Weavings between cartography and occupational therapy: experiences and fabulations ¹

Abstract

Research methodologies are influenced by hierarchical power structures that shape the means, discourses, and knowledge involved, with varying degrees of control. As researchers in occupational therapy, these considerations have prompted us to reflect on how we experience and understand research and knowledge construction through the lens of human activities and ethical-political stances. In this paper, we advocate for cartography as a qualitative research-intervention method that emphasizes the embodiment of the researcher within the research process. We aim to showcase distinct approaches to exploring the connection between cartography and occupational therapy, emphasizing the dynamic movements and emergent phenomena within these processes. Our discussion is framed around two key acts of storytelling: 1) Ethical-methodological considerations in engaging with cartographic insights through experimentation, interpretation, and innovation; and 2) Emergent challenges in occupational therapy that inform the development of specific perspectives and methodologies. Through these fabulations, we reveal a sensitive-critical dimension that interweaves lived experience and (r)existence/resistance in the production of contextually situated and socially engaged knowledge, wherein the human activity of researching is embedded in feeling-doing-thinking-being a researcher.

Keywords:
Research; Occupational Therapy; Knowledge; Ethics; Cartography

Resumo

As metodologias de pesquisa estão submetidas às relações estruturais hierárquicas de poder que qualificam meios, discursos e saberes cujos caminhos podem ser mais ou menos controlados. Como terapeutas ocupacionais pesquisadoras, tais questões têm nos instigado a pensar modos de vivenciar e compreender a pesquisa e a construção de conhecimento na chave das atividades humanas e do rigor ético-político. Neste manuscrito, destacamos a cartografia enquanto método qualitativo de pesquisa-intervenção que afirma o corpo como matéria viva do(a) cartógrafo(a) na inseparabilidade pesquisador(a)-objeto. Trata-se de apresentar modos singulares de pesquisar na conexão entre cartografia e terapia ocupacional, destacando movimentos e emergências dos processos. A apresentação se dá a partir de dois atos-fabulação: 1) Movimentos ético-metodológicos na abordagem de pistas cartográficas em experimentação, apreciação e invenção e 2) Emergências em terapia ocupacional para a composição e proposição de uma certa perspectiva e um certo modo de pesquisar. Revela-se nas fabulações traçadas uma dimensão sensível-crítica, que entrelaça experiência e (r)existência na produção de conhecimentos situados e comprometidos, em que a atividade humana de pesquisar está incorporada ao sentir-fazer-pensar-ser pesquisador(a).

Palavras-chave:
Pesquisa; Terapia Ocupacional; Conhecimento; Ética; Cartografia

Introduction

Investing in research leads researchers to encounter methods or investigative paths that are more or less controlled and recognized as methodologies. Identifying which theoretical-methodological references support this process also represents a statement about certain forms of involvement in the scientific scene, whose hierarchical power structure qualifies means and discourses, producing standards that prioritize some over others.

As occupational therapy researchers, such issues have prompted us to think about the means of experiencing and understanding research and science embedded in our professional perspectives. In an essential connection between doing, knowing, feeling, and being, we problematize the pursuit of legitimacy of positive and generalizable results to delve into the “how” linked to the “why” of this human activity that is research.

With these two inquiries, the articulation between science and philosophy is raised, also summoning politics, the arts, and the daily and cultural experiential know-hows, in search of creating paths consistent with the interest of occupational therapy (from the perspective we follow) in accompanying singular and collective processes, doings, and meanings.

In this regard, we highlight cartography as a qualitative research-intervention method that asserts the inseparability of researcher-object in the involved realization of being-knowing-doing-transforming. With rigor sustained by experience, this methodological perspective follows the movements of expanding life and becomes a commitment to and production of reality (Passos et al., 2020).

Important references for this theme in Brazil include the works “Micropolitics: cartographies of desire” (Guattari & Rolnik, 2013), “Sentimental Cartography” (Rolnik, 2014), and “Traces of the Cartography Method,” published in the volumes “Research-Intervention and Production of Subjectivity” (Passos et al., 2020) and “The Experience of Research and the Common Plan” (Passos et al., 2016a).

Based on the formulations of Deleuze and Guattari and guided by an ethical-aesthetic-political matrix, cartographic activity does not regard the method as something to be applied (Passos et al., 2020). It turns towards the realization of an ethical-methodological experience that occurs from engagement in a particular universe of sharing existential territories, in the dedication to the research plane where subject and object relate in co-production (Alvarez & Passos, 2020).

Cartography does not presuppose a prescriptive mode, orientation in ready-made rules, or pre-established objectives. However, this does not imply a lack of direction, since the traditional sense of method is reversed, highlighting the path that, in its weaving, guides the course of research (Passos & Barros, 2020). The aim is to investigate a process of production, not to represent an object, which demands from the apprentice cartographer a deep commitment to the experience. “Information, knowledge, and expectations must be left at the entrance door, and cartographers must primarily base themselves on sensitive attention, so that they may finally encounter what was not known, although it was already there as a potentiality” (Kastrup, 2020, pp. 48-49).

