Four ideas for thinking sensitive educations through multispecies narratives

Abstract

In the face of the collapse of modern epistemologies, the documentary “My Octopus Teacher” is activated as a powerful narrative of possible meanings within multispecies enunciations. We develop educational understandings shaped by the foundational concepts of time, trust, dreaming, and experience, drawing from a narrative methodology grounded in dialogical and tentacular orientations. Dialogical entanglements of selected scenes - mobilized to reflect on ways of acting and thinking-with human, non-human, and more-than-human beings - displace conventional educational understandings in the Anthropocene and open space for tentacular fabulations of possible forms of educability in multispecies assemblies. These emerge through the sensitive listening and interaction afforded by a cinematic narrative capable of sparking reflection that acknowledges the full presence of all subjects involved—with attentiveness, trust, hope, and whole-bodied experience in educational contexts.