has filmAnthropology as Educative Encounter
Jamie Barnes
(University of Sussex)
Contribution description:
Through a short vignette, I introduce various ways in which anthropology can act as host for educative encounters. The story also subtly implies the nurturing of particular sensibilities by which the educative potential of encounters might be unlocked.
Paper long abstract:
The spider in my backyard challenges me to encounter it, to enter its world. To do so, I must let go - at least for a time - of other pressing engagements. I must slow down, be still, and lend my attention to this wonderful eight-legged beast in all its complex entanglements. As I do so, a space of encounter dawns, and educative threads weave their slow emergence. Not only do I awaken to the rustle of the wind, its caress upon my skin and its waving rhythms in the leaves before me. I also notice the still patience with which she sits, eight hair-laced legs sensitively placed to trace the smallest of vibrations. And now - very slowly - in the stillness - in fleeting moments only - a part of me reaches across the divide, the space between our radically different evolutionary paths. In waves, I begin to appreciate the phenomenological life of this differently-bodied being, so Other to myself. I am lost in the flow. What does her little, complex body afford? What world does she habit and perceive? My reflections gradually fold back upon myself. The alterity of the spider's body - and this encounter in my yard - bringing awareness of my own body, with its very different set of affordances. Added here, my slow encounter with a French phenomenologist, and various anthropological and ethnographic voices. Other ideas, drawn from a deep spring that persistently brings me back to the same place, bubble to the surface. The experiencing body is indeterminate, so who is to determine the limits of its affordances? And now the mystics begin to speak and other strange folk amongst whom I have lived and worked, with whom I have shared my life. For whom also the body is mysterious and incomplete, so much more than the objectified shape of common imagination. The spider before me repairs her web. Her body dips and weaves, her eight legs meticulously working in complex harmony, pushing a thread back there, attaching another here, and moving on. She knows her environment and intelligently navigates her world. Later, I stand before my first-year students, in all their beautiful hopes and sadnesses and fears, and ask them what education is for. Behind me, caught on an endless loop, the spider repeatedly weaves her web. What do they see? Do they see it? This little complex creature, this Other life. And what are we, as humans? Can we learn to intelligently navigate our world(s), individually and collectively, our bodily and perceptual affordances (whatever these might be) awakened and brought to life? I look across the crowd. Just some, just a handful of eyes have met me. We look across the divide, the weight of our experiences, our previous encounters, now let into the room, at once present in our living bodies, with which - I hope - we will have confidence to lean in and advance. And this differently-bodied-being continues skilfully weaving, enticingly drawing us on.
Accepted Contribution:
Contribution description:
Paper long abstract:
The spider in my backyard challenges me to encounter it, to enter its world. To do so, I must let go - at least for a time - of other pressing engagements. I must slow down, be still, and lend my attention to this wonderful eight-legged beast in all its complex entanglements. As I do so, a space of encounter dawns, and educative threads weave their slow emergence. Not only do I awaken to the rustle of the wind, its caress upon my skin and its waving rhythms in the leaves before me. I also notice the still patience with which she sits, eight hair-laced legs sensitively placed to trace the smallest of vibrations. And now - very slowly - in the stillness - in fleeting moments only - a part of me reaches across the divide, the space between our radically different evolutionary paths. In waves, I begin to appreciate the phenomenological life of this differently-bodied being, so Other to myself. I am lost in the flow. What does her little, complex body afford? What world does she habit and perceive? My reflections gradually fold back upon myself. The alterity of the spider's body - and this encounter in my yard - bringing awareness of my own body, with its very different set of affordances. Added here, my slow encounter with a French phenomenologist, and various anthropological and ethnographic voices. Other ideas, drawn from a deep spring that persistently brings me back to the same place, bubble to the surface. The experiencing body is indeterminate, so who is to determine the limits of its affordances? And now the mystics begin to speak and other strange folk amongst whom I have lived and worked, with whom I have shared my life. For whom also the body is mysterious and incomplete, so much more than the objectified shape of common imagination. The spider before me repairs her web. Her body dips and weaves, her eight legs meticulously working in complex harmony, pushing a thread back there, attaching another here, and moving on. She knows her environment and intelligently navigates her world. Later, I stand before my first-year students, in all their beautiful hopes and sadnesses and fears, and ask them what education is for. Behind me, caught on an endless loop, the spider repeatedly weaves her web. What do they see? Do they see it? This little complex creature, this Other life. And what are we, as humans? Can we learn to intelligently navigate our world(s), individually and collectively, our bodily and perceptual affordances (whatever these might be) awakened and brought to life? I look across the crowd. Just some, just a handful of eyes have met me. We look across the divide, the weight of our experiences, our previous encounters, now let into the room, at once present in our living bodies, with which - I hope - we will have confidence to lean in and advance. And this differently-bodied-being continues skilfully weaving, enticingly drawing us on.
Anthropology as education
Session 1