Intra-action, interaction and an expanded diatopic hermeneutics: following things, bodies and repertoires in situated knowledge devices

Abstract

The multiple debates on new materialisms, among other aspects, have pointed to the need to adjust the focus in the field of humanities, from verbal language and the dynamics of constitution of the representational to the multiple semioses and the dynamics of constitution of the non-representational. The epistemological-ontological-ethical angle proposed by Karen Barad's agential realism (Barad, 2007) points to the impossibility of separating ethics, ontology and epistemology in scientific practice and in the production of knowledge. In her perspective human and non-human beings and other beings are not pre-existing entities but co-constitute their own existences and the different elements of their worlds as materialized actions. Considering this approach, we propose here to reflect on two ethnographic, or rather experiential, exercises that help us to understand the modes of mutual configuration of subjects and processes of materialized co-construction are triggered by different objects (Budach; Kell; Patrick, 2015). The first exercise arises from a series of biographical projects with immigrant women in Portugal, developed in an interdisciplinary and collaborative way (Keating, 2009; Keating; Solovova, 2011; Lechner, 2015; Keating, 2019). The second exercise is based on the development of an academic mobility project built according to the framework of Encontros de Saberes (Carvalho; Vianna, 2020), with the aim of bringing a master of the traditional art of jongo from Brazil to South Africa (Carneiro, 2016).