Nest/ing: an emergent (un)methodology for becoming otherwise

A dense, pungent, brown-green, intricately woven, itchy-silky, moss-strewn, twig- ridden ball brought us together.

Since then, nest(ing)[i] has become a shared methodology - nest/ing has offered a praxis of getting to know each other, getting to know nests (better) and it has become a capacious writing methodology. Taking nest(ing) seriously has drawn into sharp focus the perils of human exceptionalism. Nesting has gifted opportunities to wallow in porous boundaries and to luxuriate in modes of liminal reading/writing/experimenting, informed by a feminist politics to imagine the world differently (Despret, 2016). It is through lively storytelling, involving passing patterns back and forth that this piece, this assemblage of words (and memories, sensations and more) has nested into being - robust yet fragile, unruly yet hospitable, unknowable yet knowing. Storying the everyday is nesting.

Nest/ing has become an emergent (un)methodology for becoming otherwise; something of an affective ecology that felts together guilt, awkwardness, vulnerability and inseparability. Nest/ing has taken us to places we could not have anticipated in advance and it has persisted in keeping our curiosity provoked as we dwell upon and amongst ordinary affects (Stewart, 2007) as they are encountered through minor gestures (Manning, 2016).