A Curious Practice

Chapter 7 draws close to the philosopher, psychologist, animal-human student, and cultural theorist Vinciane Despret because of her ability to think-with other beings, human or not. Despret’s work on “attunement” and on critters “rendering each other capable” of unexpected feats in actual encounters is necessary to staying with the trouble. She attends not to what critters are supposed to be able to do, by nature or education, but to what beings evoke from and with each other that was not there before, in nature or culture. Her kind of thinking enlarges the capacities of all the players; that is her worlding practice. Earthly urgencies demand that kind of thinking beyond inherited categories and capacities, in homely and concrete ways, like the things Arabian babblers and their scientists get up to in the Negev desert. Despret teaches how to be curious, as well as how to mourn by bringing the dead into active presence. Her curious practice prepares for next chapter’s Communities of Compost and the tasks of speakers for the dead.