Thinking with Ai Stratis : Becoming-Tourist, Becoming-Researcher in a More-Than-Human-World

Abstract: This study discusses the difference between thinking with and about the island of Ai Stratis for knowledge production, advocating for situated research and embodied experience. Having conducted an ethnographic study, on the island of Ai Stratis in the North Aegean region of Greece in the summer of 2021, I look out from the island, assuming a tree-fold research field, including the physical island of Ai Stratis, a plane of reflexivity, as well as a literary plane. From there, I propose that research method assemblages perform reality,rather than solely describing it, and that foregrounding and backgrounding voices is a micro-political process with far-reaching consequences. I look at what is meant by a multiple reality, the relevance of ethics and care in more-than-human entanglements, and multiple worldings for sustainability understood as futurity. What more, I speak about how those entanglements blur species and material boundaries and how things and beings become with one another through molecular contagion whilst forming shifting assemblages. Discussing Ai Stratis as an island, I speak about some of the lure and danger of falling into geographical determinism and representational thinking. Further, I propose that dwelling in landscape whilst using all the senses (not only sight) may be a step towards practicing noticing and learning to be affected. I argue against strictly representational thinking and against a faceless mass of uniformity, and for the individual, intimate, face-to-face, situated, and embodied. Finally, I extend an invitation to have a conversation about guest-host relations, founded on particular, situated relationships of trust, care, respect, and a willingness to engage with change. I discuss this in the context of my entanglement as a stranger with the human and non-human hosts on Ai Stratis, as well as in a multispecies and a more-than-human, and metaphysical context of sustainability