Writing Cannot Tell Everything

This chapter addresses the topic of the mixte (English: the mixt), a type of writing that combines very different, sometimes perhaps even incompatible types of writing, such as fiction and non-fiction or, in a more singular manner, fiction and writing on fiction (the term of mixt has been coined by author and theoretician Jean Ricardou). However, the present chapter does not just present or examine Ricardou’s theory and practice of the mixt but takes it as its starting point to reflect on the status of the author’s self-commentary in a research-oriented fictional practice. More precisely, the chapter makes a plea, not for the merger but the articulation (and thus the relative separation) of fiction and writing on fiction in practice-based artistic research.