Embodied knowledge becomes a form of collective pedagogy

Theory, here, is a discourse embedded in academic institutions that might be seen as inaccessible – at best daunting, at worst hostile and violent – to certain publics, including those that are neurodivergent, are living with mental illness, are survivors of sexual violence, or are unable to access higher education due to class- and race-based discrimination. And yet, like Young, kc understands autotheory – a different way of practicing “theory” in para-institutional and embodied ways – to be a fundamentally politicized mode of feminist writing that makes space for those have been inordinately marginalized to engage in the practice of theorizing and to redefine what it means to theorize. (Fournier 25-26)

The day I finish the final revision of this editorial text marks the anniversary of my departure from Spain. I have now spent thirteen years living abroad.

In this extended time, I have experienced various educational institutions across multiple countries. I have been part of student bodies and teaching teams at public universities, state universities, Ivy League programs, social justice programs, and art schools. However, it wasn’t until I arrived in the Netherlands that my teaching methodologies—and my way of understanding our bodies within a classroom setting—began to change.

July 3, 2020 · 09:00 – 09:45

COVID-19 began a few months ago, and many places around the world are at the peak of the pandemic. I have an interview with the Social Practices department at the University of Applied Sciences Rotterdam. Still, I do not know if my profile fits

After a 30-minute delay, I am finally able to log into Teams and join the online interview. I feel ashamed of being late to my first “serious” interview in Dutch higher education, yet I am put at ease when the people on the other side of the screen welcome me with an empathetic greeting. They acknowledge that this is the new reality: technology is necessary to connect, yet it doesn’t always work.

I am interviewed by several different people sharing the screen; I am not entirely sure who is who, even though their names appear in the bottom corner of their windows. I set aside all the information I had prepared for the interview, letting my body simply sink into the process and follow along.

After a very organic introduction of everyone present, we dive into the content. I am asked about my pedagogical values, methodologies, and references. Right after that, I am asked a rhetorical question: “Do you realize that in our classes, we create content out of our experiences?”

At that moment, I was unable to grasp the weight or the importance that question would come to have in my development as an educator, an artist, and a person. Until that point, I had never truly considered that my experience, my body, and my identity could be the crucial elements used to generate the content of my classes. And so, it happened. That interview was rewarded with a position to teach.

For the last six years, I have brought my body and my experiences to the different classes I taught alongside a singular group of colleagues, friends, and allies:

• We imagined
• We speculated
• We thrived
• We archived
• We shared
• We plotted
• We discussed
• We gossiped
• We grieved
• We laughed
• We cared
• We published
• We mended
• We mutated
• We survived

We embodied who we are, unapologetically, and brought that into our lessons, our classes, and our programs.

Where is my body? Who is my body? What does my body remember? ^[1] Initial prompt exercise shared with my colleague Fyn van Ast in our intro classes, “The Body as an Archive”

Reference

Fournier, Lauren. Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism. MIT Press, 2022.

[Featured Image: Presentation Minor Cultural Diversity]