The Coin Will Continue to Fly

Abstract

In this performance-theoretical text, we attempt to advance collaborative writing as decolonizing inquiry. Western inquiry has been dominated by the solitary writing of lone rangers of expertise, who are granted disproportionate narrative space to discourse about the Other. We think this exclusionary way of knowing keeps historically marginalized peoples from occupying Western academia as knowledge makers. Building on our collaborative writing experiences, Paulo Freire’s dialogical philosophy, and Della Pollock’s performative writing, we discuss how our collaborations with students and ethnographic partners have allowed us to break away from the expert isolationist writing standpoint and expand our own imaginations of and possibilities for inquiry—one that is more concerned with advancing collaborative ways of knowing and representation than with individual expertise and recognition, with advancing a more serious invitation for those with visceral experience of oppression to collaborate with the learned and cultured in the creation of knowledge that heals.