Postgraduate Thesis, 2022

Abstract

Utilising a transdisciplinary approach, this thesis curates a new method of research writing/reading entitled Embodied Readership and presents it as a revitalising force for the field of climate research. Working from the triangulation of new materialism, embodied learning and critical methodology development, I ground embodied readership in three ‘Cases’ that make the argument for a method of research articulation rooted in embodied reader experience. Opening with a new materialist frame on the relationship between reading and writing, I adopt Karen Barad’s notion of “intra-activity” (2003), grounding text as a composite, contingent, sensorially enlivened material, usurping dominant identities that position text as a representational power.

Subsequent unravelling is done within the relationships of reader, author, and story, this being a fundamental practice of embodied knowledge exchange. Academic research is resituated as a learning-centric space, time given to outline the implications of a reliance on intellect as the dominant knowledge form. Embodied learning practices are then utilised as an antidote through which reflexivity, understanding and compassionate comprehension can be engaged. Finally, I attend to the whole picture of research as a colonised space.

I question the notion of ‘decolonising the academy’ through novel methodologies and the potential role of embodied readership in pursuit of this. I mediate Tuck and Yang’s argument against the conflation of decolonial practices towards ends not connected to Indigenous land repatriation (2012), situating embodied readership as a potentially valuable complication to this debate. I assert embodied readership as a transformative method through which the collaborative and creative propensity of discursive research practice is revitalised, and address this as vital to remedying the blind spots in socially engaged climate research.

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This paper is available for publication and presentation. Available for research purposes on request.

Copies at available in the Schumacher College library.