Co-designing with the abject: integrating Animal Writing to explore more-than-human interactions

Traditional design approaches reinforce human-nonhuman separations, often excluding species perceived as abjected. In More-than-Human Design (MTHD), efforts to foster multispecies collaboration have primarily focused on charismatic species, overlooking those that evoke disgust or abjection. This study challenges such exclusion by proposing abjection as a productive design force, rather than an obstacle. To explore this, Animal Writing (AW) is integrated into the MTHD process, with autoethnography further expanding it into AW + Autoethnography, collectively forming a reflective MTH design method. Moreover, building on the Research-through-Design approach of Wavering Arc, this study introduces Floating Boundaries, a concept redefines human-nonhuman special separations as negotiated and emergent rather than fixed. The findings further contribute to the development of Emergent Design, a methodology that transitions design from control-based frameworks to adaptive multispecies co-creation. This research demonstrates how AW transforms abjection from a psychological barrier into a generative design force. It offers a novel methodological approach for inclusive, multispecies design within MTHD.