Kenniskring November 16: how to become generous researchers, by Ruth Benschop

How to become Generous Researchers? – Ruth Benschop
16 November 15:00 – 17:00, Herdenkingsplein 12

If you want to attend, please send a message to ghislaine.boere[at]zuyd.nl.
To open the two suggested articles press the links below.

Buchanan et al 2015 On asking the right questions
Despret_Responding[4]

Responding Bodies and Partial Affinities in Human–Animal Worlds
Vinciane Despret

Abstract
The aim of this paper is to explore the different manners in which scientists’ bodies are
actively engaged when interacting with the animals they observe in the field. Bodies are
multiple, as are the practices that involve them: sharing the same diet, feeling similar
affects, acting the same, inhabiting the same world of perceptions, constructing
empathic affinities, etc. Some scientists aim to embody the animals’ experiences.
Some are willing to empathetically experience situations ‘from inside’, while others
‘undo and redo’ their own bodies in order to interact more closely with the animals and
to respond to them more cautiously. Still others are faced with the question: what can
we do or what arewe allowed to do with our bodies when we are with our animals? All
of these practices present a very different version of ‘embodied empathy’, a concept
which describes feeling/seeing/thinking bodies that undo and redo each other, reciprocally
though not symmetrically, as partial perspectives that attune themselves to each
other. Therefore, empathy is not experiencing with one’s own body what the other
experiences, but rather creating the possibilities of an embodied communication.