Abstract
This work, comprised of pinhole photographs paired with written text, represents a series of ontological experiments with participants on a rafting expedition, on the Franklin River, lutruwita (Tasmania). Through photographic experiences in this landscape these experiments interrogated ideas about ways to represent places and ideas. We began with informal riverside workshops on pinhole photography followed by making pictures and developing them during the river journey. The home-made pinhole camera used by participants in the making of these photographs had neither a lens nor a viewfinder, thus the making of photographs demanded a certain sensual presence. The written expression of this work is partly comprised of reflections on the experiences of participants, some of whom engaged directly in this making. Participants were asked to consider what drew their attention to particular photographic images, and what feelings, emotions, experiences, memories or thoughts these chosen images evoked. These reflections are conjoined with musings on wild, self-willed and educational opportunities therein. The way in which this work is deliberately presented is reminiscent of a lyric philosophy (Zwicky 1992, 2003) that seeks to engage the reader, in this case through visual and linguistic representations, with patterned resonance.
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1. Authors and other participants represented in this paper are all privileged individuals. The philosophical approach taken here makes no attempt to generalize findings, rather, it represents a glimpse at their collective experience. In a sense, this is their pinhole view of the world at a particular time and in a particular place.
One reviewer rightly draws attention to the Rock Island Bend image and the caption that describes it as “an icon in the iconography of the Franklin River.” The same reviewer’s concerns are highlighted by another comment in this paper: “such attention involves listening to the available voices.” These observations lead to a question posed to the authors, “What about the unavailable or quieted voices?”
This is an excellent question. In one sense, efforts have been made to include a range of voices from the more-than-human world. However, another response is to acknowledge the importance of ever-broadening the human composition of the groups participating in these wild pedagogy experiments. Or, a response could be to reach out to other populations and encourage their own experimentation. Whether by these means, or in other ways, wild pedagogies will not be broadly useful unless issues in cultural politics are more fully addressed.
2. Background information on wild pedagogies is presented in the opening chapter of this volume. However, a couple of key points bear additional attention in relation to this paper. Most importantly, wild pedagogies have at their core an aim to problematize control. This does not suggest a free for all, or the elimination of all controls. Rather, we mean looking critically at the aspects of control—implicit or explicit—that limit imaginative possibilities for humans to dwell well in places. This includes looking at aspects of control in Western, European, and increasingly globalized, conceptions of education, and in discourses about human relationships with the more-than-human world.
Wild pedagogies is presented as a heuristic—that is, as an agent for discovery rather than as a more rigid framework. As such, this heuristic is an invitation to any person, or group, to experiment with their conceptions of education within their places in the world, particularly those who share concerns about control. We anticipate multiple responses and this is reflected in the pluralized use of wild “pedagogies.” This paper just provides one small inkling into a broad array of possibilities.
Finally, for now, we recognize that the idea of wilderness has been tainted by much legitimate critique of its use an agent of colonialism. We join in that critique. However, we also maintain, following the Old English etymology—essentially leading us to see wilderness as “self-willed land”—that a robust conception of wilderness exists that does not rely on disenfranchisement of people from their homelands (Crex Crex Collective et al. 2018).
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Morse, M., Jickling, B. & Morse, P. Views from a pinhole: experiments in wild pedagogy on the Franklin River. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education 21, 255–275 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42322-018-0021-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42322-018-0021-x