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Recursive Epistemologies and an Ethics of Attention
her life shifts more deeply into relationships with people, places, and
concepts that become increasingly constitutive of her own thought
and being. While fostering porous proximities, a recursive epistemol-
ogy does not lead toward homogeneity. Rather, it works productively
with difference, change, and exchange. In addition, it demands a re-
thinking of ethics. I return to this latter point shortly.
Recursive epistemology helps me account for the ongoing entan-
glement of my own learning. Jessie’s teachings were not just in my
notebooks but were becoming formative of my own experience of the
world. They were shaping my life, my questions, my perceptions, my
hypotheses, and much that I would later write.
Jessie was a great hunter—the Ngarinman term is Mularij. Every-
body wanted to go with her all the time because they knew they would
get a feed. Her forte was fish. She never missed. Jessie and I went to
just about every junction, every permanent waterhole, and most creeks
and billabongs within her sections of the Victoria and Wickham riv-
ers. Sometimes we went on foot, more often by motorcar; sometimes
we went with a large group, occasionally she and I would take a cou-
ple of kids and strike out on our own. Some of those days were so
glorious that they remain among the most beautiful times of my life.
Others, of course, were dreadful. If I never again sit on a steamy riv-
erbank in forty-five-degree heat with my head about to explode from
the reverberations of the screaming cicadas, and with blood running
down my legs from the march flies, that will be ok with me. Jessie
almost always seemed happy, but sometimes there were too many
kids, too much nuisance, and everybody wanting to borrow her gear,
messing it up, and then sitting around waiting for her to catch fish so
that they could have dinner. We hunted together in good times and
tough times.
Jessie died in 1995 , leaving me desolate and also worried. Was our
friendship over, or would something remain in addition to the notes,
tapes, photos, and memories? This question brings me to the next
phase of the story I am pursuing. In that same year, I had reason to
take a group of indigenous people from North America to Litchfield
National Park (just south of Darwin) for a day. I had been working
with a group of the traditional owners of that area for a few years,
