ABSTRACT
In her 2015 paper, Towards a Politics of Whimsy: Yarn Bombing in the City, Joanna Mann argues for whimsy's capacity to prompt change. In this chapter, the authors think, write and play with notions of whimsy, drawing into their scrutiny and inquiry reflections on how whimsy intersects their everyday living and working. Whimsy is identifiable in ethnographic writing practices, especially those that seek openness and uncertainty, and those that embrace getting lost. The authors attempt to engage a “nonlinear, many-layered textuality” by working with temporality across prose as well as poetic forms of inquiry. Listening and writing with whimsy might help us to attend to the invisible in the everyday. The pause that we have gained from being locked down has enabled a break from the barrage of stress, pressure, and busyness.
