Embodied and Material Pedagogies

However, these ways of knowing and also making place are not produced in isolation; they are produced through social-material engagements, through a continuous process of embodied material learning and teaching. In Chapter Four, a new materialist theory of pedagogy is developed; where the intra-actions of humans and matter are pedagogic, an embodied and material pedagogy. This is achieved through the examination of how matter teaches, and how we learn and teach place and belonging.

The Ethics of Working the Spaces Between

Practice research, underpinned by new materialism, embraces new and different ways of researching but it also disrupts the practices and discourses that make the identities of researcher as subject and participant as research object. What is of interest is not the subject or object of the research but the space between, the withness. Chapter Six is an exploration and examination of how these spaces can be worked and how these intra-actions enable this continuous making and remaking or positioning of researcher, participant, learner and teacher. This chapter plunges into the complexity, the colour, texture and messiness of the ethics of new materialist practice research; and attempts to address researching with care; mind, body, spirit with matter.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter the main premises of this assemblage are summarised: to know and learn how we make place we need to know and learn the ways in which bodies intra-act with the socio-material world and these ways are complex, fluid, flexible, and subject to change. However, this knowledge of place of is not produced in isolation. This is because to be human is to already be materially with place, and to be materially with place is to be human, the entanglement of body with place, place with body. Place is the very experiential fact of our existence but, it is also a necessary one, as it enables the creation-making of meaning and socio-material relations. We know and learn place with embodied and material pedagogies and we also know and learn place from being with.

Making and Remaking: The Practice Research of Place

To understand and question these everyday and artistic practices of life that are sometimes invisible or hidden - and most of the time taken for granted - because they are sensed, felt, of the body, and not easily verbalised, an embodied, affective, relational research approach is needed. The innovative approach of practice research, underpinned by new materialism, that can enable these understandings are discussed in Chapter Five. Additionally, inventive artistic practice methods and a remaking of traditional empirical methods are examined that enable the exploration of the agency of matter and advance vitalist frameworks. By moving beyond the problem-focused approach this chapter works the intra-actions of theory with practice, practice with theory, to develop new approaches to new materialist-place practice research. The practice research approach also politically positions research practices, emphasising the complex materiality of bodies immersed in social relations of power.

Place

Chapter Three, is a theoretical and philosophical mapping of the concepts of place that are used to underpin and position this assemblage. As there are many theoretical understandings of place with different epistemological underpinnings, this Chapter maps how place and the theories of place have been on a winding path through philosophical thought from Aristotle, Newton, Descartes and Kant where place was gradually subsumed by space. But by returning to Aristotle’s premise of the bound relationship between place and the body, the resurrection of place is enabled through Kant, Whiteread, Husserl and especially Merleau-Ponty and Delueze. Through examining these theories and philosophers the main premise of this assemblage is argued; that there can be no place without the body, and that place is continually made through and with the everyday socio-material practices of bodies and is more than a background for action and thought.

Introduction

This introductory chapter positions this assemblage within the fields of: new materialism, place, embodiment and practice research. This positioning demonstrates the bound relationship between the body and place and how the meanings and pedagogies of place emerge within and through social relations, practices and matter. The content of this chapter also introduces: the intra-disciplinary praxic (theory with practice) engagement and presentation of this assemblage and the main premise; that place is the very experiential fact of our existence but it is also a necessary one, as it enables the creation of human meaning and socio-material relations. An overview of the book and the content of each of the chapters are also provided.

Placemaking: The Australian Bush

Chapter One is an assemblage of data of the socio-material embodied ways of making a place-world, the Australian bush. This chapter is an intra-action of the participants and authors everyday and artistic practices-makings and critical reflections. This intra-action of experiential-embodied prose and art practices-outcomes, is a sharing of the senses of place and to ‘work’ the differences that make a difference. The content of this chapter enables an understanding of the ways of making place, and how through everyday practices with creative-artistic makings place and belonging is made and learned https://www.tarapage.org/placemaking

The Place-World of the Bush

From the local to the global, Chapter Two is an assemblage of the linguistic, poetic, artistic, pedagogic, filmic, and geo-political representations, practices and materiality of a specific place-world, remote Australia. Through mapping the differences that make a difference this analysis demonstrates how the makings of place are made-performed-learned. The term ‘place-world’ is used to denote a particular place that has specific and particular forms of human, and non-human socio-material knowledges, performances and practices. This analysis also demonstrates the power these various mediascapes have and how the presence, but also the very absence of matter, are pivotal to the pedagogies of national identity and nationhood discourses.