Learning to be affected by earth others

If, as Val Plumwood (2002) suggests, we can no longer behave as isolated and masterful human individuals, nations or species, but need to act in accordance with those earth others enabling our existence, what does this mean for the activity of research? One answer might be to seek out those who are already transforming their relationships with the more than human world, to learn about and tell their stories, and to help multiply, magnify, legitimate and proliferate their practices. If one looks for them, there are many who are engaged in learning from our climate changed earth in such a way that they themselves are transformed and are prompted to create new ways of living with earth others. Bruno Latour (2004b) calls this process that co-transforms the learner and the world “learning to be affected”. Central to learning to be affected is a process whereby one becomes sensitized to (affected by) a world that in turn becomes more highly differentiated (see Latour 2004b; Gibson-Graham and Roelvink 2010). In this essay I want to tentatively suggest that by connecting with those already affected by the manifestations of climate change academic researchers too might learn to be affected.