Exploring environmental caring through affective and embodied writing
Marie-Claude PlourdePurpose
This article challenges disembodied academic writing conventions by experimenting with affective and embodied storytelling. While environmental crisis provides an urgent starting point – particularly the failure of rational campaigns to shift destructive behaviors in the Global North – the deeper contribution of the article lies in demonstrating what becomes possible when scholars write to touch people's “guts” rather than merely inform their minds.
Design/methodology/approach
Adopting a performative methodology grounded in relational ontology and feminist epistemologies, this article presents a personal narrative that interweaves the author's relationship with her dying mother and humanity's relationship with Mother Earth. This methodological choice responds to affect's elusive nature—something we experience but struggle to observe – by enacting affects rather than studying them externally.
Findings
Contrasting written and oral performances of the narrative revealed that while oral delivery generated stronger affective responses, a written narrative with careful attention to form, imagery and language can still create spaces for resonance and transformation. The experience demonstrates both the potential and current limitations of affective writing as a mode of knowledge production.
Research limitations/implications
As a performative experiment rather than an empirical study, the article cannot systematically assess its own impact. Readers themselves must evaluate whether and how the narrative affected their relationship with Mother Earth and their understanding of what academic writing might accomplish.
Originality/value
This work experiments with affective storytelling as a feminist methodological intervention that challenges disembodied academic norms. It offers a model for embodied and relational writing that may inspire scholars addressing grand societal challenges where conventional rational argumentation proves insufficient to catalyze transformation.