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Recursive Epistemologies and an Ethics of Attention
reported, and he calls for more analysis of the “epistemic content”
produced in this manner. As is the case with many others, the willing-
ness to follow, to try to learn what my teachers were trying to teach,
and to act on that knowledge in responsive and responsible ways has
led me outside many norms. This paper tracks one such excursion.
Rather than pursuing Fabian’s call for epistemic content, however, I
examine the ethics of experience.
The story I offer here primarily involves my relations with people
in the communities of Yarralin and Lingara, in the Northern Terri-
tory of Australia, where I began my research in 1980. In particular, it
concerns my friend and teacher Jessie Wirrpa. She took me into her
care not long after I arrived in Yarralin in 1980 , and kept me under
her wing until her death in 1995. I have already written about one as-
pect of what I think is important to say about Jessie in an essay called
“Taking Notice” (Rose 1999 ). A brief summary follows.
When Jessie and I took a walkabout, she called out to her ances-
tors. She told them who we were and what we were doing, and she
told them to help us. “Give us fish,” she would call out, “the kids are
hungry.” Jessie’s country included the dead and also the living, and
when she called out, she addressed the dead.
Her brother Allan Young explained it this way: “At night, camp-
ing out, we talk and those [dead] people listen.... When we’re walk-
ing, we’re together. We got dead body there behind to help.... Even
if you’re far away in a different country, you still call out to mother
and father, and they can help you for dangerous place. And for tucker
[bush food (Australian term); food gathered in nature] they can help
you” (Rose 2002 , 73 ).
As Jessie and I walked, we took notice of other living things. When
the cockatoos squawked and flew away, Jessie laughed because they
were making a fuss about nothing. When the march flies bit us, we
knew the crocs were laying their eggs, and Jessie began to think about
taking walks to those places. When the jangarla tree (Sesbania for-
mosa) started to flower, we knew, or Jessie knew, that the barramundi
would be biting. The world was always communicating, and Jessie
was a skilled listener and observer.
In “Taking Notice,” I wrote about paying attention to the world:
