Ion Copoeru Professor, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca

Participatory sense-making in the context of variable modes of engagement

One of the issues in the enactive theory of sense-making is if sense-making should be seen as an inherently active concept. Therefore, we have to acknowledge that there is not a definitive (stabilised) operational closure at the level of the individual living organism and the emergence of a world of significance does not (at least not always) involve an active sense-making. In an attempt at solving this tension, the paper will take another path than that of Fuchs and de Jaegher, who proposed the concept of “mutual incorporation, i.e. a process in which the lived bodies of both participants extend and form a common intercorporality.” (2009) My proposal will be to take the interaction process as central in participatory sense-making and to bring together insights from interactional sociology and enactivist theories.

The model for the participatory sense-making will be the emergence of the meaning in the organization itself of the action. Therefore, the popping up of a world of significance will be a matter of practical competency. The paper will emphasize the need for a more flexible and encompassing ‘ontology’ of the modes of engagement and, for that purpose, will discuss the concept of “meshed architectures” (Varga and Gallagher 2020) and the performative theory of hybridity (Camilleri 2020).