Writing the Torment

Abstract

In this article, we reconfigure the notion of writing with theory to include a troubling of theory as data that is always already coded by our citational practices. However, the reduction of the “cacophony of ideas swirling as we think about our topics with all we can muster” to a singular citation, while necessary if we want to bear the burden of our interpretations, is also dangerous because the more mechanistic data analysis becomes, the less situated it is. We demonstrate here how we rupture this mechanistic bent by using the space of the page both to inhabit and halt aporias, producing aporetic data. When we write and reread our claims to those theorists through citation, aporetic data highlights our inability to do those theorists justice and produces additional uncertainty about the possibility of justice for any data. To that end, we provide a theoretical conversation that has been interrupted and revisited multiple times as we think and rethink the many Derridas produced through our readings. This work highlights the possibilities enabled by calling upon one another to keep data in motion by truncating, diverting, or extending aporias rather than treating data as passive objects.