Talking with a tongue - A glossary to redefine your thinking

A glossary to redefine your thinking

The following contribution is about decentralizing us humans and our anthropocentric views. «Talking without a tongue» is an attempt to redefine our vocabulary and concepts so internalized and rudimentary to us, we tend to forget that they are not universal. This redefinition is an animated Glossary, visualized by N'Faly Ismaël Camara.

This is a refusal. A Refusal to theorize, to put into academic words, to reference human scholars.

Instead we want you to.

Think about who you recognize as kin.

Does thinking involve a brain?

What about all those who take decisions without a brain? Is it still called a decision then?

Does every organism feel pain? Also the ones without a brain?

You know flowers menstruate too, Pine trees set themselves on fire and bacteria build cities passing on their memory.

Do you look for language that looks like your own, to see if others talk

look for hands with five fingers to see if others build

look for community resembling your own to see if others have mothers

And look for legs to see if others walk?

Then ask the mountain humbly to teach you the speech of hills and rivers.

Learning from and with nature, as well as nature-based pedagogies, seem central to your practice. How have the different pedagogies of self-organised learning, collective and/or peer-to-peer learning and learning from and with nature, interacted with and enriched one another during your time at School of Commons?

All Life is self-organised – also the learning process– inherently, instinctively and automatically. Theorizing about it seems redundant to us.

We created the Entity precisely to not learn from human peers. So if by peers you mean the mushrooms, then yes. They taught us a lot, giving us constant feedback and constructive criticism.