TU#02 Insight - Becoming (not acquiring) knowledge

Talking Uncertainty

How do we practice and teach mnidoo-knowing in the face of dominant western ideologies? While western phenomenologists have considered knowledge as a material wealth that you acquire on your own, Anishnaabe people view knowledge as something you become with others. For Merleau Ponty, the rational self is disembodied - it floats above the world and surveys it as if it is not immersed in it. In this philosophy, he is extracting himself and trying to exist in the absolute present as the world emerges for him through his perception. As such, he is trying to stay in a knowing subject position that assumes that knowledge is detached from the body. In fact, mnidoo-knowing happens through a dialogue: between two or more individuals or between the corporeal (finitude) and the mnidoo (infinitude) self. As such, we all have access to this knowledge of mnidoo worlding. Yet, the dominant, rational western thought always undermines it and tells us that we should negate it and not pursue it. Attending to this layer of being (mnidoo) requires everyday resistance to western thought systems that deny the validity and existence of these other ways of communicating. Read all the talk insights here. https://www.urgentemergent.org/talking-uncertainty/mnidoo-worlding