hypertext - polyvocal text

The hypertextual representation creates a polyvocal text in which all the actors (or co-producers of knowledge) are not human (Haraway, 2004a; see also, see also, Abram, 2006; Berry & Tucker, 2006; Harvey, 2006b). The hypertext creates spaces for non- or trans-rational (Astin, 2002) ways of knowing and enables animate Earth to enter as 'participant' in knowledge production (see Lipsett, 2001, 2002).

For readers who are used to the "comfort text" (Lather, 2001, p. 205) of linear explanatory prose, the disruption in form can be quite unsettling; for others, whose life is guided more by intuition than by reason, it may provide a much more 'natural' and fluid read.

It seems that only when I would disrupt the flow of thought, the Earth's voices could enter. As Gladys Behnsen (2006) admonishes, and others such as Bai (2009) suggest, we need to extend beyond our conceptually bound intellect in order to re-animate embodied perception. In fact it is often when we 'get out of our heads,' that the most valuable insights emerge. The hypertextual research and representation practices used within this text disrupt the human intellect as the privileged and unmarked site of knowledge production (see Bai, 2003, 2009; Lipsett, 2001, 2002; Payne, 2005a) and at times unsettle the continual reinscription of humans as the unmarked norm and only conscious agents involved in research processes.