According to Rolnik (2014), cartography is performed simultaneously as it accompanies the dismantling and formation of worlds; thus, the losses of meanings and the creation of other worlds and modes matter, in the pursuit of expressing contemporary affects. In this sense, it is "the task of the cartographer to give voice to the affects that demand passage" (Rolnik, 2014, p. 23), which, under this perspective, demands that researchers be immersed in the intensities of their time and context.

Liberman & Lima (2015), who relate to the method in the field of occupational therapy, emphasize that the body is the living matter of the cartographer, and it is important to mobilize qualities such as attention, presence, availability, and sensitivity in the cartographic exercise. Thus, it involves “a work of permanent self-production, in the experimentation of a body that continually configures itself in encounters with other bodies” (Liberman & Lima, 2015, p. 190), in search of what the body can do (its potency), and not what it must do (the constraints imposed).

Occupational therapists have affirmed cartography as a methodology in their research (Siegmann, 2011; Ferigato, 2013; Angeli & Fonseca 2015; Silva, 2018; Farias, 2021; Cardinalli & Silva, 2021; Cardinalli, 2022; Cardoso, 2023; Shiramizo, 2023), sharing, composing, and inventing ways of doing based on the encounter between the sensitivities activated by the cartographic experience and those mobilized by the construction of knowledge in/by occupational therapy. Interlacements, forms of engendering, and twists occur in research that places the production of life in its complexity as a highlight, in the excavation and affirmation of the multiple bodies, affections, and senses involved.

Included in this movement, we share experiences and recent productions that reveal a weaving of meanings between cartography and occupational therapy. In this text, specifically, we highlight movements and emergencies of singular ways of researching that summoned fabulations in the study “(r)existences/resistances affirmed in occupational therapy: vestiges and fabulations” (Cardoso, 2023).

On Weaving

The study aimed to recognize the experiences of occupational therapists centering on the resistances encountered in professional practice that interweave micro- and macro-political dimensions, considering the hegemonic structures and dynamics of life organization and exploitation and their relationships, productions, and daily impacts. The monitoring of the processes that comprised the common plan of the research occurred across three relational territories that interweave: a) meetings and experiences with the research group Human Activities and Occupational Therapy (AHTO); b) participation of occupational therapists collaborating in the study, with narratives shared in forms, free expressions, and letters; c) movements of a living, open, experiential crowd-cartographer body. We aim to gather notes linked to the processes and results of the research that will be presented in two acts of fabulation: ethical-methodological movements and emergencies in occupational therapy. In the first, we will address some clues (or principles) of cartography that manifest in experimentation, appreciation, and (re)invention. In the second, we will highlight the composition with a certain perspective and a certain way of researching-thinking-doing occupational therapy. The investigative processes are marked by unique events that, despite showing different ways of researching, are composed of shared plans of thinking and doing research. This text emerges from a common plan of affective-scientific production² supported and intensified in meetings that expand the powers of action, configuring processes and experiences in a context in which it is possible to compose desires and differences.

Thus, it involves storytelling in a writing-thought as an act of invention (Deleuze, 1997) and communion in the search of expanding ways of researching in/with occupational therapy and creating new and more joyful connections with the world (Vinci, 2021).

1. ETHICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL MOVEMENTS

In recognizing the experiences and productions of occupational therapists, we involve ourselves in the events, subjectivities, and creations that comprise this professional field in the Brazilian context. By affirming that we inhabit the territories of occupational therapy, we perceive strengths, flows, and processes activating a sensitive attention in our researcher bodies that have dedicated themselves to tracking the production of non-static maps of these territories. Maps anchored in reality, open, connectable, and reversible that adapt to setups and breakdowns (Deleuze & Guattari, 2011, p. 30). It is up to us to unearth movements from this ceaseless creation and recognize the meanings produced. Here, we share and consider some processes, specifically those connected to the method of cartography.

Our creations are grounded in the understanding of human activity by occupational therapy (Cardinalli; Silva, 2021), which involves following up people, their unique processes, and the development of new questions. This interaction ethically positions us in encounters with different ways of existing, being, and researching, whose integration produces new knowledge and practices that we want to affirm. The perception of the processes we experience also summon us to move as an inventive possibility of thinking about life from other points of view. Thus, by fabricating along the way, we encounter fungi and ducks.

The mycelia and the ethic of the cartographer

When researching, we do not believe in the capture or revelation of existing meanings. On the contrary, we aim to produce a continuous movement of (re)signification and creation of meanings (Rolnik, 2014), investing in a living mapping of practices, productions, discourses, and statements that “investigates the experience from the experience” (Passos et al., 2016b, p. 9). Thus, research occurs through creative experimentation, shared and sustained by the porosity and intensification of contagions, communications, and connectivity. These processes refer us to the ethic of the cartographer (Rolnik, 2014; Escóssia & Tedesco, 2020; Costa, 2020), which, as an act,

has a power of amplification, propagation, and resonance that inscribes it in the network of other acts. To act ethically means to position oneself as a singular point in an open infinity of relationships, without one’s action being supported by norms that function as a priori forms imposed from outside the action (Escóssia & Tedesco, 2020, p. 106).

