Spiderly sympoiesis : tensegral tentacularity and speculative clews

Abstract

With Spider(s) as our guide, we tentatively prod and turn felt concepts of situatedness and entanglement; stickiness and attachment; plasticity and pliability; precarity, uncertainty, and leaps of vulnerability. Inspired by multitudinal spiderly threads, we turn to spinning—not as a rote practice, self-serving tidy manipulation or fabrication, but rather as a working-with-world in care-full tending and continual creation of a supportive mesh. The figure of the web allows a transdisciplinary, heterogeneous, and generative weaving-together through which to gather seemingly disparate theoretical threads, not only to consider Spider(s) anew but also to spin-with as a performative thinking-with in scholarly becomings. We follow and carry with us many Æffective encounters with tentacular companions and sticky traces. In Æsthetic (re)turning, we find value in the space for attentive, collaborative tending and response with/in the tensions of inquiry in a more-than-academic world.