Abstract

This essay explores the existential difficulties involved in being a non-indigenous scholar of philosophy and early childhood education in an indigenous context. It begins by recalling an encounter with young Sámi children that happened while doing research at an early childhood centre in northern Scandinavia. This is read alongside the poetry of the Sámi writer Nils Aslak Valkeapää, a personal documentary text by Sámi author Elin Anna Labba, and Wittgensteinian philosophy. These texts are read as a philosophical exercise of the imagination through which the scholar‘s words, thoughts, and assumptions are reworked in a decolonising process. This process involves the scholar in a lived philosophy of avoiding deflection of what Cora Diamond has called “difficulties of reality” and considerations of the role of imagination in ethics. In doing so the essay reimagines the notion of hybrid cultures and identities through Wittgenstein‘s invitation to imagine forms of life. The essay concludes by suggesting that by thinking of scholarship in this way hope and meaning can emerge out of the silences in the encounters between the non-indigenous scholars and the indigenous children.

摘要

本文探讨了在本土背景下成为非土著哲学和早期儿童教育学者所面临的生存困难。首先，我们回想起在斯堪的纳维亚北部的一家幼儿中心进行研究时遇到的萨米儿童的遭遇。本书与萨米作家尼尔斯·阿斯拉克·瓦尔卡帕（Nils AslakValkeapää）的诗歌，萨米作家艾琳·安娜·拉巴（Elin Anna Labba）的个人纪录片文本以及维特根斯坦主义哲学一起阅读。这些文本被视为对想象力的一种哲学演练，通过该演说，学者的言语，思想和假设在非殖民化过程中得以重塑。这个过程使学者陷入了一种活生生的哲学中，即避免偏离科拉·戴蒙德所说的“现实的困难”，并避免考虑想象力在伦理学中的作用。通过这样做，本文通过维特根斯坦（Wittgenstein）的邀请重新想象了混合的文化和身份的概念，以想象生活的形式。本文最后提出，通过以这种方式思考学术，可以在非土著学者与土著儿童之间的the默中产生希望和意义。