This is because cartography does not only summon us “to think or act on a certain field, but to experience it in its multiple dimensions, in an ethical movement of porosity and composition” (Costa, 2020, p. 13) that turns towards the sustenance of life in its potential for expansion (Rolnik, 2014). This ethical positioning, and the ways of conducting research that are woven in propagation and complexity, refer us to the modes of life of fungi and their mycelia³ .

Thinking about fungal and mycelial existences interests us and assists in recognizing and naming processes that compose methodological movements produced in unique contexts of our studies. We approach this universe cautiously, as one who arrives delicately and humbly before new and highly complex knowledge.

Mycelia form the filamentous structures of multicellular fungi that develop within the substratum. The specific mycelial image that inspires us refers to the cycles of reproduction and expansion of mushrooms in forests. Here, the mycelia are networks of microscopic filaments (hyphae) that spread horizontally underground, while the mushrooms are their visible fruiting bodies.

The mycelial networks create a type of shared existence that connects multiple existences simultaneously. They enable, for instance, communication between different trees and could be seen as a form of collective intelligence, shared and built by several species at once. They are also an essential part of the cycling of organic matter in the soil (Pinheiro et al., 2019).

According to Tsing (2022), who investigated possibilities of life in the ruins of capitalism, the study of fungi and their mycelia enables another way to think about life, less anthropocentrically. The fabrication of worlds is not exclusive to humans, and in this sense, fungi teach us the production of life from precariousness and collaborative contamination. This anthropologist, recognized and awarded worldwide, also contributes by highlighting that the flows involving mycelial digestion compose narratives of degradation and creation. The decomposition produced allow for the creation of new worlds (Pinheiro et al., 2019).Another author who speculates with mycelia is Tim Ingold ⁴ , when arguing that the best image to think about the multiplicity of life and to operate the philosophical concept of rhizome⁵ , developed by Deleuze and Guattari, is the fungal mycelia or a fungal mesh.

For Tsing, the existence of mycelia informs more about the assumptions of the concept than the botanical image of the rhizome. The decentralization of flows that enables the transmission of information throughout the forest and the ability of mycelia to reconstruct at any point are characteristics that stand out in this regard, and are questionable when thinking of rhizomes like the banana plant, for example – since these are formed in the weaving of roots that reproduce creating a network of similarities: if one part is destroyed, the entire network collapses (Job, 2021).

Mycelia helped Ingold to develop his concept of mesh, which refers to life itself – understood as a texture of interwoven threads, growing tangled lines, moving, communicating, and integrating (Ingold, 2012, 2015). We understand cartography as the monitoring and study of woven lines, their relationships, correspondences, and creations, considering ourselves as researchers as part of this mesh.

As we turn more specifically to one of our research experiences and some of its ethical and methodological movements (Cardoso, 2023), we connect with the image of the mycelia’s atmosphere — in contagion, propagation, decentralized connectivity and communication, in the decomposition and creation of narratives.

These are investigative experiences that discuss inhabiting existential territories – places of passage, meanings, modes of expression, and life in a constant process of production (Deleuze & Guattari, 2012). These territories inform us of the interweaving of lines that are not external to the researchers, but are formed in relationships of proximity, distance, communion, estrangement, and recognition in the integration of landscapes and characters (Alvarez & Passos, 2020).

In our studies, contrary to an approach where the studied field is analyzed and synthesized as external and capable of being represented, we inhabit, share, and constitute existential territories – realities in motion, expression, creation, and conflict. Thus, “it is not a question of research about something, but research with someone or something” (Alvarez & Passos, 2020, p. 135). This occurs in an immersion that is attentive not only to forms but also to sensitivities and forces, producing maps related to encounters, affections, and sensations that emerge along the path taken (Liberman & Lima, 2015, p. 183).

This is how ethical reality in cartography is established, through the resonance and correspondence of actions, where it is up to the researcher to let themselves be carried by the collective plan “not due to lack of methodological rigor, but because of an attentive attitude characteristic of the cartographer” (Escóssia & Tedesco, 2020, p. 105) – a way of moving that favors the activation of the plane of forces.

The research experience that stands out highlights the experimentation of an ethics of encounter, open to plural, unexpected relationships, without guarantees, based on a stance in favor of events and life that challenges and confronts norms and external impositions. At the same time, the experiences reveal the challenge of sustaining this posture when confronted with incursions of so many other forces within us: rigid lines and ways of investigating from dualistic, hierarchical, and unloving perspectives. There emerges a desire to affirm alternative modes, shifting from a normative dimension to one that expands the potential to act (Escóssia & Tedesco, 2020).

The Brazilian merganser, the monitoring of processes, and analyses in cartography

In cartography, we monitor processes by avoiding the predominance of information seeking. We engage in procedural work, encounters, and their intensities, which resonate with the production of subjectivities and invention (Passos et al., 2020; Barros & Kastrup, 2020). “It is like pushing the boat out into an as yet unformed world—a world in which things are not ready made but always incipient, on the cusp of continual emergence.” (Ingold, 2016, p. 408). We follow clues attentive to the movements of desire—intensities that seek passage, expression, and create worlds (Rolnik, 2014)—with a willingness to affirm the powers of life, since embarking on this adventure implies “connecting with the pulsing of life in one’s body and with paths toward which this pulsing points” (Liberman & Lima, 2015, p. 183). And in this movement, in search of (more) life, the ways of living, creating worlds, and resisting echo from a duck on the brink of extinction.

