From the curve of the snake, and the scene of the crocodile: musings on learning and losing space, place and body

Abstract

Where else can educational research begin and end, if not with the body of the researcher, if not with the particular material/ corporeal/ affective assemblages that this body is and has been part of? This paper traces the mutual constitution of bodies, identities and landscapes through memory as the body of this educator travels through multiple scenes of geo-spatial-temporal movement, and down the east coast of Australia. This movement parallels the movement from being a school teacher to becoming an academic. Throughout the paper landscape is foregrounded, and the body in landscape is evoked through poetic and literary modes of writing around the themes of learning and losing. The body in landscape is not merely the body of the writer. Other bodies in the landscape include ‘the curve of the snake’ - the row of protective hills that were said to protect her tropical home from cyclones – and the ‘scene of the crocodile’ – the rock that hung over the valley she passed on her way to school that she had learned of from Indigenous teachers. The political and ethical consequences of memory work, of body and place writing, and of genres of writing in educational research, are also considered. The paper argues for an embodied and reflexive literacy of place that incorporates multiple modes of knowing, being and writing.