Writing as Affective Methodology in Participatory Design

Abstract

This interview article explores how writing can function as an affective methodology for understanding and extending Participatory Design (PD) processes. In dialogue with Anna Gibbs, whose work in affect theory, feminism, and experimental writing has been influential for over three decades, this work addresses a central methodological challenge in PD: how to apprehend and articulate the pre-cognitive, corporeal, and affective dynamics that shape participation and collaboration. The interview examines collaboration as an affective and rhythmic process, drawing on metaphors of performance, dance, and atmosphere to highlight the contingent, relational, and asymmetrical nature of collective work. In this context, writing emerges not merely as a representational practice but as a collaborative act with the potential to redistribute agency. Writing emerges as always in process, contingent, unfinished, and open-ended: a site of continuation that does not close collaboration but suspends it.