The Brazilian merganser is a discreet and elusive animal that relies on clean water for survival, and thus, environmental devastation makes it one of the ten most endangered bird species on the planet—deforestation, river water pollution, the construction of hydroelectric projects, and disorganized tourism critically endanger it, according to the Red Book of Endangered Brazilian Fauna (Brasil, 2018).

This bird was found in cascading, very clean rivers in the high areas of the Central-west, Southeast, and South regions of Brazil, as well as in Argentina and Paraguay. It was once considered extinct by researchers, and currently, the few remaining individuals survive in reduced areas of the states of Minas Gerais, Bahia, Goiás, and Tocantins (Silveira, 2011; Disconzi, 2012). The Brazilian merganser persists! And its main home on this planet is the Serra da Canastra in Minas Gerais.

The duck moves in search of life. It walks on rocks, in the forest, makes flyovers, swims over the waters, contemplates, dives. Ways of being-doing merganser in wanderings—across the surface, walking, laying eggs in already opened holes; in flyovers—low and attentive to water flows, sensitive to displacements; in dives—following the vibrations (and enactments) of life.

As Suely Rolnik highlights, the cartographer is an anthropophagous who is “always in search of elements/foods to compose their cartography” (Rolnik, 2014, p. 65). Thus, the Brazilian merganser, its “modes of expansion, propagation, occupation, contagion, settlement” (Deleuze & Guattari, 2012, p. 20), and its impacts on the researcher are incorporated into the ethical-methodological movements appreciated here, particularly concerning how to monitor processes, recognize experiences, and produce analyses in this methodological landscape.

This is because, as we move in territories that constitute a common plane of investigation-intervention-production, we operate with an attention that is simultaneously floating, concentrated, and open, sensitive to forces, vibrations, resonances, and intensities that call us to dives—"where to place one’s attention” (Kastrup, 2020, p. 35), in search of vibrant life, its mobilizations, creations, and transformations. This results in unique ways of understanding and conducting analyses in the cartographic process—which is, above all, inventive.

Understanding, however, that we are much more a mesh of correspondence than a network of connection, meaning the duck not only connects with the water: the duck is the water, as there is no duck without water, just as there is no spider without a web (Ingold, 2015).In this way, wandering, flying, and diving, which are vital activities, have shaped research practices sensitive to the interwoven lines of the investigated plan. Specifically in this study, the wanderings relate to inhabitation and movement in the field of occupational therapy, which unfolded in the monitoring of processes and the production of various materialities (forms, letters, artistic creations, field diaries, among others). The flyovers refer to a way of relating to the materialities produced in the inhabited territories in connection⁶ , shaping what we call procedural analysis. These materialities were accessed at different times, in floating readings or even in the joint production of academic records of experiences (works presented at events, articles, and reports of university extension projects). And they helped the emergence of provocations, restlessness, and questions that preceded the reflective thematic analyses—the dives—which were guided by question-vibrations that called for deepening into the materialities, in a transversal and connective analysis.

Thus, through wanderings, flyovers, and dives, we followed traces and produced marks on resistance with occupational therapy, in a mycelial attitude of propagation, activation, and connection, creating unique ways of producing materialities and operating analyses in the cartographic process.

These research processes occurred in the inhabitation of territories that comprise the common plan of investigation and in the constant operation of an attention that is simultaneously floating, concentrated, and open—“ A being that moves, knows and describes must be observant. Being observant means being alive to the world” (Ingold, 2015, p. 13, emphasis by the author).

Thus, a researcher-fungus-duck body was forged—moving and sensitive to forces, shapes, vibrations, and resonances that indicated where to focus attention (Kastrup, 2020). A cartographer’s body immersed in the intensities of its time, anthropophagous (Rolnik, 2014), in the pursuit of devouring the traces of pulsating life it encounters (experiences, narratives, concepts), merging with them in transformation and creation of the new.

This plan includes the researcher and evokes more of an “itinerancy” rather than an interaction or distance, because it is about “joining in correspondence” with those from whom one learns, with what one studies (Ingold, 2016, p. 409).

From this perspective, the analysis involves a critical reading of the research process, that is, its implication in the territory. As a continuous process, the analytical process is present throughout the entire time and journey; it is not configured as a stage. It moves from problems that summon focal points of attention, seeking to make forces and relationships visible, constituting a shared reality that also represents the results of the research (Barros & Barros, 2016).

The method of cartography does not oppose theory and practice, research and intervention, knowledge production and reality production. The cognitive act—the experiential basis of all investigative activity—cannot be considered, in this perspective, as disembodied or as an exercise in abstraction over a given reality. Knowing is not merely to representing the object or processing information about a supposedly previously constituted world, but presupposing involvement with the world, committing to its production (Alvarez & Passos, 2020, p. 131).

Thus, in the key of mutual implication researcher-subject-object, in the production of research and knowledge, our experiences unfolded in experimentations and exchanges with occupational therapists, producing attention to affects, relationships, and emergent processualities in existential territories that compose a common field—occupational therapy or some occupational therapy.

