Sharing the Field: Reflections of More-Than-Human Field/work Encounters

Abstract

The “field” has long been contested as spatially and temporally bounded. Feminist epistemologies have re-imagined and engaged field/work as shared, messy and co-constitutive, while critical more-than-human methodologies in the transdisciplinary field of the environmental humanities are further expanding our understanding of who and what counts in the production of knowledge in the field. This compendium article orbits around a collective concern for the sharedness of bodily and planetary ecologies through field/work. It brings together cross-disciplinary accounts of field encounters that critically explore what it feels like to do this work and what it entails. With a focus on practice and process, the six contributing authors—researchers, artists, practitioners, writers—consider how nonhumans share in our research, shaping the work we do, the questions we ask and the responses we craft. Together, they offer thoughtful provocations on the troubling and promising ways in which human and non-human bodies become unsettled and rearranged through field encounters.