Tentacularities (as diffracted from Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, Octopuses, and Extended Consciousnesses of Jumping Spiders)
Haraway, in Staying with the Trouble notes the Latin meanings of tentacular — to touch, to feel, to try. In other words, hapticity, affect, and experientiality / experimentality (note the French emphasis on sameness of these two).
Staying with the Trouble strives to be a tentacular book. (“Hmmm…. Is that really possible? To be a tentacular book?”, said the monocled-upward-looking emoji face). One sees it in relation to how she cites her sources: ideas springing from conversations (“Katie King told me…”), from jokes (“my partner…”), from discussions with her PhD students… from wherever the tentacles touched-felt-tried.
Knowledge has to be tentacular by nature. Doesn’t matter whether it you touch the books-journals-archives, or be touched by conversations-discussions-meaningless blabbings, it is always in relation to some-thing that touches us, moves us, drives us to experience(s) or experiments.
To be continued…
Sanem Güvenç 