Paper short abstract:

This paper shares findings from a study with movement practitioners in a rural post-industrial town plagued by crises. Engaging feminist posthumanist philosophy in post-qualitative research design, this study reveals how non/human bodies are becoming-together in complex contemporary times.

Paper long abstract:

The experience of living during precarious times is influencing embodied experiences. Recent research on movement practitioners processing despair during pandemic reveals how communities are responding to the challenges of our times through the relations they are cultivating (Jeffrey et al., 2021). Importantly, these relations are existing in a continual state of becoming as multiple amorphous crises continue to influence everyday life, and are being articulated through findings gathered in movement cultures (Humberstone, 2022; Olive, 2022). Studies on moving bodies demonstrate how practitioners are engaging with environments in crisis, and illuminate the need to expand understandings to acknowledge the ways that human/nonhuman bodies are intricately woven into tapestries of becomings during complex times (Braidotti, 2020). Through this paper, I engage Haraway’s (2016) concept of making kin, as moving practices that are cultivating communities of non/human kin situated in environments that are in crisis. Being ontologically inspired by this framework, I imagine how the design of post-qualitative research can support the active cultivation of multi-species futures that incorporate both the joy and destruction of our times. In this paper, I share movement practitioners' experiences of joy and connection, anguish and loneliness being experienced during a range of movement practices (dance, yoga, swimming, walking) hosted indoors, outdoors and online. The purpose of this paper is to ignite a curiosity around the role of research with moving bodies in precarious times, and the potential for posthumanist frameworks to cultivate findings that embrace both the generative and destructive relational experiences that influence movement practices.