Kin-Making as Parent Pedagogy. (Odd)Kin: Pedagogies in Weedy Worlds – Part 2

• In Event: Radical Acts of Parenting and Kinship

Abstract

(Odd)Kin: Pedagogies in Weedy Worlds (Part II)
In part II, the presenters suggest a series of three pedagogical considerations involving embodied praxis with more-than-human worlds:
(1) Establish habits of multi-generational venturing into ‘weedy’ (Tsing, 2004) worlds where (odd)kin might reside. Such locations can require spatial and temporal orientation, stepping outside of the clockwork of settler time and spatial configurations of superficial peripheralized visibility. Following young kin outside (a praxis of venturing into other ontologies and new forms of curiosities) can lead to ruptures in ways of knowing. Following, in our sense of the word, doesn’t necessarily mean trailing, but can instead refer to processes of encouraging spatial and temporal inquiry and wandering, specifically within outdoor locations, in our case where other forms of life and non-living beings abound.
(2) Uncover possibilities for (odd)kin-making through sustained sensory engagement on varying scales of time/space. In order to find what is already there, one has to look differently. Noticing can mean returning to something, a moment, or action, normally glanced over. Finding emotional connection with long-lost relations also serves as remembering of the colonization of land and species and how colonial projects continue to separate and render kinship with the otherwise unknowable (Glissant, 1990).
(3) Reinforce meaningful (odd)kinship with visceral physiological connection, (re)uniting, and (re)seeing invisibilized relations (which could sometimes be there all along). Fostering (odd)kin as care for earthly survival is an (un)knowing/(re)knowing sustained praxis, shifting representation of the human. A superficial bond is not enough to form kinship. Meaningful kin-making should be reinforced in as many ways (of knowing). Haraway (2016) describes how it is both a lived everyday and speculative task to engage in ‘odd’ ways making trouble, revolting against dualistic overrepresentation, stirring up potent responses to already enacted catastrophe and devastating events yet to come.
Toward Sustained Praxis with Audience Engagement
In offering two pedagogical inquiries into mothering and making (odd)kin, the presenters (re)turn to the question of ‘What should we be doing right now?’ The immediacy of the question humbles and enacts engagement in praxis that is both centered in the moment and within expanded timescapes. In mothering and knowledge-making as well as kinship pedagogies, the rules of engagement/relationality are renegotiated, a way to reconsider everyday multigenerational praxis and how this relationality can be enacted. To conclude, the presenters invite audience members to (re)imagine forms of learning from/with our children, resisting urges to reproduce (over)representations of Man (Wynter, 2003) and remaining attuned to moment-to-moment enfoldings.

Author

• Korina Jocson, University of Massachusetts - Amherst