I’ve come back to a discussion about hope between Belgium philosopher Isabelle Stengers and Mary Zournazi. There are some key ideas in this conversation that I’d like to unpack and explore, as they might open up my thinking on generative acts of being with.
Stengers (2002: 245) refers to Alfred North Whitehead’s idea of interstices (spaces between…):
‘life is always lurking in the interstices, in what usually escapes description because our words refer to stabilised identities and functioning.’
I often feel like there are palpable connections in places, but that language of the material (body- country) doesn’t adequately describe what I am feeling/sensing. Maybe there are some special glasses out there that I can put on which will make all of these felt things visible!
I like that Stengers (2002: 247) validates feeling in this next quote. Integration of thought and feeling, an intuitive knowing perhaps, seems to be a way of being similar to what Scharmer (2007) speaks about when he uses the term presencing:
‘You cannot have true thinking without feeling – and what that means is that true thinking is about transforming yourself. But the very fact that we can be transformed by what we encounter, or what we participate in, is a matter of hope.’
I’m still not sure of what Stengers’ definition of hope is though and I’m not too sure on what mine is either; something to contemplate. I want to really explore the idea of transformation and how it emerges. If I were to look more specifically at the transformation of a worldview, my worldview, I guess this whole process of exploration through ‘research’ (along with the ideas, experiences, events, places, relationships, …. which I’m interacting with) is facilitating some kind of Nia Evolution!
Being with Country 