Eclectic Collaborations in Anna Tsing's Friction and the Victorian Ecologies Classroom

ABSTRACT

This essay takes up Anna Tsing's idea of eclectic collaboration as a corrective to Western naturalist practices which divorce knowledge from its developmental contexts. Pedagogical practices informed by collaboration open the door to voices traditionally excluded from or underrepresented in both Victorian studies and the environmental humanities, allow students to see themselves as necessary to the collaborative process of knowledge formation, and recognize each collaborative agent's positionality and its influence on their perspective. In this essay, I explain what Tsing's idea of eclectic collaboration can offer for studies of the nineteenth century, and provide three examples of collaborative practices within the Victorian Ecologies classroom.