A less-than-human academia

the effect of disembodied encounters

Abstract

The editorial discusses the impacts of the global pandemic to human agency, through the authors self-reflection of academic work during the past two years accompanied two philosophical perspectives. First, we return to Chris Philo’s (2017) conception of ‘less-than-human geographies’, and secondly, to Helmuth Plessner’s (2019) conception of the sociality of human embodiment. What these perspectives have helped us to see is that people, including academic communities, need embodied encounters to fully experience ourselves and others as humans – humans whose exceptionality is not about superiority over non-human nature but eccentricity that offers us possibilities to avoid inhumanity. In conclusion we note the value of embodied encounters as a constitutive aspec of humane social life, particularly in the current times of war in Europe.