Essayistic interviews : the interview as collaborative essayism

Abstract

Through a reflective discussion of what the authors call “essayistic interviews” published in The Edinburgh Companion to the Essay (2022), this chapter proposes and develops the concept of “collaborative essayism.” The authors survey existing theories of the interview as a genre, and they then outline the rhetorical practices behind and the formal choices made in the interviews for The Edinburgh Companion to the Essay in order to explore how and in which ways the interviews may be deemed “essayistic” and “collaborative.” The chapter argues that these essayistic interviews extend and challenge already-existing genre definitions, and it proposes collaborative essayism as a form of thinking and a form of writing that depends on an experimental, collaborative and dialogic interplay of voices.