity” where she emphasized how the “strangeness” of the other and of ourselves is not something to stay away from, but rather to embrace, during writing. This text, written as an interplay between us, illustrates how the generous stance opened a different approach to writing embodiment in research. We call it “writing embodied generosity”; an art-inspired writing-in-movement through reading, drawing, and listening that overflows and surprises us as we write in embodied multiplicity.