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Don't Move! Desired, Hairy, and Forbidden Surface Encounters in (Motionless) Walking with Alpacas

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The a-r-t-ographic inquiry of living with alpacas has facilitated an opportunity to become aware of the alpacas’ physical encounters with physical matter and more-than-humans in their environments. The process of mutual human-alpaca co-becoming has also been an eco-pedagogical journey where the alpacas’ ways of being urged and challenged anthropocentric presumptions about movement, touch, and care. The first author's encounters with her alpacas through walking and motionless togetherness, observing and photographing, have shown alternative ways of attuning to the land and searching for respect and trust between them. The article focuses particularly on three alpacas’ encounters with water, trees, and humans, and discusses possible meanings behind their sense of touch and movement. The main question the article seeks to answer is: What can acts of touching and abutting, motivated by the alpacas’ individual and specie's specific preferences, teach us about more-than-human agency? The text raises new questions about inter-species care and non-human agency. What has been learned through the eco-pedagogical encounters with the alpacas can provide a deeper understanding of wild and domestic animals and can potentially motivate deconstruction of human-centeredness in relation to non-human animals.

Keywords: companion species ; ecological awareness ; embodied experience ; Indigenous Andean communities ; interspecies compassion ; interspecies justice ; intra-action ; learning ; more-than-humans ; movement ; sense of touch