1. EMERGENCIES IN OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY

The ethical-methodological, procedural, and shared experience in knowledge production has formed a unique-collective dimension that allows us to highlight some specific notes in the weaving between cartography and occupational therapy. The sharing and composition of unique experiences also help us recognize emerging lines from the analyses that interweave in an exercise of fabulation about researching in occupational therapy, which re-signify the forces of cartography from our perspective. This proposal is presented in three fabulated perceptions that affirm ways of understanding and producing knowledge-practices with occupational therapy: a) knowledge only comes through experience, b) researching is to (r)exist/resist in occupational therapy, and c) a sensitive-critical dimension is revealed.

1. Knowledge only comes through experience

To conceive experiments from other perspectives and ways of life in research—and thus to create with fungi, ducks, and various beings—, first we must question how knowledge production is understood, so that we distance ourselves from positivist modern science and its interests. Moving beyond dichotomies, such as between subject and object or theory and practice, requires not only conceptual changes but a real twist in the ways of understanding and legitimizing knowledge.

Researching involves following inventive processes, which also informs a characteristic of knowledge that is its constant transformation. This restores to knowledge production its condition as a living event, meaning that, at every moment in life, it is possible to know oneself and the world, placing every being in continual knowledge production. Therefore, this activity is not restricted to researchers, scientists, or human beings; its modes and characterization depend on the relationship each being uniquely establishes with the world and living, deriving their ways of knowing, relating, inventing, and creating.

From a cartographic perspective, the investments in and compositions among these heterogeneities configure the production of knowledge, along with the monitoring of flows, requiring the cartographer to remain open to encounters and their affects. It is in the welcoming and recording of these events and the forces, concepts, and desires produced that the landscapes and movements in the shared production of data will form (Barros & Kastrup, 2020).

Knowing and doing are inseparable, revealing that experience is the actual production of knowledge: the knowledge that emerges from doing. “Such primacy of experience directs the research work from knowing-how to making-know, from knowing in experience to the experience of knowing. Here lies the methodological ‘path’” (Passos & Barros, 2020, p. 18).

Larrosa (2015) points out that hegemonic ways of life stand in opposition to experience. In this context, science, as a central apparatus in the production of modern subjectivity, mistrusts the attributes of experience and condemns it (Agamben, 2008).

In Cartesian logic, knowledge primarily refers to a set of verifiable and universal truths or evidence. Knowledge from experience, on the other hand, relates to embodied, singular, finite, and situated knowledge. It requires openness to flows, encounters, and their spontaneous events, an extension of time, exposure to the unpredictability of life, and passion (Larrosa, 2015)—all aspects that are scarcely welcomed in the academic realm.

In this scenario, reclaiming experience becomes an ethical, esthetic, and political issue, and turns towards the affirmation of existence and its power of affectation, variation, and singularization, in defense of the living that inaugurates ways of being-doing. In this sense, experience is linked to the idea of experimentation, and occurs as an active force in the world (Vinci, 2021).

1. Researching is (r)existing/resisting in occupational therapy

In various ways, cartography evokes resistance against hegemonic modes of thinking and operating life and science that are sustained by hierarchical dichotomies of opposition (Collins, 2016). Here, we particularly highlight how this method questions the divisions between subject/object and theory/practice, challenging neutrality and affirming experience in the feeling-thinking-doing research process. Thus, it is inherently political because it pertains to “the choice of new worlds, new societies” (Rolnik, 2014, p. 69).

We would like to consider, however, how our experiences evoke not only resistance but also (r)existence, in the micropolitical understanding of this term that emphasizes the active and affirmative forces expressed in the inventive production of life (Deleuze, 2007; Alvim, 2011). A resistance that asserts itself in its power to act, create, and differentiate, and against which power positions itself and reacts.

This idea mobilizes an affirmative stance to be invested in each of the everyday actions (Rolnik, 2019), highlighting the singularity and at the same time the plurality of ways of living and creating that shake the hegemonies of government and control of life. This requires a commitment to recognizing the multiple and intersectional forms of oppression (Akotirene, 2020) that operate in the contemporary world and are contrary to the expressions of life that seek to assert, expand, and differentiate themselves.

The cartographic processes we share in this study point to the production of rigor based on commitment and care for the affirmative forces expressed in the involved experiences, including those of the researchers. From the cartography of their own research experiences, multiple lines emerge, but a desiring and connective singularization stands out, sustained in a collective mesh of affectivity and creation. Traces of (r)existence/resistance in research in occupational therapy, in a feeling-doing that dissolves clots and rigidities in the construction of partnerships and possibilities that affirm existences in the embrace of contradictions, wounds, fissures, desires, marks, and inventions.

In this process, we experienced and gave consistency to a sensitive-critical cartographer body, in constant attention to hegemonic reproductions and inventive forces that escape them. A body with bodies, a collective singular, that in the production of the common does not feel alone.

