Circle 3: The Praxis of Social Imaginaries. Cosmologies, Othering and Liminality

Circle 3 Website: https://scalar.usc.edu/works/praxis-of-social-imaginaries/

You can also read about the study circle and research community related to this work here

A NEW Call for Participation is out for the final session!

Welcome to

A Writing Retreat – independent work done in community

Location: Kökar, Åland Islands, Finland OR online
Dates: 21–28 July, 2025 
Join for a guided writing retreat, either remotely from your preferred writing place or by coming to Kökar (limited number of spots)!

During the past years, this community has moved in time and place by following medieval travellers to the East, in Africa, over the Atlantic and to the North. Now it is time to conclude what we have learnt and gather our experiences into a more tangible format. This is why you are invited to take part in an organised writing retreat. This can be done in two different ways.

1. You stay in the comfort of your own home and join the community for guided sessions in the mornings and evenings (Finnish time). The sessions are meant to set you up for independent writing during the day and to check-in on how the writing went at the end of the day. In the end of the week, we will also make room to share and comment on each other’s writing.
2. You join Laura on the beautiful island of Kökar in the archipelago of the Åland Islands to write together with a community. There is a limited number of spots for accommodation available in simple and shared cottages (contact me for further details). Alternatively, you find yourself more comfortable arrangements that you pay for from your own expenses. Recommendations are the following places: Klobbars, Brudhäll, Antons Gästhem or Sandviken. Or, then coming with a private boat and staying in the Harbour in Hellsö.

To join the writing retreat, please send in an abstract of your idea for an article that you will be working on. Please add the following to the abstract: suggested title, general outline of your idea, the materials you will be working with, what methods you are using, how the work is trans- or inter-disciplinary in its approach or deals with traditional and/or indigenous epistemological practices. Also, add if you are writing this independently or together with someone else, as well as where you wish to publish your work.

Abstracts should be submitted by email to laura.hellsten(a)abo.fi by 30th of May! Please indicate if you want to join the writing retreat in person or online. If you are new to this community and wish to join us in person, also send a short bio where you present yourself and your interest in this work.

The abstract can be the description of an article you have half ready in a drawer or a completely new idea. If you want to work towards contributing to our upcoming special issue with ARTS, this is also possible. The deadline for NEW submissions will be September 5th.

Based on the submitted abstracts, a selection will be made on who will be welcomed to join the writing retreat. You will be informed about the decision no later than June 2nd. To register for the event and secure your spot in the writing retreat, the membership fee (25€) of the Nordic Summer University for the year 2025 needs to be paid by June 15th!

General Information:

This study circle works through three different strategies: praxes of reading, listening and the telling of stories. The project can be described as a cosmological artistic intervention. By bringing artists, activists and researchers from different disciplines together in laboratories of praxis, we want to create a transformational learning environment and study how shifts in awareness and epistemic paradigms may occur.     

The Praxis of Reading
The praxis of reading takes different forms. Artists, activists, and researchers will delve into medieval cosmology by reading a series of travel accounts. We will critically engage with works of the learned elite of medieval Europe, describing their encounters with the people and cultures at the borders of their ‘world’ through close reading and co-contextualization with counter-narratives and autoethnographies. Historians and theologians like Mary Louise Pratt, Geraldine Heng and Willie James Jennings have identified that these particular stories were at the core of what created and spread the racialised social imaginary that later became a racialised gaze of white Christian Europeans. Jennings further argues that this inverted, distorted vision of creation reduced theological anthropology to commodified bodies at the same time as it disrupted the relationship to land, place and creatureliness of Christian white westerners.^[1] By following this formation in the texts spanning from the period of the 11th to the 16th century, we hope that the participants in the circle will gain deep insights into how questions of race^[2] and relationship to creation are intertwined.

The Praxis of Listening

In the laboratories, the praxis of listening refers to both the fact that the texts we encounter come from lived experiences of marginalised people in the Nordics as well as historic and diverse worldviews. The praxis of listening will also take the form of listening to each other’s experiences of the joint reading. This includes the expertise of Indigenous peoples.

