ABSTRACT
Farrell Racette argues that education should take place in intergenerational spaces of shared work, thoughtful conversation, food and laughter. She develops what she calls: “kitchen table theory” or “kitchen table logic”. Kitchen table logic is characterized by informality, circularity, limitless potential, conversation, laughter and togetherness. Michif speaker Erma Taylor has offered Farrell Racette the term pa washakapik to describe kitchen table logic, meaning “to sit together in a circle”, but inferring “being open and learning together”. She describes kitchen tables as the centre of the home and remarks on how kitchen tables are work spaces—often the only flat space in a house—play spaces, meal spaces and spaces of conversation. She describes a cleared kitchen table as a space of anticipation that typically signals a shift in the table’s role (from work space to meal space, for example). Imagining kitchen table logic as research methodology necessitates a few essential elements: tea/coffee, food and attentive listening. Racette describes combining this notion with her meditations on beading. She refers to beading also as a research methodology: as a recuperative process and transformational action. Farrell Racette argues that the kitchen table needs to be reclaimed and reimagined as a sovereign space where women, men and children dream and create.
