How do we become worldly across the species in a dog park and what do we become?
Shared by SHIL BAE
How do we become worldly across the species in a dog park and what do we become? When Jackson (a Rottweiler playmate of my dogs in our local dog park) passed away, Jackson’s human companion hung up a visual eulogy in the dog park. Many people stopped by the poster, reading with such thoughtfulness. It seemed that the grieving for Jackson was not just a private matter, but also involved shared grief with all those who had been entangled with Jackson in this dog park. Jackson’s death reminded me how each fleshly encounter (un)folded/(re)configured our capacity to be affected, care for and respond (Haraway, 2008). It left me pondering the way in which our human bodies touch and are touched by dog bodies in the dog park, demanding us to recognise each other’s presence and prompting us to act in a motley web of caring (Pacini-Ketchabaw & Taylor, 2015).
References
Haraway, D. (2008). When species meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., & Taylor, A. (2015). Unsettling pedagogies through common world encounters: Grappling with (post-) colonial legacies in Canadian forests and Australian bushlands. In V. Pacini-Ketchabaw & A. Taylor (Eds.), Unsettling the colonial places and spaces of early childhood education (pp. 43-62). New York and London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group