![Sample our Environment & Sustainability journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5935/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Environment-Sustainability.jpg"})
Abstract
In this paper, we attempt to do a kind of theorizing that we think is compatible with new materialisms. To do this we explore the idea of what it might be to separate ontos- from -logos, and give suggestions to readers for ways of experiencing this idea. We posit that it is not only possible to make diffractive readings and re-readings of texts, but also that experiences themselves can provide a diffractive context for ontos. Thus, not only can different concepts held in the forefront of our minds allow us to encounter, interpret, and understand differently but so too can positioning and entangling ourselves differently. As such we will ask the reader to do things beyond simply reading the text as they engage this paper. We also tell stories, two from an Anishinaabe knowledge keeper of Chris’s acquaintance, to provide another way for shifting conceptualizing towards a different ontological position compatible with an immanent materialist position. We explore the capacity of words to tell a story about experiences that are inherently non-verbal, in which human I-ness shares a being state with what are normally thought to be separable objects in the natural world. The paper concludes with a short discussion of pedagogy in light of this discussion/action.
Keywords:
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 For defining entanglements, we refer back to Ingold and his earlier use of it (2008). While we begin with this term to permit readers to orient themselves, something about what has become the static-ness of such as central term that purportedly describes not only emphatically non-static instances, but moments in which subjectivity/objectivity distinctions are rendered meaningless, concerns us. So, we also use enmeshments and feltings and variations thereof to get at a broadly similar idea.
2 While we recognize the argument that academic papers cannot and ought not to attempt to do everything, to not attempt to make such an argument in this form might be considered tantamount to leaving the field to others. If the argument we make herein is justified, precisely the opposite course is needed.
3 In an earlier version of this paper, a substantial section was devoted to a critique of Noel Gough's excellent paper, ‘Postparadigmatic materialisms: A “new movement of thought” for outdoor environmental education research?’ We consider this to be one of clearest delineations of a post-structural position as it relates to new materialisms. However, it concerned us that the full difference, indeed the sometimes wordless aspect of new materialisms could be apparently so seamlessly incorporated into a primarily linguistic stance.
4 The term end game is used here as it is in chess, to refer to the final stages of the game in which few pieces remain, the risks to poor strategic moves are high and the range of possibilities is limited. We think this corresponds well to current planetary conditions, with one exception: in the game of chess, defined “moves” are well established. What we propose is a different kind of move, which takes the game from the board to the world. This case was initially made, in nascent form, in a presentation given at the WEEC conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, in July, 2015.
5 See Clarke and Mcphie (Citation2014), Mcphie and Clarke (Citation2015) and Clarke and Mcphie (Citation2016).
6 English appears particularly to be at odds with the way meaning is made in many verb-based languages, especially Indigenous ones.
7 For earlier discussions see: Beeman (Citation2012, 2014). We prefer to use ontos rather than the more obvious being, because the English carries with it so many other connotations, even when italicized.
8 We include an inclination toward anthropocentrism here because of the way theorizing about logos often includes assumptions based on humans as the model for what language, knowledge, and proof are. This tends to then be skeptical of things like trees speaking or ravens knowing.
9 In an attempt to honour the rhythms of speech of the Elders pauses in phrasing were marked with line-breaks. Thus appears a poetic form, relating to Davis’ notion of how ‘the poetry of the shaman gave way to the prose of the priest.’ (Davis, personal communication, April, 2010)
10 Alex Mathias in Beeman, forthcoming.
11 Beeman (Citation2006).
12 Wade Davis, personal communication.