It is this body that contemplates the importance of activating bodies in occupational therapy that are rigorous with experience and their (r)existences/resistances. Twisting the word, as taught by Mariângela Quarentei—rigor as a synonym for committed care, for honesty. Understanding that being rigorous with the plural experiences of occupational therapists and the people they follow up is urgent. To care for what affects, crosses, marks, composes, and decomposes potency in professionals in this field and their varied practices; for what forms and transforms them, for what happens to them.

This is because accessing, appreciating, affirming, and caring for what happens to the people we follow up demands rigor with the very experience. Prioritizing the living event itself, in the other, between, with, broadens the conditions for contacting the forces and structures that oppress life and its effects.

Sustaining investigative practices in occupational therapy on the affirmation of experiences and their (r)existences/resistances embodies and expresses the complexity of life and enhances the possibilities of composing potency among singularities that connect and recognize each other.

1. A sensitive-critical dimension is revealed

“This is people: they scream, hurt, and love – everything mixed together”

(Eliane Brum)

Based on the idea of a vibrating body, Rolnik (2014) emphasizes the activation of sensitivity to perceive the effects of encounters within/on bodies, in the welcoming of intensities and meanings produced by the movements of desire (Rolnik, 2014). This sensitivity, like singularities, escapes hegemonic rationality. It is necessary, therefore, to revisit the sensitive to recognize encounters, forms of existence, meanings of human and non-human activities, and to contemplate or invent other ways of living. The sensitive reveals the creative power and differentiation of life, the beauty of simplicity, and the production of meanings and more life.

We call ‘sensitive’ what operates in another attentiveness, available to affections, forces, relations, and self-(re)creation (Spinoza, 2013; Quarentei, 2001). In this sense, understanding sensitivity recovers its critical condition by going beyond what is established by dominant forces. Critique, in turn, aids us in the quest to unveil structural processes situated in social, historical, cultural, economic, and political contexts that impact the production of life and knowledge about life (Galheigo, 2012; Castro et al., 2013). This includes considering, above all, self-critique that emphasizes the reproductions of hegemonies, violence in itself, in relations and activities, as nothing escapes the incidence of power or the desire for power. Reinforcing this composition, it is sensitivity that helps us awaken and insist on the refinement of our attention.

We live in a complex network that (re)produces modes of existence, expressed in the doings and everyday lives of people; hence, it is necessary to think about experiences and resistances within this sensitive-critical dimension in a multidimensional approach to processes and events.

For cartography, it is immersion in the territory that enables us to see “that our questions do not simply come from our heads, but that we question ourselves to the extent that we establish relationships with what makes us question” (Costa, 2014, p. 73). And it will be the availability to a suspicious, curious, and genuine sensitivity that will promote “a shift from ready-made ideas, from what is naturalized, from the ‘it’s just that way’, from the obvious, without surprises, from what seems to have always been given” (Costa, 2014, p. 74).

From this perspective, the inseparability of cartographic research-intervention connects to the sensitive-critical perception of occupational therapy.

Final Remarks

How do we produce meaningful knowledge in response to the demands and urgencies of today? Layers of power, hierarchies, competitions, classifications, investments, and publications define themes, methods, procedures, languages, and groups.

This manuscript presents reflections on the embodied construction by occupational therapist researchers producing inventive research that proposed interweaving the qualitative method of cartography with the construction of knowledge-actions-feelings in occupational therapy. In this journey, the sensitive-critical cartographic body must remain alert to the clues of the field without being shaped by them. Thus, the inventive processes from the entire composition with themes, studies, and collaborators meet the experience, based on the rigor with the proposal and the ethical-political commitment as guidelines of the process.

The space for inventiveness relates to a profound encounter of meanings and significance, overflowing prescribed hypotheses or expectations, to enhance the multiple connections constructed and foster new spaces of understanding the themes worked on.

In these experiences, the composition of a singular research—yet of collective construction, involved with the possibilities and limits of daily realities—respects the processes and events of those involved as it comprehends their action in structuring and partnership, their limits and strengths, and their greatness and insignificance in the world.

• 1
  This work originates from doctoral research that complied with all current ethical procedures – Research Ethics Committee opinion nº 4,692,379.
• 2
  Sharing reflections from two doctoral research projects, conducted between 2018 and 2023 in the Graduate Studies Program in Occupational Therapy at the Federal University of São Carlos, where themes, methods, interlocutors, and debates converge.
• 3
  Pinheiro et al. (2019), que assinam o editorial do Dossiê Fabulações Miceliais publicado na revista ClimaCom Cultura Científica, defendem uma transformação taxonômica ao abordarem o assunto dos fungos e do micélio, o que será também assumido aqui – “Contrariando o habitual da taxonomia das ciências biológicas em português, optamos pelo nome no plural e feminino. A intenção é tanto se endereçar à pluralidade das “micélias” evidenciada na escolha do plural latino mycelia em detrimento do singular mycelium, como combater a universalidade do gênero masculino nas palavras plurais em português (marca indelével do antropocentrismo que fez do Homem seu herói linguístico)” (Pinheiro et al., 2019, p.6).
• 4
  Tim Ingold is an English anthropologist, the son of a prominent mycologist. Influenced by the studies of Deleuze and Guattari, his itinerant approach has caused much astonishment in traditional anthropological circles. A critic of modern dualism, he advocates for anthropology as a "philosophy with people inside," a field where art, education, and psychology converge (Job, 2021).
• 5
  The term rhizome first appears in the text “Rhizome”, and was subsequently published as the initial chapter of “A Thousand Plateaus.” It refers to a form of understanding life as a system of connections without a beginning or end, permeated by lines, strata, intensities, and segmentarities. The conceptual image of the rhizome originates from botany and consists of a subterranean stem with branches extending in all directions, like bulbs and tubers (Deleuze & Guattari, 2011).
• 6
  In the case of this study, the flyovers involve the experiences within the research group, the collaborating participants and the researcher.
• How to cite: Cardoso, P. T., Cardinalli, I., & Silva, C. R. (2024). Weavings between cartography and occupational therapy: experiences and fabulations. Cadernos Brasileiros de Terapia Ocupacional, 32, e3473. https://doi.org/10.1590/2526-8910.ctoAO266334732

