legitimate work II

What investments would humans have to give up if they  acknowledged the necessarily situated and limited nature of human reasoned consciousness? What kind of pedagogical and research practices might help us hear the voices of the more-than-human world?

What would happen if bodily knowing was given more credit?

I was out skiing the other day, having a great time moving along trail, when I met another faculty member. We stopped, exchanged greetings, and he quickly explained that he had just finished a four-hour stint writing a paper. I responded to his comment, noting that I too, had been working on my dissertation that morning, and was out on the trail to 'clear my mind'.

What I didn't, and couldn't feel I could say, was that it was here, in communication with the trees, the land, the animate Earth, that I gained some of my most important insights. Why can't I acknowledge the source of these insights? Why is it that I feel I must always attribute them to either another human (through a reference), or take credit for them myself. Why is it that I seem to feel I must 'justify' time spent outside skiing in the language of work?

"If humans and the more-than-human world meet one another and come into being in relation to each other, how does one represent, in the richest ways possible, the more-than-human world, and what are the implications of this for education?" (Fawcett, 2005, in Jardine, Johnson, & Fawcett,  p. 57).