Experiencing vulnerability between frontstage and backstage identities: the vulnerable ‘I’s in creative writing workshops

In the context of creative writing groups, this paper explores how the affective experience of vulnerability as a basis for driving more reciprocal and interdependent caring relations involves articulating orientations towards individuality and orientations towards relationality. I examine this experience of vulnerability as an ambivalent embodied condition shaped by sociocultural norms and expectations by drawing on Goffman's theorisation of frontstage and backstage identities. I suggest that vulnerability is experienced differently between the level of frontstage identity (as writer-listeners) and the more intimate level of backstage identity. Throughout my writing, I embody the story I tell by interweaving experiences of vulnerability in the collective context of creative writing workshops and in the co-writing experience of the academic review process.