• Funding Source

  This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001.

Referências

• Agamben, G. (2008). Infância e história: destruição da experiência e origem da história. Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG.
• Akotirene, C. (2020). Interseccionalidade. São Paulo: Editora Jandaíra.
• Alvarez, J., & Passos, E. (2020). Cartografar é habitar um território existencial. In E. Passos, V. Kastrup, & L. Escóssia (Orgs.), Pistas do método da cartografia: pesquisa intervenção e produção de subjetividade (pp. 131-159). Porto Alegre: Sulina.
• Alvim, D. M. (2011). Foucault e Deleuze: deserções, micropolíticas, resistências (Tese de doutorado). Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, São Paulo.
• Angeli, A. A. C., & Fonseca, T. M. G. (2015). O Menino-Cachorro e o projeto TOCCA1: intensidades e experimentações na constituição de ações em Terapia Ocupacional. Cadernos Brasileiros de Terapia Ocupacional, 23(4), 815-828.
• Barros, L. M. R., & Barros, M. E. B. (2016). O problema da análise em pesquisa. In E. Passos, V. Kastrup & S. Tedesco (Orgs.), Pistas do método da cartografia: a experiência da pesquisa e o plano comum (pp. 175-202). Porto Alegre: Sulina.
• Barros, L. P., & Kastrup, V. (2020). Cartografar é acompanhar processos. In E. Passos, V. Kastrup & L. Escóssia (Orgs.), Pistas do método da cartografia: pesquisa intervenção e produção de subjetividade (pp. 52-75). Porto Alegre: Sulina.
• Brasil. (2018). Livro Vermelho da Fauna Brasileira Ameaçada de Extinção (Vol. 3 – Aves). Brasília: ICMBio/MMA.
• Cardinalli, I. (2022). Ninho de Nós: sentidos da atividade humana em terapia ocupacional (Tese de doutorado). Universidade Federal de São Carlos, São Carlos.
• Cardinalli, I., & Silva, C. R. (2021). Atividades humanas na terapia ocupacional: construção e compromisso. Cadernos Brasileiros de Terapia Ocupacional, 29, e2880.
• Cardoso, P. T. (2023). (R)existências afirmadas em terapia ocupacional: vestígios e fabulações (Tese de doutorado). Universidade Federal de São Carlos, São Carlos.
• Castro, E., Isoda, N. M. T., Duarte, R. T., Galheigo, S. M., & Almeida, E. A. A. (2013). composições... palavras... imagens... costuras. Interface: Comunicacao, Saude, Educacao, 17(46), 743-754.
• Collins, P. H. (2016). Aprendendo com a outsider within: a significação sociológica do pensamento feminista negro. Sociedade e Estado, 31(1), 99-127.
• Costa, L. B. (2014). Cartografia: uma outra forma de pesquisar. Revista Digital Do LAV,7(2), 066-077.
• Costa, L. B. (2020). A cartografia parece ser mais uma ética (e uma política) do que uma metodologia de pesquisa. Paralelo 31,15(1), 11-35.
• Deleuze, G. (1997). Crítica e clínica São Paulo: Editora 34.
• Deleuze, G. (2007). Nietzsche. Lisboa: Edições 70.
• Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2011). Mil platôs: capitalismo e esquizofrenia 2 São Paulo: Editora 34.
• Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2012). Mil platôs: capitalismo e esquizofrenia 2 São Paulo: Editora 34.
• Disconzi, G. (2012). O pato-mergulhão Mergus octosetaceus Vieillot, 1817 e as águas da Chapada dos Veadeiros (GO) (Dissertação de mestrado). Universidade de Brasília, Brasília.
• Escóssia, L., & Tedesco, S. (2020). O coletivo de forças como plano de experiência cartográfica. In E. Passos, V. Kastrup, & S. Tedesco (Orgs.), Pistas do método da cartografia: a experiência da pesquisa e o plano comum (pp. 92-108). Porto Alegre: Sulina.
• Farias, A. Z. (2021). Expressões das violências de gênero no cotidiano de terapeutas ocupacionais no campo da saúde (Dissertação de mestrado). Universidade Federal de São Carlos, São Carlos.
• Ferigato, S. H. (2013). Cartografia dos centros de convivência de Campinas: produzindo redes de encontros (Tese de doutorado). Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas.
• Galheigo, S. M. (2012). Perspectiva crítica y compleja de la Terapia Ocupacional: actividad, cotidiano, diversidad, justicia social y compromiso ético político. TOG (A Coruña), 9(5), 176-189.
