Particle Episode 18

LISTEN HERE: https://soundcloud.com/user-163431348/particles-episode-18-maria-antonia

In this episode we are joined by the ever-inspiring María Antonia González Valerio a philosopher and professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), who invites us to really look at and consider how we are responding to the pandemic in our institutions, in our bodies, and in our communities. María Antonia is interested in our incapacity to stop, to slow down and questions why we as humans have responded to this unprecedented circumstance with the mentality that we must continue business-as-usual. She proclaims, "Let the extraordinary be extraordinary! Why are we so afraid to stop?"

María Antonia also strongly urges us to resist the normalization of online teaching and education. Within her experience, this platform greatly limits interactions and community-building which are the aspects of education that truly allow for learning to take place. When our eyes and sense of ourselves and one another are limited to a 2-dimensional screen, we lose our bodies, we lose our transmission of affect and connection. This conversation and ideas provoked by María Antonia and Victoria is a reticent call to action, reminding us to remember the phenomenology of our bodies, to step back into ourselves and to reconnect to the physical and each other.