Critical Collective Cartographies: Expanding Memory-Work and Collective Biographies through Desire and Imagination

This article draws on Rosi Braidotti’s critical posthuman theory to reflect on a conceptual innovation of the methodology known as Collective Memory-Work and Collective Biographies. Although a principle of non-linearity underpins memory in this methodology, we find that existing developments tend to foreground the retrospective dimensions of temporality, causing non-linearity to operate implicitly within the method-ology rather than being explicitly integrated into the research design and process. Using a case study on teacher retention involving collective biography workshops, we explore and discuss the potential of engag-ing more deliberately and actively with the forward-looking and imaginative dimensions of temporality — the virtual and emergent. We argue that this enhances the methodology’s ethical and affirmative engage-ment with the political dimensions of research as a world-making practice and increases its transformative potential. Finally, we propose a new term for this conceptual innovation of the methodology: Critical Col-lective Cartographies.