Embodied dialogues. A transformative pedagogy of spaec, time, and identity

This chapter focuses on the transformative potential of the sensobiographic walks, connecting them to the tradition of embodied narrative methodologies in research on adult education and learning . The concrete features of the method entail walking-with and remembering, hence creating a powerful, layered, material and symbolic setting triggering an experience of learning, or creation of the new. More specifically, the authors compare data from two projects: the SENSOTRA project and an Italian study (“Unexpected subjects: reception, space and meaning in asylum seekers’ experience”) using the same method to highlight the experience of newcomers and natives living in the same territory. In both cases, walking-with created unexpected contacts between the participants (and with the researcher, who is not, in this kind of study, a neutral presence). This analysis brought to problematize difference and identity: in walking pairs, differences are a precondition due to the research plan (the groups of participants, or targets, were identified at start) and appear shaped by dominant narratives and categorization, or even expectations, that may be partially internalized. During the walks, these presuppositions became more blurred and problematic, since categorization was overcome by other, more dynamic and local, differences emerging in and by the process. From a fixed idea of difference, coming from categorization and polarisation of identities (“the newcomer” and “the native”, “the elderly” and “the youth”), the concept of difference as a feature of the relationship, and a construct, brought to celebrate the dynamic contact, curiosity, playfulness, transformation, and transcendence of individual qualities.