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Don't Move! Desired, Hairy, and Forbidden Surface Encounters in (Motionless) Walking with Alpacas
Intellect , 123 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1386/9781789389197_8
/content/books/9781789389197.c06
/content/books/9781789389197.c06
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  2. Allen, C. (2016). The living ones: Miniatures and animation in the Andes. Journal of Anthropological Research, 72 (4), 416–441.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Bastian, M. , Jones, O. , Morre, N. , & Roe, E. (2017). Introduction: More-than-human participatory research: Contexts, challenges, possibilities. In M. Bastian , O. Jones , N. Morre , & E. Roe (Eds.), Participatory research in more-than-human worlds (pp. 1–15). Routledge.
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  5. Bekoff, M. (Ed.). (2013). Ignoring nature no more: The case for compassionate conservation. University of Chicago Press.
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  6. Bekoff, M. , & Louv, R. (2014). Rewilding our hearts: Building pathways of compassion and coexistence. New World Library.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Bennett, M. M. (2006). The Camelid companion. Racoon Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Broglio, R. (2011). Surface encounters: Thinking with animals and art. Oxford University Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsn-ebooks/detail.action?docID=819531
  9. Bromage, G. (2019). Llamas and alpacas: A guide to management. The Crowood Press.
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  10. Cáceres Chalco, E. (2016). Sistema económico Indígena Andino: Funcionamiento y lógicas desde la perspectiva del Runa en el Sur Andino. [Indigenous Andean Economic System: Workings and logic from the perspective of the Southern Andean indigenous]. Abya Yala.
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  13. De Georgio, F. , & De Georgio-Schoorl, J. (2016). Equus lost? How we misunderstand the nature of the horse-human relationship—plus, brave new ideas for the future. Trafalgar Square.
  14. De la Cadena, M. (2016). Earth beings: Ecologies of practice across Andean worlds. Duke University Press.
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  15. Despret, V. (2008). The becomings of subjectivity in animal worlds. Subjectivity, 23 , 123–139.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Fredriksen, B. C. (2011). Negotiating grasp: Embodied experience with three-dimensional materials and the negotiation of meaning in early childhood education. The Oslo School of Architecture and Design.
  17. Fredriksen, B. C. (2020). More-than-human perspectives in understanding embodied learning: Experience, ecological sustainability and education. FORMakademisk, 13 (3), 1–23.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Grosz, E. , Yusoff, K. , & Clark, N. (2017). An interview with Elisabeth Grosz: Geopower, inhumanism and the biopolitical. Theory, Culture & Society, 34 (2&3), 129–146.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Ingold, T. , & Palsson, G. (Eds.). (2013). Biosocial becomings: Integrating social and biological anthropology. Cambridge University Press.
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  20. Keski-Korsu, M. (2014). Alpaca Oracle. http://www.artsufartsu.net/alpaca-oracle/
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  22. Lakoff, G. , & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. Basic Books.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Lee, N. , Morimoto, K. , Mosavarzadeh, M. , & Irwin, R. (2019). Walking propositions: Coming to know a/r/tographically. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 38 (3), 681–690.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Lindgren, N. , & Öhman, J. (2019). A posthuman approach to human–animal relationships: Advocating critical pluralism. Environmental Education Research, 25 (8), 1200–1215. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2018.1450848
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  25. Loayza Huamán, S. (2015). Cuestión de identidad entre los pastores de llamas y alpacas en las comunidades alto andinas de Vinchos. [Identity issues among the shepherds of llamas and alpacas in the Andean highland communities of Vinchos.]. In E. Cáceres Chalco (Ed.), Tejiendo las bases teóricas del sistema medico indígena andino: salud e interculturalidad desde los Andes. [Weaving the theoretical base for the indigenous Andean medical system: health and interculturality in the Andes]. Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Malone, K. (2016). Theorizing a child–dog encounter in the slums of La Paz using posthumanistic approaches in order to disrupt universalisms in current “child in nature” debates. Children's Geographies, 16 (4), 390–407.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Matthews, P. T. , Barwick, J. , Doughty, A. K. , Doyle, E. K. , Morton, C. L. , & Brown, W. Y. (2020). Alpaca field behaviour when cohabitating with lambing ewes. Animals, 10 , 1–18.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. Morton, T. (2018). Being ecological. Penguin Random House.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Murray, J. V. (1985). The limits and imitations of the “Vertical Archipelago” in the Andes. In S. Masuda , I. Shimada , & C. Morris (Eds.), Andean ecology and civilization: An interdisciplinary perspective on Andean ecological complementarity. University of Tokyo.140
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Pedersen, H. (2010). Is “the posthumanism” educable? On the convergence of educational philosophy, animal studies, and posthumanism theory. Discourse : Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 32 (2), 237–250.
     [Google Scholar]
  32. Petersen, E. , Fiske, A. P. , & Schubert, T. W. (2019). The role of social relational emotions for human-nature connectedness. Frontiers in Psychology, 10 , 1–6.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2017). Matters of care: Speculative ethics in more than human worlds. University of Minnesota Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2011a). Embodied minds or mindful bodies? A question of fundamental, inherently inter-related aspects of animation. Subjectivity, 4 (4), 451–466.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2011b). The primacy of movement. John Benjamin.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Stake, R. , & Visse, M. (2021). A paradigm of care. Information Age.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Stelter, R. (2008). Learning in the light of the first-person approach. In T. Schilhab , M. Juelskjær , & T. Moser (Eds.), Learning bodies (pp. 45–64). Danmarks Pædagogiske Universitetsforlag.
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  38. Stenslie, S. (2010). Virtual touch: A study of the use and experience of touch in artistic, multimodal and computer-based environments [Doctoral dissertation]. The Oslo School of Architecture and Design.
  39. Taylor, A. , & Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. (2019). The common worlds of children and animals: Relational ethics for entangled lives. Routledge .
     [Google Scholar]
  40. Triggs, V. , Irwin, R. , & Leggo, C. (2014). Walking art: Sustaining ourselves as arts educators. Visual Inquiry: Learning & Teaching Art, 3 (1), 21–34.
     [Google Scholar]
  41. Tsing, A. (2010). Arts of inclusion, or how to love a mushroom. Mānoa, 22 (2), 191–203.
     [Google Scholar]
  42. van Dooren, T. , Kirkesy, E. , & Münster, U. (2016). Multispecies studies: Cultivating arts of attentiveness. Environmental Humanities, 8 (1), 1–23.
     [Google Scholar]
  43. Young, T. , & Rautio, P. (2018). Childhood nature animal relations: Section overview. In A. Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles , K. Malone , & E. Barratt Hacking (Eds.), Research handbook on childhood nature (pp. 1211–1237). Springer.
     [Google Scholar]

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