Curiosity

Anna Tsing writes that the first thing we need to bring back in the present case of emergency, catastrophe, crisis and pandemic is curiosity,
which has been buried, hidden, because it does not fit within the accepted temporalities of a capitalist and productive system. But why is curiosity not "productive"? What is productive? Which kind of productivity do we want?

We all have been curious. We all have inhabited a whole new world and the implied need to discover it [2]. There is something about childhood that grabs us, that stretches us. An ability to immerse ourselves in the world, to observe the details and explore them. From the houses, the gardens. Children know the secret places, the forbidden places. There is something in those corners, another temporality, a Kairos that we gradually lose the ability to inhabit. How to recover the Kairos? Is it there where curiosity dwells?

We have been trained to give the right answer, to always be prepared. Absorb, memorize, vomit. We grow up in a system that rewards the first of the class, but knowledge is not an individual merit, it is shared and co-generated. It is relational, it cannot exist without the other. Looking at the Latin etymology: Inter - esse, "that which is in the middle," "to make a difference," "to participate in something," “to matter”.

Curiosity, interest and knowledge are shared and transformative practices. They are co-created experiences, they are becoming-with. They are also material practices: how to start a conversation without the other? How to read without a book, a platform? Each object is the result of a long process of various forms of life working in different temporalities. Which tree has brought out the pencil with which I write? Which graphite stone? Who designed it, collected it, processed it?

If we continue, we run the risk of falling into a vertigo spiral in which everything is linked to everything. Not everything is directly linked to everything, but everything is linked to something [3]. We need to understand, then, what things we are linked to and how we relate to them. How to practice responsibility with those with which we share ourselves and make us be?

How to train the mind to visit? How to visit without invading? Vinciane Despret proposes to emphasize attunement rather than empathy. Attunement is to agree, to coordinate rhythms. Empathy allows us to understand what it is like to "be like the other", to put ourselves in their place. Empathy implies occupying the space of the other, but it does not tell us how to be with the other, how to coordinate rhythms and move alongside, how to attune.[4]

Curiosity is a practice that needs to look at the environment and recognize it. It implies discovering us, to cultivate interest. It is nourished by an extended temporality, by devoting slow attention, by an affection with and towards others. It demands to explore the corners, to make them a familiar place. It is to go to the same space again and again to recognize different worlds. It is to walk slowly, it is to gather.

We live in a frenetic and precarious society that teaches us to long for what is to come: a higher salary, a higher position. But "those who look up have no idea how to make visits, how responsible for relationships, or how to practice curiosity without sadism." [5]
Curiosity is soft and found in the present. Here. But those who look forward don't know this because they are hard and hermetic. They are not interested because they do not recognize themselves in the middle, because they do not understand that they are already involved.
But we, in the middle of a precarious and frenetic society with poor and catastrophic visions of the future, do not look forward, we look here. We stay with the mud, there where roots grow. There where we can be wet and squashy, oozy and generative, soft.

[1] Anna Tsing, /The Mushroom at the End of the World. On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruin/, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2012), 6.
[2] "Kids do not look at the houses, but they know them, the corners, better than the mother. Kids look around. They search. They do not look at the houses any more than they look at the walls of flesh that enclose them when they cannot yet see. But they know them." free translation from Marguerite Duras, /La Vida Material/, trans. David Llig, (Barcelona: Club Editor, 2018).
[3] Donna Haraway, /Seguir con el problema/, trans. Helen Torres, (Bilbao: Consomni, 2019).
[4] Vinciane Despret, “The Body We care for: Figures for Antropo-zoo-genesis”, /Body and Society/ 10, 2-3, (June 2004): 111-134, 10.1177/1357034X04042938.
[5] Helen Torres, “El Llamado del Chthulu” in Maria PtqK, /Especies del Chthuluceno/, (Bizcaya: Sycorax. 2019), 22.