The hidden garden: cultivating relational writing through intimate encounters in the collective research journey

Abstract

ABSTRACT Relational writing offers an alternative approach to traditional writing and is a process to explore intimacy in togetherness. In this paper, we offer a bouquet of stories that we, eight scholars, have written collectively to share our memories of researching and writing together over the past three years. Ours was not a linear journey; it evolved organically, like a rhizome. With our intention to relate, intimacy followed. We contend that this intimacy can help us withstand the pressures of the neoliberal academy, foster care and, most importantly, flourish like a garden. We find that the journey of relational writing nurtures new ideas and possibilities, it is not just transactional, but cultivated. This paper, therefore, contributes to emergent theorising on collective writing and writing differently by advancing the concept, practice and experience of relational writing across aesthetic, moral and political dimensions.