Reconfiguring Cartesian Dualism through Pain and Place in a Disabled Body: A Personal Case Study on the Meaning of Adventure and the Outdoors

Abstract

Summary Can an embodiment with place reconfigure what it means to be outdoors, whose body belongs? Through an autoethnographic narrative of lived experiences with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS) and pain, this case study explores how the colonial and outdated meanings of adventure may exclude disabled outdoor practitioners. Remembering a lifetime of outdoor experiences, from childhood backpacking trips in the Sierra Nevada to working in the field in remote regions of the world, and finally, through field research in the Himalaya, the concept of embodiment of place and pain is examined. In this way, understanding embodiment leads to a dissolving of the Cartesian dualisms that so intently create expectations of what it means to be outdoors. Shifting from pushing through pain to embracing disability reconfigures these dominant narratives. As such, the meaning of adventure is subjective for any body who exists in the outdoors, as we are the apparatus of our experiences, contextual in space and time. Information © CAB International 2024