Multiple Knowledges. Learning from/with Other Beings

Book excerpt: This issue of Transpositiones showcases a range of interdisciplinary and critical approaches to classic and alternative conceptions of cognition and sources of knowledge. The articles reflect on the many types of sensory and extrasensory knowledge available to non-human beings and wonder whether and in what ways can we, as humans, perceive, conceptualize, and respect these knowledges. The authors highlight how the existence of multiple knowledges questions species boundaries and onto- and epistemological perspectives, in the process of learning not only about other beings but also from and along with them. This selection of texts attempts to contribute to overcoming the anthropocentric perception of subjectivity and to the abandoning of an optics based on the dualisms of nature and culture, spirit and matter, subject and object, animate and inanimate nature, physis and techne, etc., which are so firmly entrenched in the Western intellectual tradition.