ABSTRACT
The chapter discusses the implications of anomalous embodiment for research, education, and social change. In dominant scholarly orientations, researchers and scholars typically don’t discuss their failures and vulnerabilities. They prefer to project control and authority to validate their findings. An approach of anomalous embodiment, on the other hand, will not only acknowledge the sources of vulnerability but engage with them honestly during the research process to treat them as part of any inquiry. Researchers can embrace their vulnerabilities to accommodate their generative potential in knowledge construction. The chapter goes on to articulate the pedagogical implications of treating communication as a practice of anomalous embodiment by discussing its main features. Communicative practice is treated as embracing the following: encumbered capabilities and dispositions; expansive semiotic resources in meaning making; emplacement in material ecologies and social networks; embodiment in anomalous resources; and ethical investment in communication. The chapter concludes by articulating a vision for social change. Anomalous embodiment suggests that rather than engineering social life to achieve perfection, aspire for superhuman abilities, and celebrate the few who excel in selective notions of competence/ability, we should redesign the environment so that all can thrive with all their diversities and vulnerabilities.
