As we near the end of the semester (and our class wide group project), I am finding it more and more clear what Butler in Bloodchild when she said “There is danger in working with a partner. ” Similarly to Denis’s post, I too am struggling with what it means to work with a partner.
I find myself becoming attached to what I personally want this project to look like and I find myself having to compromise that for something that works with everyone. Most often during our discussions, we find an idea and almost always, that idea is met with some resistance. This at first almost frustrated me when we began to work on this together, however I am realizing now that in order for this project to work, if we weren’t met with resistance, there would be a few students who make decisions without the input from others. The fact that no one is afraid to (respectfully) speak against one another, says a lot about how the finished project will look like. It truly will have everyone’s voice involved and we are happy to make it as inclusive as possible even at the risk of having your desired ideas being lost.
Overall, this has become a growing opportunity for me personally as it should, working with 26 other people is a feat within itself and all of us are bound to finish this semester, a little different than how they started. Learning how to incorporate 27 voices into a single piece of paper was extremely difficult but it taught me how to be patient and how to let go if need be. Of course, I also learned what it was about Butler’s fiction that I knew needed to be included into the final project, and some things I would fight for. However, when it comes to working with this many partners, you have to choose your battles.