Learning to notice and love a multispecies world

Abstract

For several years we have dedicated ourselves to find strategies in order to change world perspectives by “noticing” so many ways of life of more than humans and worlding with them. With this aim we have been working with pupils, students, educators, researchers, and others. It began by following the "delicate empiricism" of J. W. Goethe. Through this method we venture to live direct, sensitive and affective experiences in different outdoor places; we treasure the time and the continuity of experiences and assign their meaning, stimulating the use of different languages in raising short stories. Through these multiple stories we can notice and attend the transformations of each one in these processes. The voices of Michel Serres, Anna Tsing, Natasha Myers and Carla Hustak, Vinciane Despret, Donna Haraway, Isabelle Stengers, among many others, have helped us to weave the narrative that we bring here. In this narrative made together with the short stories mentioned before, perception and sensibility come together with other forms of knowledge; with them we may develop an ethical and affective commitment. A new model of knowledge is ongoing, as Tsing states; its fundamental characteristic is multispecies love. Our narrative includes fragments of making-world projects; discoveries of "abundance of reality" in the most unexpected places, both in semi-natural and in urban areas in the South of Portugal, during the lasts 7 years. We accentuate modes of attunement among trees, pupils, streams, rivers, students, mosses, educators, birds, researchers, sounds, colours and others, and stress ways for multispecies love which occur during those making-world projects.