Living with the sea: Making connections - a personal and professional Heimat

Leather, Mark (2017) Living with the sea: Making connections - a personal and professional Heimat. In: 16th European seminar of the Institute of Outdoor Adventure Education and Experiential Learning (EOE), 28th June – 02nd July 2017, Plymouth Marjon University.

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Abstract

This presentation is an autobiographical account of my connection with the sea and the associated narratives that it holds. The sea is my Heimat – my homeland and I feel a personal sense of belonging to this place. The concept of somaesthetics is introduced as a way of exploring my embodied cognition of time with the sea. I consider how my earliest experiences of the sea has influenced my professional practice as a university lecturer, and as a consequence how seascapes have affected my students’ understanding of their own connection to the sea. I discuss the romanticised stories of the sea and explore how matters of social justice and oppression can be found just beneath the surface. Autobiography as my construction of reality here is what Bruner (1991: 8) describes as “hermeneutic composability”, that is the telling of my story and its comprehension as a story depends upon the human capacity to process knowledge in an interpretive way. Autobiography is to do with recovering a past “and depends on the deployment of an often shifting, partial and contested set of personal or collective memories” (Cosslett, Lury and Summerfield, 2000: 4). Questions of validity inevitably arise with the use of autobiography due to the subjective nature of memory recall and the possibility of embellishment. Van Manen (1997) defends this use that may include fictitious scenarios, emotions or moods within a life story, as they still allow us to be imaginatively or emotionally involved. It is hoped that the audience may become involved with the sea in this way.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Lecture)
Divisions:	?? UniversityCollegePlymouthMarkJohn ??
Depositing User:	Ms Alice Primmer
Date Deposited:	03 Oct 2017 09:04
Last Modified:	22 May 2019 11:52
URI:	https://marjon.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/16143

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