Writing Choreographies: (STS) Knowledge Production in Post-digital Academia

Abstract

In this paper we develop the notion of “writing choreographies” and explore the epistemic practices and politics of STS writing by drawing on a collective autoethnography of academic work. In particular, we analyse post-digital writing practices, where these are understood as distributed across different devices, tools, bodies, and spaces under conditions in which distinctions between “digital” and “non-digital” formats, practices, and objects are no longer clear. As in the choreography of a dance, writing choreographies emerge from dynamic movements across space and time, follow rhythms and patterns, and are shaped by aesthetic considerations. We argue that writing is choreographed through the artful arrangement and navigation of “seams” between different materialities of writing, and through configuring and “atmosphering” writing spaces. We explore how agency within writing emerges from aesthetic choices and practices, and how STS researchers are “made and done” within their research. As such, writing choreographies speak to the ways in which writers encounter and negotiate current academic structures and dynamics, such as acceleration and increasing pressure to produce concrete “outputs” such as articles.