Conceptual Speed Dating
- Choose a generative text.
- Choose a minor concept weaving through the generative text.
- Ask each person in the group to count off as a one or a two.
- Instruct the ones that they are “posts.”
- Instruct the twos that they are “flows.”
- Ask the posts to find a post: a spot in the room where they would like to have a conservation.
- Ask the flows to pair up with a post.
- Direct everyone to a page in the text where the minor concept occurs.
- Ask the participants to discuss the function of the minor concept, staying as close as possible to the text, with detailed attention to how it is constructed.
- Notify participants that when exactly five minutes are up they will hear a signal, and that when they hear the signal they must end their conversation immediately, even if they are in the middle of a word.
- When the five-minute signal sounds, ask all flows to move to the next post in a clockwise direction.
- Repeat eight to ten times.
- Bring the group back together and discuss in plenary session what was discovered about the minor concept and the text.
From: Brian Massumi, “Collective Expression. A Radical Pragmatics,” The Principle of Unrest (London: Open Humanities Press, 2017) 111-140, here: 111-112, http://openhumanitiespress.org/books/download/Massumi_2017_The-Principle-of-Unrest.pdf
German version: https://nocturne-plattform.de/text/kollektiver-ausdruck