Text as occasion, dialogue as data, context as disturber

This paper sets off to discuss the meaning of context in collaborative knowledge production. The discussion will be unfolded in relation to an experiment of moving a concrete text from one collective context of analysis to another. Doing the unthinkable: Moving a text out of context to find out how context informs focus of analysis and explore the analytic possibilities entrenched in this move!

The text in centre of the experiment was produced by a feminist activist in a memory-work session realised in Peru in 2009. The researcher, who facilitated the memory-work in Peru, brought the text to Denmark and asked her colleagues to consider how they would approach such a text analytically.

We show how ‘the text’ becomes an occasion to take turns with and critically deconstruct naturalised processes of interpretation. We argue that an exploration of what happens when a text change context can inspire a deconstruction of constraining meaning-making processes and impulse critical dialogue both about meanings of the thematic of the text in ‘the context of the reading’ and about how to understand what is at stake when “researchers” and “practitioners” produce knowledge through dialogical and collaborative research.