Methodology
Discussion begins regarding our positionality as
agents in mutual affected/affecting systems within a damaged planet. Here, poetic
language is inseparable from academic analysis, as fields of
philosophy/ecology, and should not be undermined. My distressed reaction to
impending planetary disaster is as relevant to the following research as any
interview, museum trip, or textual analysis. Distress serves no reason flattened, if not used to strive
towards change, and activate my audience through poetry. We are on the brink of
disaster, and fixation on enriching texts with hyper-intellectualised, hyper-specific
language does little but segregate readers, and forge hierarchies between those
whose English literacy gifts them understanding and those whose doesn’t. I do
not subscribe to western, English, *human* definitions of intelligence, nor their
fetishisation of the academic format, I believe in poetry. Poetry helps us
‘stay with the trouble’, it does not reduce emotional gravity, embedded empathy,
nor the real horror felt from information regarding the *Anthropocene* (Haraway,
2016). ‘Poetry is not a luxury,’ but a necessity to expanding understanding,
feeling that understanding, and activating unconcerned audiences (Lorde, 1983).
My chosen language reflects this importance of poetry within ecology, often referencing Earth as Lovelock’s ‘Gaia’, as not to forget spirit, nor our place within a divine superorganism (Lovelock, 1979). English does not provide absolute clarity for this discussion; I often use words whose definitions are contested by the text, i.e. *species*, as our language has not reached common terminology for an evolutionary web rather than evolutionary tree (Bridle, 2022, pp.107-111). These act as place holders for a word to come – they are the closest, simplest term with the language we currently have, but their definitions are fabulated and must be perceived through lens of destructive, reductionist scientific practice, or enforced binaries and boarders (Bridle, 2022, p. 52). To highlight these discrepancies, words as such are outlines with *asterixis*.
Poetic format also gives direct attention to my personal biases, of which I do not try to flatten, nor pretend to be absent. I am in this body, I am a collage of everyone I have ever met, a point of agency my directly adjacent tendrils of an interconnected cultural mesh, I can never speak for the mesh as a whole.
I recognise my immense privilege in whiteness and class, and subsequent biases from socialisation as capitalist, gendered, English speaking, individualist, who is only recently glitching from internalised capitalist systems towards queerness, ‘compostist’ (Haraway, 2016), and modern scavenger cultures. This dissertation tackles the question of how we can shift power centres from capitalist, colonialist thinking, and thus aims to speak to people embedded in capitalist, colonialist, white-centric and patriarchal structures. To those raised in gift economies, who have deep connection to country, my argument is incredibly rudimentary.
My positionality removes me from an embedded understanding in parts of my research due to language barriers and lacking exposure, specifically, in my experiences and research within various indigenous cultures. An inability to conduct experiential research reduces research to interviews with people who have, making information further fabulated; less reliable due to unknown biases of whom I am talking to.
Experiential research has been applied where it can: acting within the Geish movement, activating community craft projects, personal scavenging/crafting, and excursions to museums, exhibits and events. Though limited by personal bias, experiential autoethnographic and material culturalist research provides unique and fuller recounts and analysis (Chang, 2008), to broaden scope, this is supported by selected interviews with creatives and some surveys of participants of events.
Secondary research attempts to include variety in form (i.e. books, films, artworks, albums, podcasts, etc) and diversity in authorship with a trend towards feminist/ecologists, however, as the academic institution supports whiteness, my research tends towards older, white-centric academics, with much further variety in authorship found in texts that exist outside academic convention, such as narratives, films and art. Regardless of my positionality, limitation in language, internet algorithm, the scope of texts can be expanded upon, and I recognise this as research limitation.
My chosen language reflects this importance of poetry within ecology, often referencing Earth as Lovelock’s ‘Gaia’, as not to forget spirit, nor our place within a divine superorganism (Lovelock, 1979). English does not provide absolute clarity for this discussion; I often use words whose definitions are contested by the text, i.e. *species*, as our language has not reached common terminology for an evolutionary web rather than evolutionary tree (Bridle, 2022, pp.107-111). These act as place holders for a word to come – they are the closest, simplest term with the language we currently have, but their definitions are fabulated and must be perceived through lens of destructive, reductionist scientific practice, or enforced binaries and boarders (Bridle, 2022, p. 52). To highlight these discrepancies, words as such are outlines with *asterixis*.
Poetic format also gives direct attention to my personal biases, of which I do not try to flatten, nor pretend to be absent. I am in this body, I am a collage of everyone I have ever met, a point of agency my directly adjacent tendrils of an interconnected cultural mesh, I can never speak for the mesh as a whole.
I recognise my immense privilege in whiteness and class, and subsequent biases from socialisation as capitalist, gendered, English speaking, individualist, who is only recently glitching from internalised capitalist systems towards queerness, ‘compostist’ (Haraway, 2016), and modern scavenger cultures. This dissertation tackles the question of how we can shift power centres from capitalist, colonialist thinking, and thus aims to speak to people embedded in capitalist, colonialist, white-centric and patriarchal structures. To those raised in gift economies, who have deep connection to country, my argument is incredibly rudimentary.
My positionality removes me from an embedded understanding in parts of my research due to language barriers and lacking exposure, specifically, in my experiences and research within various indigenous cultures. An inability to conduct experiential research reduces research to interviews with people who have, making information further fabulated; less reliable due to unknown biases of whom I am talking to.
Experiential research has been applied where it can: acting within the Geish movement, activating community craft projects, personal scavenging/crafting, and excursions to museums, exhibits and events. Though limited by personal bias, experiential autoethnographic and material culturalist research provides unique and fuller recounts and analysis (Chang, 2008), to broaden scope, this is supported by selected interviews with creatives and some surveys of participants of events.
Secondary research attempts to include variety in form (i.e. books, films, artworks, albums, podcasts, etc) and diversity in authorship with a trend towards feminist/ecologists, however, as the academic institution supports whiteness, my research tends towards older, white-centric academics, with much further variety in authorship found in texts that exist outside academic convention, such as narratives, films and art. Regardless of my positionality, limitation in language, internet algorithm, the scope of texts can be expanded upon, and I recognise this as research limitation.