How can we overcome the limits of academic narrative to create truly shared knowledge? A concrete experience of collective writing devices that restore narrative power to participants.
The form of narrative as epistemological matrix
In her enlightening article (attached) published in the journal Culture et Recherche No. 148, Dr. Mélodie Faury, a communication researcher, aptly theorizes an idea that is very important to me: “participatory sciences and research are not limited to producing knowledge; they weave links, transform relationships and the arrangements they explore.” This observation resonates deeply with my practice of accompanying participatory and cooperative projects. As she affirms, “the way of writing is part of the elaboration of our knowledge and our relationship to the world”, a conviction that structures my entire approach.
The central problem that Mélodie Faury raises is that of the inadequacy between the richness of participatory experiences and the relative poverty of traditional academic formats. The scientific article, with its academic norms, operates as a reductive filter that “leaves certain modes of existence at the margins in its restitutions”. This reduction is not trivial: it constitutes a form of epistemological violence that erases voices, attachments, and lived transformations.
Faced with the same observation, I have long developed a practical approach that I believe responds quite well to the problems raised by Mélodie Faury for “relational, ethical, sensitive narratives that open the possibility of allowing ourselves to be touched, grasped and collectively transformed by what is being woven”. My cooperative narrative device seeks precisely to create the material and symbolic conditions for this type of narration to emerge and endure.
A distributed narrative production device
My method consists of orchestrating collective experiences followed by a three-stage writing process. After each moment of exploratory work, participants are invited to produce three distinct types of writing: a personal synthesis of what they have received, the expression of any disagreements, and additional contributions. This tripartition is not arbitrary, it responds to what Bruno Latour would call “matters of concern”: recognizing that knowledge is never univocal but always crossed by productive tensions.
- The first component, the synthesis, reveals an impressive dimension of collective knowledge. Each participant produces their own cognitive cartography of the lived experience, and the set of these syntheses forms what I call “choral knowledge.” This epistemological polyphony echoes what Donna Haraway calls “situated knowledges” (1988), knowledge that assumes its anchoring in particular bodies, experiences, and perspectives. The juxtaposition of these syntheses creates a stereoscopic effect: knowledge gains in content, depth, and relief through the multiplication of viewpoints.
- The second component, that of disagreements, institutes what Jacques Rancière might call a “space of dissensus”. By giving a structural place to controversy, the device recognizes that “the inquiry extends into and through writing: together they name, recognize and give meaning to what is being woven” (Mélodie Faury). Disagreements are no longer obstacles to overcome but generators of complexity and nuance. They maintain knowledge in a state of productive tension, resisting premature closure of meaning.
- The third component concerns additional contributions: ideas, leads, or knowledge that have not been addressed but that the participant considers relevant, thereby enriching the common corpus. This is the “master’s place” offered to each participant; because the “master” is only a role, but in no way a superiority, as everyone has knowledge to contribute. It is very important to open this space so that knowledge can fully emanate from the collective.
The materiality of sharing: infrastructures of collective memory
The technical innovation of my device lies in its material and technological dimension. I have developed a technology and method: participants photograph their handwritten texts and upload them to a shared web space accessible via a simple QR code with their phone. This apparently mundane gesture contains considerable symbolic and practical significance. First, it preserves the graphic singularity of each contribution; handwriting carries traces of the body, emotion, and spontaneity that standardized digital transcription would neutralize.
Furthermore, the technical autonomy of participants in the online publishing process constitutes an act of epistemological empowerment. As Isabelle Stengers emphasizes, “tell me how you tell, I’ll tell you what construction you’re participating in.” (2009) By giving participants direct control over the publication of their knowledge, the device institutes them as legitimate authors rather than mere sources of information for a researcher who would synthesize it.
The permanence of this digital space, which I guarantee independently of any commercial platform, responds to what Mélodie Faury calls the necessity to “bear witness to existences, absences, to recognize interdependencies”. This living library becomes a “place of memory” in Pierre Nora’s sense (1984), but an open, evolving place where everyone can return to draw or simply note that their knowledge exists somewhere, available to others.
The ethics of accompaniment: holding space without colonizing it
My role as facilitator in this device deserves particular reflection. I am neither the depositary nor the interpreter of the knowledge produced, but rather what Tim Ingold would call a “correspondent”, someone who enters into correspondence with other participants while maintaining the conditions of possibility for their autonomous expression. This posture echoes “writing as extension of inquiry” where the researcher is no longer overarching but immersed in the collective process.
The guarantee of permanence I offer for the digital space constitutes a form of “infrastructural care”. Maria Puig de la Bellacasa speaks of “matters of care” (2017) as what must be cared for to maintain habitable worlds. By ensuring the technical maintenance and continuous availability of this knowledge, I participate in ensuring that these experiences are not simply “extracted” to feed my own academic production, but that they continue to exist for and by those who produced them.
This approach brings, I hope, perspectives for rethinking participatory sciences more broadly. If, as Mélodie Faury affirms, “our way of writing is part of the elaboration of our knowledge and our relationship to the world”, then transforming our narrative devices amounts to transforming our collective capacity to inhabit the world in a more just and living way. Cooperative narratives are not just an alternative method; they are an ethical and political proposition for a science that fully assumes its relational and transformative dimension.