The Praxis of Telling Stories

Finally, the praxis of telling stories arises when both artists and researchers are guided into interpreting how the praxis of reading and listening could be transferred into their particular fields of work. All of the medieval travelling accounts carry, for example, descriptions of dancing, cultural customs, food, weather, and animal and landscape descriptions that we hope will inspire further explorations by both artists and researchers. Our aim is that the praxis of telling stories will lead to artistic collaborations arising from the time spent together. The study circle will create joint article publications, an anthology and artistic exhibitions. For the latter, we are collaborating with events like Aboagora.

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^[1] Jennings 2010, 58.

^[2] Our working definition of racism is: In principle, race theory (…) understands, of course, that race has no singular or stable referent: that race is a structural relationship for the articulation and management of human differences, rather than a substantive content. Heng 2018, 19.

^[3] These books will be selected considering the language preferences of the participants. Some suggestions are: Riikka Tanner and Tuula Lind’s Käheä-ääninen tyttö (2009); Sanna Hedman’s Henry Hedman – Kärrynpyörä, taivas ja maa, (2013); Niillas Holmberg Halle Helle (2020); Nura Farah’s Aavikon tyttäret (2014) or Aurinkotyttö (2019); Elin Anna Labba’s Herrarna satte oss hit:om tvångsförflyttningarna i Sverige (2020); Elin Cullhed’s Eufori. En roman om Sylvia Plath (2021).

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Välkomna till vår studiecirkel!

Under dom kommande tre åren kommer vi att bekanta oss med medeltida reseskildringar.

Idén är att vi ger oss ut på en spännande resa i historiska och etnografiska material där resor vid Europas yttersta gränser skildras av medeltida lärda människor. Under tre års tid kommer vi att tillsammans utforska berättelser med start hos Gerald av Wales (c. 1146 – 1223) besök på Irland och Wales, William av Rubrucks (1248–1255) och Marco Polos (1254-1324) resor österut, Ibn Khalduns (1332-1406) besök i Afrika, Xu Guangqis (1562 – 1633) och Matteo Riccis (1552-1610) beskrivningar av Kina, Olaus Magnus (1490-1553) resor i Norden och slutligen José de Acostas (1540-1600) och Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566) seglatser över Atlanten. Genom att följa skilldringarna ser vi hur blicken på “den andre” skiftar och formas genom århundradena så att slutligen visar sig den rasifierade blicken där den vite mannen anses vara “skapelsens krona”. Berättelserna skapar också ett samband mellan hur ett västerländskt rasifierat tänkande växer fram sida vid sida med ett vetenskapligt utforskande av världen – en världssyn som tror sig kunna manipulera och styra över både kroppar och materia.

Samtidigt innehåller berättelserna även många rika natur och kulturbeskrivningar som kan inspirera till utforskning av sambanden mellan då och nu. Därtill möter läsaren av texterna kunskaps och samhällsystem som är väldigt olika den västerlänningar idag är vana vid. Dessa kanske öppnar upp helt nya sätt för oss att närma oss varandra och världen vi lever i!? Genom mötet med varandra och texterna, och genom samtal med special-inbjudna gäster så som den samiska danskonstnären Ola Stinnerbom önskar vi skapa utrymme för kreativa dialoger kring teman som hållbar utveckling och utanförskap idag. Du är varmt välkommen att vara en av dem som bidrar till dessa samtal och denna dialog genom din konst och din forskningsexpertis!

I mars 2023 är det Gerald av Wales som vi börjar läsa tillsammans under en gemensam tre-dagars träff i Oslo. Deltagandet i symposiet fungerar även som en kurs i vetenskapskommunikation inom kurshelheten Social Justice and Sustainability för magisters och forskarstuderanden vid Åbo Akademi. Se på vår hemsida hur du kan ansöka om att få delta!

Exempel på program från ett tidigare symposium:

Coordinators:

Laura Hellsten
Lindsey Drury