• Guattari, F., & Rolnik, S. (2013). Micropolítica: cartografias do desejo. Petrópolis: Vozes.
• Ingold, T. (2012). Trazendo as coisas de volta à vida: emaranhados criativos num mundo de materiais. Horizontes Antropológicos, 18(1), 25-44.
• Ingold, T. (2015). Estar vivo: ensaios sobre movimento, conhecimento e descrição. Petrópolis: Vozes.
• Ingold, T. (2016). Chega de etnografia! A educação da atenção como propósito da antropologia. Educação, 39(3), 404-411.
• Job, N. (2021). Como a obra de Tim Ingold desdobra a ontologia de Deleuze e Guattari. Cosmos & Contexto, 45(1). Retrieved from https://cosmosecontexto.org.br/como-a-obra-de-tim-ingold-desdobra-a-ontologia-de-deleuze-guattari/
  » https://cosmosecontexto.org.br/como-a-obra-de-tim-ingold-desdobra-a-ontologia-de-deleuze-guattari/
• Kastrup, V. (2020). O funcionamento da atenção no trabalho do cartógrafo. In E. Passos, V. Kastrup, & L. Escóssia (Orgs.), Pistas do método da cartografia: pesquisa intervenção e produção de subjetividade (pp. 32-51). Porto Alegre: Sulina.
• Larrosa, J. (2015). Tremores: escritos sobre a experiência. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica Editora.
• Liberman, F., & Lima, E. M. F. A. (2015). Um corpo de cartógrafo. Interface: Comunicacao, Saude, Educacao, 19(52), 183-194.
• Passos, E., & Barros, R. B. (2020). A cartografia como método de pesquisa-intervenção. In E. Passos, V. Kastrup & L. Escóssia (Orgs.), Pistas do método da cartografia: pesquisa intervenção e produção de subjetividade (pp. 17-31). Porto Alegre: Sulina.
• Passos, E., Kastrup, V., & Escóssia, L. (2020). Pistas do método da cartografia: pesquisa- intervenção e produção de subjetividade. Porto Alegre: Sulina.
• Passos, E., Kastrup, V., & Tedesco, S. (2016a). Pistas do método da cartografia: a experiência da pesquisa e o plano comum. Porto Alegre: Sulina.
• Passos, E., Kastrup, V., & Tedesco, S. (2016b). A experiência cartográfica e a abertura de novas pistas. In E. Passos, V. Kastrup & S. Tedesco (Orgs.), Pistas do método da cartografia: a experiência da pesquisa e o plano comum (pp. 7-14). Porto Alegre: Sulina.
• Pinheiro, D. A., Artioli Neto, F., Noronha, I., Santos, L. L., Autrán, R., Lassali, T., & Chiodi, V. (2019). Dossiê Fabulações Miceliais [Editorial]. ClimaCom Cultura Científica - Pesquisa, Jornalismo e Arte,6(14), 5-14.
• Quarentei, M. S. (2001). Terapia Ocupacional e Produção de Vida. In Anais do VII Congresso Brasileiro de Terapia Ocupacional (pp. 1-8). Porto Alegre: ABRATO.
• Quarentei, M. S. (2006). Experimentar, criar... afirmar territórios, vidas... belezas. In Anais do I Seminário de Criações Contemporâneas (pp. 1-6). Botucatu: Coletivo de Estudos de Terapia Ocupacional e Produção de Vida.
• Rolnik, S. (2014). Cartografia sentimental: transformações contemporâneas do desejo. Porto Alegre: Sulina.
• Rolnik, S. (2019). Esferas da insurreição: notas para uma vida não cafetinada São Paulo: N-1 Edições.
• Shiramizo, C. S. (2023). Corpo e formação: uma pesquisa encarnada em terapia ocupacional (Dissertação de mestrado). Universidade Federal de São Carlos, São Carlos.
• Siegmann, C. (2011). Pensar e inventar-se: terapia ocupacional como clínica dos afetos. Porto Alegre: CRV.
• Silva, J. A. (2018). Políticas do encontro e as forças selvagens na clínica infantojuvenil (Tese de doutorado). Universidade Estadual Paulista, Assis.
• Silveira, L. F. (2011). O pato mais ameaçado das Américas. Cães & Cia,381, 52-53.
• Spinoza, B. (2013). Ética. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica.
• Tsing, A. L. (2022). O cogumelo no fim do mundo: sobre a possibilidade de vida nas ruínas do capitalismo São Paulo: N-1 Edições.
• Vinci, C. F. R. G. (2021). Crer, Experimentar, Fabular: ensaio sobre a experiência. Educação e Filosofia, 35(73), 341-372.

Edited by

Section editor

Prof. Adriana Miranda Pimentel

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  05 Aug 2024
• Date of issue
  2024

History

• Received
  11 Dec 2022
• Reviewed
  12 Jan 2023
• Accepted
  15 Dec 2023