Other bodies and amphibian epistemologies

Abstract

This essay is a composition of reflections that present "other" possibilities of perspectives on the body, conceptions that involve "other" modes of scientific knowledge production, and inquiries that seek to challenge hegemonic concepts and ways of learning Biological Sciences. Building on previous research, I bring understandings that involve bodily languages, performances das oralituras, and different notions of the body, including Amerindian, Afro-diasporic, African cosmoperceptions, gender studies fields, body arts, and my experiences with listening to the body as potentialities to compose pluriepistemic views, decolonial and countercolonial pedagogies. By presenting different ways of producing knowledge from the body, I question whether "other Sciences" are not occurring and happening before us, if we are or are not reading the scripts that process them, with the perspective of encouraging other modes of listening, readings, and perceptions that surpass hierarchical and segregating boundaries. Because, if the different forms of languages constitute borders between 'epistemic worlds,' we need to relearn how to read the living libraries (bodies) that we are in order to 'move between worlds,' like amphibians in submersions, crossings, and intersections.