The figure of an aporetic knower doing world philosophy as situated ‘field’ philosophising in Northern Australia

In this presentation ‘I’ as the figure of a Japanese aporetic knower attend to particular heres-and-nows re-visiting particular moments of experience in developing an autobiographic reflexive account of becoming as a practitioner of world-philosophy. The beginning of this series of experiences was hearing and being captivated by the sound of the didgeridoo, a musical instrument perfected by Aboriginal Australians over millennia. I was travelling in Turkey, and so enthralled was I that in the years that followed I would devote years to studying ethnomusicological analysis of this Australian Aboriginal music, amongst other Japanese enthusiasts http://earthtube.com/research/index2.shtml
I first arrived in Aboriginal northern Australia some twenty years ago. Soon after my arrival in the Bininj Country, the Aboriginal people of Western Arnhem Land, I was admonished by a Bininj Elder, with what I heard as an aphorism: “You gotta speak our lingo before playing mako (the didgeridoo in Bininj language)!” With the hope to be able to live according to that aphorism at least well enough, and I hoped to become able to play the didgeridoo well enough, my aporetic journey become one of engaging with words and languages. Puzzling about the ways I could experience Aboriginal languages and cultures without reasoning and explaining away, rather, cultivate my capacity to pause and stay with my disconcertments as an aporetic knower.

After twenty years I am still here in Aboriginal northern Australia, more or less comfortably grappling with embodied disconcertments that emerge while working with Aboriginal Elders with/through concepts in the academy of Charles Darwin University. I am experientially immersed in a politicoepistemic work where taking concepts as situational practices affords possibility for generative dissensus to emerge in going-on together. Attending to the conceptual multiplicity that is a necessary part of such going on, an ethos of my knowing-self as situated Japanese ‘field’ philosopher, informs inquiry. At present my inquiry delves into the ways in which different knowledge communities might engage well enough and produce academic knowledge diplomatically.