Haecceity Altercation: Thisness as Pedagogy

Abstract

I write into the haecceity of recent events in and around my teaching in environmental education to explore the concept of thisness as pedagogy.

Altercation. There had been moments, recently. Washed-out face and fuzzing foreground on screen. I’m looking tired. The inter ruption. Sorry, you go. No? Ok. I wanted to talk about . . . sorry . . . I wanted to talk about the thing I said. Yes. Yes. There was an altercation. In the room. No. No one said anything. I mean, I said something. Something like, “I don’t. think. there’s. time . . ..” And this altercated. It was altercating. No, it was in the air. No one argued. It was a crack, sprouting []. And everyone stopped for . . . a. Was it a moment? Something shifted—maybe what Andrew Gillott (2023) calls a, mo[ve]ment?

That classroom with the windows on three sides [PL 1.26] holds stories [though it leaks, of course ]. We’re talking about environmental philosophy. You know, Deleuze stuff. And the need for new stories. With Haraway, Latour, Stengers. And dualisms/not-dualisms. How our “analytical frameworks” pluck us out from-[form]-transcend the world. How we’re wanting to [re]situate. Finding a pedagogy that does better. Lines of becoming-life. The others’ [alter]imbrication. The tree [Treeing? No tree? ] outside the window is our talking point/line. It transmogrifies as we practice it differently through our ontologically shifting discussion. “But this,” here . . . “but that,” there. The others’ story. And how all things are environments. We are enclosed and enclosing. We see the human microbiome reel out of “us” [always becoming-with] and mingle with (zoom in) the airborne single-celled life. The microplastic and breath in this room. Cosmopolitics. We’re talking about hope in stories, basically. And I say something like . . . I don’t have much hope .

I don’t think environmental educators are supposed to say that.

Not as cold as ice. That space, on top of your fingers where bodies collide when you type. But still beautiful. You sense, feel, think, write it as fresh, while it hurts. I told you I’d felt jaggedy recently. And we tried to work out what that was. We kicked the cup around, and you left it on the floor near the gates. To be blown down the Royal Mile. I still think about that. When my fingers are so cold, they feel a million miles away. Something elses’—they altercate. I hope we’re doing better. I suppose this is pedagogy. What we are all doing. So long as we attempt. I don’t believe in the environment.

The thisness of it. This thisness of it. How it doesn’t fit, and you turn it and try again. The room altercation. That, then. The now. What I [Was? This?] said. I took it back. [I took it with me, here]. Not 4 minutes later. I do have hope. I promise. I mean. I mean to say both I do/n’t. I mean to say . . . I’m just getting by. Not hope for endings, utopian. But for better living—[Where is living? Who? How?]. New worlds are always practiced. Environments are always practiced. Immanence is always practiced. This is it. Thisness as pedagogy.