Edouard Glissant - Poetics of Relation (some concepts)

From March 11-22nd 2016, SenseLab welcomed Tito Mukhopadhyay and Adam Wolfond. Our time together began with a celebratory launch of Tito Mukhopadhyay’s Plankton Dreams (Open Humanities Press, 2015), where Tito led us through several neurodiverse thought experiments. These led us to the work of Spinoza, who became the focus of day two, agitating across the writings of Adam – on movement, gesture, thought – and those of Tito – on the history of philosophy, rocks and the more-than human. 

"What kinds of modes of existence does neurodiversity bring into being? What techniques do the neurodiverse make operative to orient themselves (and others) in this predominantly neurotypically-inflected world? What else might the world look like (and feel like)  were neurodiverse techniques foregrounded in pedagogy, art, research-creation? What if neurotypicality weren’t the best place from which to collaborate with existence in the making? Through a close reading of Tito Mukhopadhyay’s Plankton Dreams, this SenseLab event invites us to experiment with techniques for neurodiversity. Tito Mukhopadhyay will join us to discuss his new book onTuesday March 18 at 2pm (Concordia University, EV 10-785)."

If you follow the link, you can view some videos of the conversation we had with Adam and Tito, as well as a little bit of some of the facilitation techniques Adam and Tito use. 

http://senselab.ca/wp2/events/techniques-for-neurodiversity-march-11-22-2016/

The book Tito wrote is available for free download, here 

small excerpt Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay 65- 66 Chapter 9:

Eggsplorer Eggstraordinaire

How could it not be difficult for me to sit in my classroom when

I had such thoughts in my head? A restless egg was rolling around the wide world to gather eggsperience so that he could write about it one day. I could feel the future book in my hands: Memoirs of an Elliptical Traveler. The world stretched before him in every direction.

Good to go East,

Good to go West.

Good to go anywhere...

I must have left the classroom in search of some egg-fulfillment. The seeker egg will always seek an egg purpose!

A Bad Eggsample

Someone, who was unfamiliar with my desire for success or who would terribly miss my elliptical presence inside the classroom, pulled me back. And he wasn’t even the mother hen kind! He just dropped my eggy self on the chair and told to be seated for the rest of the day. How had I not cracked from the impact?

I hoped that at some point this someone would realize how the center of gravity works in an elliptical form. Special ed authorities usually don’t understand the simple egg science of egg gravity. For a while I sat on my chair, swaying with an egglike tilt; then

an egglike seasaw motion. The urge to roll away flowed out of me like a liberated yolk. I tumbled down from the chair while all the king’s horses and all the king’s men watched. I began to roll around from wall to wall, alarming my audience, which seemed to fear the unpredictability of my movement.

I think I was being a bad eggsample. One voice began complaining, “Tito’s gotten up again!” As if that weren’t enough, different eggs in different voices began singing the age-old egg song, “Tito’s not in his chair.” Of course, Caeser’s voice was most prominent. So someone, not quite the same brooding rooster, hauled me back to my coop. There would be more henpecking. 

The Banal Quotidian

While working on a worksheet, I contemplated rearranging

some spelling words. The permutational possibilities seemed endless. I sat between all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, consumed by a novel idea: how to go back in time when spelling was in its primordial or egglike state. So I picked up my pen! To make the banal quotidian memorable, I scribbled random letters on my left arm.

Word Drop

There was no reason whatsoever to write on the worksheet. “Who cares if the fill-in-the-blanks go hungry?” I thought

to myself. The worksheet lay flat on the table. No one was supervising. Maybe a word or two might drop down from my left arm and fall into the mouths of those chirping blanks. I left that decision entirely to the words themselves. “I’m so very tired of playing Mother Bird.” Then I turned my attention to my right arm.

Literacy for All

As my left hand struggled to write the same words on my right arm, someone, of course, had to stop me. But why shouldn’t the two arms be balanced? Why shouldn’t they both be literate? It

is always difficult when an egg wishes to paint itself on Easter morning. Sadly, the egg can’t get his point across, especially in a special ed classroom. That point will not penetrate yolk-less minds.

Eggsactly

There seemed to be a total misunderstanding when I offered to write some of my words on a classmate’s arm. I wanted to show him that arm writing doesn’t kill people. In fact, one may grow to enjoy it. I felt a responsibility to spread my words of wisdom so that everyone was on the same page. Think of it as uniting the world through eggy hieroglyphics.

Misunderstanding continued to prevail because whichever

way I offered to turn my pen, people seemed to be in a state

of paranoid frenzy. And it was just as I had expected! Someone discovered that I had not yet written anything on my worksheet, except for a triangle and some coded symbols gathered from alien chicken feet that directed my pen to scratch around. Who knows what those scratches meant? I didn’t know what they

meant. Perhaps I would discover. Then there was a shower of discordant complaints: “Tito has not started his work!” 

ANOTHER EXCERPT, 81, Plankton Dreams:

Plankton Dreams

If I had a choice, I’d be some kind of plant—floating algae, say.
It has no obligation to remain in one place. Algae-Tito would drift on the ripples of a shallow pond till a duck spotted me and chased me around. I would elude the duck, and in his surprise he’d wonder if I had secret eyes that could tell me where he was. “Hey, you!” the duck would say in his quacking language, which the wind would translate into my plankton language. “Plankton are supposed to wait for ducks to eat them!”
“Not this plankton,” I’d reply. A chase would follow—the duck would be utterly determined to consume me. After a while,
I’d find myself in the gastrointestinal pathway of that ignorant and illiterate bird, which knows-not-what-it-does. Masticated pieces of Algae-Tito would mix with other previously swallowed plankton. In a state of disbelief, I’d cry, “Et tu, Duck!” To which the feathery Brutus would respond by emitting a satisfying burp.
Then perhaps I’d look at the peristaltic mess inside the gastrointestinal pathway of the duck, which knows-not-what- it-does, and hear a human voice being translated into plankton language: “Tito, we need to walk faster before it starts raining!” The voice would sound remarkably like Mr. B. In the form of a final, vaporizing burp, my algae life would come to an end.
I’d awaken from my plankton dreams, thankful to be where I was, because the special needs classroom is exactly the place that special beings can dream up duck-and-plankton dramas. You have the whole day to dream. Time is immortal here.