Composting Storytelling: An Approach for Critical (Multispecies) Ethnography

Abstract

Stories produce bodies that produce stories in an endless intra-active metabolic continuum. Stories do not only represent material worlds but also shape and make new worlds. Starting from these premises, this article develops “composting storytelling,” a methodological approach to heterogeneous, open-ended, small stories interwoven with everyday interaction. Drawing on years-long ethnographic work in a school greenhouse, and multispecies and critical animal studies literature as well as feminist storytelling, the authors develop a twofold argument. First, composting storytelling can be mobilized as a critical research approach in which critique emerges along with horizontal movement from closer, warm assemblages to more distant or erased, cool assemblages. Furthermore, multispecies storytelling can inform the broader field of qualitative research by positioning the ethnographer and the field in a relationship characterized by a hesitant ethics of knowing. The study draws attention to the polyphony of voices and temporalities, foregrounds intra-active transformation, and suggests a more modest position for the human protagonist.