This experiential workshop will be conversational in nature. Conversation with a difference. These pandemic dialogues will draw on participants’ lived experience. We believe that meaningful conversations develop when the language used continually refers to experience to insure aptness. Rather than resorting to “off the rack” vocabularies, we’re encouraging “custom made” meanings…not top-down meanings supplied by “experts”, but rather bottom-up meanings that are sourced from particular experiences. Many top-down meanings have passed their “best before date.” That is, they no longer reflect existent realities but rather describe an era that may have passed. Ulrich Beck referred to them as “zombie” concepts—concepts that live in the word but no longer exist in the world. After allotting time for individuals to reflect on their experience we will gather to share and discuss our emergent meanings. We acknowledge that such a process is initially difficult because it involves a trying on various ways of depicting our experience; rather than a smooth, authoritative delivery that is often valorized in academic contexts. However, we think that it is a skill worth developing in this liminal time. Collective map making is the process the produces new meaning perspectives for both individuals and the group.

Presenters: