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Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter
... We are both interested in a post-qualitative research paradigm and what research processes can do more than what they currently are, thus we decided to challenge the ways in which we think methodologically about research together with children. Our theoretical approach is inspired by feminist thinkers such as Karen Barad (2003Barad ( , 2007Barad ( , 2018 and Rosi Braidotti (2013. The first author has worked in the kulturskole both as a teacher and as a leader. ...
... The soup as materiality had an effect on the pupils who spoke more freely when concentrating on the soup instead of focusing on the first author and her research questions. Thus, the soup holds power and it highlights the position of materiality (Barad, 2018), the soup changes the conversation. The soup, the room, the first author's thoughts about the lack of written material, and the pupils' responding with video films were all active factors (Barad, 2018, p. 237) in diffractions, meeting like waves to make new diffraction patterns. ...
... This is a material-discursive, affirmative, and performative contribution to the field. The trembling moments are four possibilities out of many (Barad, 2018). Possibilities that are not definite answers, but understandings based on what we see in the process and in the material. ...
In this article, the authors investigate making data with pupils in the kulturskole through the exploration of a performative paradigm. There seems to be a lack of knowledge concerning how the pupils see their place in and engagement with the kulturskole. When we started working with the pupils, a request emerged to not only observe and interview them, but also to hear their stories and understandings of being with the kulturskole. These processes are, throughout the article, described and understood as methodologically developmental when working with pupils. We attempt to bridge a qualitative approach into a post-qualitative performative thinking about making data. The article contributes explorations into what data can be and how to make data with pupils.
... Next to cyborg feminism, agential realism (Barad, 2007(Barad, , 2018 and posthumanism (e.g., Braidotti, 2013Braidotti, , 2019 invite scholars to think beyond the human and challenge anthropocentric, masculine ontologies. With the introduction of agential realism, Barad (2007) can be seen as one of the key figures in new materialism, a response to the linguistic turn in the 1990s. ...
... With the introduction of agential realism, Barad (2007) can be seen as one of the key figures in new materialism, a response to the linguistic turn in the 1990s. Building on the work of physicist Niels Bohr, Karen Barad (2007Barad ( , 2018, themselves a physicist, emphasizes that "things" are material discursive practices, meaning that any object or phenomenon only emerges through intra-action. Intra-action is positioned as a contrast to interaction, as the latter would suggest independently existing entities prior to any form of action. ...
... Intra-action is positioned as a contrast to interaction, as the latter would suggest independently existing entities prior to any form of action. Barad (2018) argues that it "is through specific agential intra-actions that the boundaries and properties of the 'components' of phenomena become determinate and that particular embodied concepts become meaningful" (p. 230). ...
Gendered organization theory refers to an understanding of organizations as sites that (re)produce gender dynamics and the gender order. Bringing the gender lens to discussions about organization theory is useful to capture the filter through which relational dynamics operate in organizations and the way these (re)construct the psychological, cultural, and social dimensions that shape the organization as a dynamic, relational, and interdependent structure. Key ideas associated with gendered organization theory center on gender as a social category that continues to be the basis for inequality in working life. Gendered organization theory pays particular attention to how gender interacts with different dimensions of social, political, economic, and technological life and how this is mobilized in organizations as well as how organizations foster and tackle new and reformulated gender(ed) inequalities. However, gender is not the only social category of difference that shapes inequality in organizations and would benefit from more explicit insight from feminist theories to unpack the complex dynamics in organizations and the impact they have on individuals. Focusing on intersectionality, decolonial feminism, ecofeminism, queering, and theorizing beyond the human provides a more integrated framework to understand the complex and fluid impact of gender in organizations.
... Sin embargo, el planteamiento de este libro es que esa dualidad se cuestiona y deshace si la abordamos desde la noción de intra-acción. Con este término Karen Barad (2003) se refiere al hecho de que los elementos no tienen propiedades inherentes, sino que surgen de la relación, combinándose para la acción. Esta noción cuestiona los dualismos y las separaciones, puesto que reclama considerar -como se observa en el saber pedagógico-, que los elementos se constituyen en relaciones no en separaciones. ...
... Desde esta mirada sobre y desde la IBA los sujetos son entendidos como un yo-múltiple-en-relación que intentan acercarse y comprender un fenómeno de la realidad que se presenta en devenir y de manera contingente e indeterminada. (ONSÈS SEGARRA; HERNÁNDEZ-HERNÁNDEZ, 2019) Un fenómeno que es afectado y nos afecta de diferentes modos, y devenimos en un proceso de intra-acción (este término, planteado por Karen Barad (2003) se refiere al hecho que los elementos no tienen propiedades inherentes, sino que surgen de la relación, combinándose para la acción). De esta manera, la IBA no trata sólo de compartir y comprender experiencias y hacerlo mediante estrategias artísticas, sino de entender estas experiencias conectadas con la teoría dentro de un marco ontológico, epistemológico, metodológico y ético. ...
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Souza, A. C. G. de A., & Bulla, G. S. (2024). Narrativas e (auto)biografias: contribuições para a pesquisasobre a prática pedagógica. In: S. B. B. da Silva, J. M. Sancho-Gil, F. Hernández-Hernández (orgs.), Docentes pesquisadores: epistemes e metodologias/ Teachers researchers: epistemes and methodologies/ Docentes investigadores: epistemes y metodologías (pp. 221–239). Salvador: EDUFBA. (ISBN: 978-65-5630-561-5)
... While design and HCI researchers have discussed materiality as a way to enhance interaction and understanding of data, in this paper, materiality is approached with a focus on the nature of being a material, which has a physical body, and creates capacities and constraints by ongoing 'intra-acting' -"in contrast to the usual interaction, which presumes the prior existence of independent entities" (Barad, 2018). Through this paper, we are particularly interested in the intra-actions across biological, social and cultural contexts. ...
... According to Barad (2018), things (i.e., humans and nonhumans) iteratively configure boundaries through 'intra-actions' and she defines the dynamic configuration processes as phenomena. For understanding the complexity of the world, she asserts we need to focus on "the primary units that are not words (things) units but material-discursive practices through which boundaries are constituted". ...
... our immediate example is the work of art as an expression of the human-inhuman integrated ecology that operates beyond the determinism of the actual. on the one hand, the work of art is not restricted to humans, as evidenced by the artifices of nature, such as animal shelters in the wild, 1 which presuppose a co-determination with the material agency of the inhuman (Barad, 2003). 2 on the other hand, true human artwork is supposed to be disengaged from the realism of the everyday. ...
... The ontologies of Bawaka, then, co-become through intra-action (Barad, 2008) and bring with them relationally proscribed ethics and responsibilities -such as the need to acknowledge Bawaka Country as author of this commentary. The ontology of the seagull is neither the same as, or separate from, that of the sand it stands on or the air it breathes. ...
There is a politics to what ontologies are recognized as existing; what pasts, presents and futures are made real; what configurations of place, time and being are validated; and what ethics underpin the reality of our connections with and as the world. And there is a powerful violence associated with their dismissal. In responding to Simon and Randalls' discussion of the ontological politics of resilience, we consider ontological politics in an Indigenous context. We do this as an Indigenous-non-Indigenous, human-more-than-human collective, from, and as, Bawaka, an Indigenous Australian homeland in northern Australia. We offer an ontography of Bawaka and, in so doing, attend to the layers of lirrwi (charcoal) in the sand to recognize what lirrwi can tell us about being, and politics, in a Country that has always co-become with Yolsu people.
... As Aaron taught in the lecture component of the macroethics lesson, positionality and power impact how people perceive the world based on how the world treats them [19]. Or, from a feminist perspective, knowledge cannot be separated from the knower, and knowers hold different types of validated power [25]- [28]. Recognizing how knowledge is affected between persons (both how it is produced and received) is useful because it allows for an understanding that engineering education is another product of power relations [20]. ...
... Dette forstår vi som en performativ tilnaerming til formingsfaget. Undersøkelsen forankres i teori om det performative som innebaerer forståelse av at rom og tid skapes i hendelser (Barad, 2018). Vi støtter oss også til teori om rom og bevegelse, der bevegelse betraktes som levende arkitektur (Laban & Ullman, 2011, s. 5). ...
Denne artikkelen tar utgangspunkt i forskningsprosjektet Å nøste hvor målet er å bidra til å utvikle tverrfaglige undervisningsmetoder innenfor kunstfag, for å fremme utdanningskvalitet i barnehage- lærerutdanningen. Spørsmålet som stilles i artikkelen er hvordan en performativ tilnærming til formingsfaget i barnehagen kan åpne for tverrfaglige potensialer. Den performative tilnærmingen innebærer å rette oppmerksomheten mot selve aktiviteten og det materielles rolle i lek med materialer. Forskningsmetoden er praksis-drevet (Haseman, 2006) og går ut på at forskerne i samarbeid med en gruppe barnehage-barn og barnehagens personale utforsker lek og bevegelser med nøster. Filmer og fotografier fra denne leken analyseres med blikk for møter mellom mennesker og materialer. Prosjektet forankres teoretisk med begrepet romtidmaterialisering (Barad, 2007) og Rudolf Labans romlære “choreutics” (Laban & Ullman, 2011). Undersøkelsen viser hvordan sted kan forstås som en lokasjon for endring og at det finnes skapende potensialer i opplevd stillhet. Rommet beskrives som et bilde i bevegelse der tid skapes i en kjede av evige hendelser. Disse opp-dagelsene, av hvordan det i en performativ tilnærming skapes med både materiale og bevegelser, åpner nye tverrfaglige undervisningsmulig-heter i møtet mellom fagene forming og drama i barnehagelærerut-danningen. Slike tverrfaglige, skapende potensialer kan ha relevans for bærekraft fordi det handler om hvordan vi blir til som mennesker i møte med materialer og omgivelser.Keywords: performativitet, tverrfaglighet, forming i barnehagen, romtidmaterialisering
... CPH is connected to feminist theory and science studies in reciprocal fashion. FNM are concerned with questions of matter-and how matter matters (Barad, 2018). Owing a large debt to indigenous knowledge ways, FNMs also have roots that can be traced to the beginnings of feminist philosophies of science (Haraway, 1988;Harding, 1991). ...
With this paper, we walk out some central ideas about posthumanisms and the ways in which nursing is already deeply entangled with them. At the same time, we point to ways in which nursing might benefit from further entanglement with other ideas emerging from posthumanisms. We first offer up a brief history of posthumanisms, following multiple roots to several points of formation. We then turn to key flavors of posthuman thought to differentiate between them and clarify our collective understanding and use of the terms. This includes considerations of the threads of transhumanism, critical posthumanism, feminist new materialism, and the speculative, affirmative ethics that arise from critical posthumanism and feminist new materialism. These ideas are fruitful for nursing, and already in action in many cases, which is the matter we occupy ourselves with in the final third of the paper. We consider the ways nursing is already posthuman-sometimes even critically so-and the speculative worldbuilding of nursing as praxis. We conclude with visions for a critical posthumanist nursing that attends to humans and other/more/nonhumans, situated and material and embodied and connected, in relation.
... Aus Perspektive eines Neo-Materialismus, wie er bspw. von Naraian und Amrhein (2020) im Anschluss an Barad (2008) vertreten wird, können die Beiträge der verschiedenen Fachdidaktiken als domänenspezifische "Schnitte" in der Realität gedeutet werden, die dann -aus der Sichtweise der jeweiligen Disziplin -verschiedene Konstellationen menschlicher und nicht-menschlicher Akteur*innen hervorheben und zu Inklusion in Beziehung setzen. Damit können Aspekte akzentuiert werden wie bspw. ...
In einer theoretisch-systematischen und empirischen Annäherung kann sich die Bezugnahme auf das Phänomen schulische Inklusion in mindestens drei Dimensionen konturieren: der bildungspolitischen, der disziplinären und der schulpraktischen. Dieser Sammelband beinhaltet Beiträge aus den Didaktiken der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften, der Sprachen sowie der Naturwissenschaften, in denen das Phänomen Inklusion ausgehend von drei Leitfragen, die diese Dimensionen abbilden, aus fachdidaktischen Perspektiven betrachtet wird. Der Band liefert somit einen Überblick über fachbezogene Inklusionsdiskurse und fachspezifische Phänomene schulischer Inklusion in nahezu jeder Fachdidaktik. Indem der vorliegende Band damit schulische Inklusion als Phänomen entlang von Phänomenen schulischer Inklusion herausarbeitet, werden die fachdidaktischen Spezifika und Eigenlogiken schulischer Inklusion deutlich.
... From the discussion so far, a number of things are clear: we know that researchers have identified somatic symptoms as commonplace outcomes of trauma (Chivers-Wilson, 2006;Rothschild, 2000); we know that somatic disturbance is understood to lie at the heart of PTSD (Rothschild, 2000), commonly diagnosed in victims of sexual violence (Byrne et al., 2016); and we know there is a growing acceptance of the links between somatic disturbance and psychophysiological health (Ogden et al., 2006). We understand from Barad (2008) and Hekman (2010) that matter is not passive or static, and from Diamond (2013) that matter has the communicative capacity to express in non-verbal ways. We know from my autoethnographic research and from my participants that bodily symptoms manifest in the rape aftermath (Downing, 2016). ...
... When embodying feminine or masculine figurations, we are produced by gendered discourse and also become representations that maintain and uphold the positions and boundaries between "men" and "women." In other words, society-defined women and men, as discursive materialities, partake in the ongoing processes of both creating and dividing communities of belonging (see by way of comparison Barad 2008;Butler 2004;Lilja and Martinsson 2018). However, what is also at stake is how norms materialize and shape matter. ...
Recent sex ratio data indicate that the number of “missing” women and girls has reached approximately 200 million. This is a significant increase since 1990, when roughly 100 million women and girls had “disappeared.” What are the contemporary discussions concerning the widespread practice of the elimination of fetuses and bodies with female genitals? Moreover, how should we, as scholars of law and global politics, name and theorize these “missing” bodies? Despite decades of rigorous scholarship on the connections between sex, gender, and “missing” bodies, there appears to be no agreed understanding of the current and ongoing elimination of fetuses and bodies with female genitals. In this article, we go beyond some well-argued and thought-provoking elaboration and critique of the concept of gendercide to further inquire: what claims should be secured to establish a solid theoretical base for further research on the elimination of fetuses and bodies with female genitals? By building on – in empirical terms – the case of India, our suggested answer to this question rests on two main arguments. First, to capture the motivations and practices of the elimination of fetuses and bodies with female genitals, the productive and materializing aspects of gender should be further interrogated. Second, we argue that previous research has failed to include a temporal dimension to the debate around the “missing” women. We should embrace the imagined emotional encounters with the future, mainly on the part of parents or other family members who perform the sex-selective practices. By integrating these two arguments, we conclude that rethinking the elimination of fetuses and bodies with female genitals also means rethinking the resistance to its practices.
The use of ‘loose parts’ by early childhood teachers is explored through the lens of New Materialism and Post-humanism. Loose parts, that is, found, discarded and recyclable materials, offer teachers from under-resourced communities in Eastern Cape, South Africa, still burdened by the legacy of Apartheid, a different approach to teaching and learning. The work described stems from a project run by a non-profit organization, Africa A+ Schools, working with teachers to expand their pedagogical practices in challenging settings. Working with loose parts is an effective method of addressing issues of equity, inclusivity and diversity through practical and accessible pedagogical techniques.
Take a deep breath. Although nothing is more natural or essential to human bodies than breathing, this simple yet vital act is the critical result of complex organizational, material, and political processes. We suggest that breathing can be thought of as a political model of organizing insofar as it shapes questions of life and death while rooting these “operationally” in immediate, urgent, collective and more-than-human intra-action. Breathing is also a social act because the self is bound up with others in a fabric of relations upon which each person depends, and so breathing can serve as a trope for regenerating and rethinking social structures, institutions and organizing blueprints. We take the act of breathing—its literal and metaphorical (im)possibility and collective organization—as the focus of a reflection on relations among humans and between other living beings, humans, and their ecological surroundings. Re-thinking the question of whose breathing we care about and whose breathing counts, we offer a political model that embraces the mutuality principle for post-humanistic and post-anthropocentric organizing and community building. We thereby hope to “inspire” and materialize new social and political realities for organizing our shared future, conceptualized as building a (scholarly) community of breathers who breathe and let breathe.
Though there has been a marked increase in research driven by posthumanist theory and inspired by the common worlds research approach, practical approaches to conducting this type of research have not been well documented and shared within the literature. This article explores the process of navigating the planning and conducting of research that aims to think with more-than-human worlds. Three research methods that were applied in a study involving young children in a forest school program are described: (1) non-participant observation, (2) observing the park through “sit spots,” and (3) the use of wearable cameras to film a different perspective. I explore each of these as a way to guide other researchers grappling with the tensions and challenges of conducting posthumanist research. Any combination of these methods could be considered within research that aims to disrupt the dominant anthropocentric lens in early childhood education for sustainability and beyond.
By examining debates on the Anthropocene era ignited by new materialist and posthumanist scholarship, this paper aims to discern how these perspectives can reframe the human-nature nexus. It also considers how various ?developmentalist? approaches might assume the role traditionally held by the concept of human nature. The first section highlights concerns raised by posthumanist and neomaterialist scholars about the marginalized status of ?nature?, life, and biology within dominant constructivist viewpoints. A central argument posits that notions like ?denaturalization? and biopolitics amplify societal dominance over nature, pushing social theory towards an anthropocentric and potentially biologically indeterminate stance. Contrasting this, the second section delves into modern interpretations of the planet in social theory, inspired by the emergence of the Anthropocene. This lens reveals a dynamic, co-constitutive relationship, tilting less towards the unilateral commands of ?nature? and more towards understanding the evolution of human life and societal structures within Earth?s expansive temporal and spatial realms. The third section further unpacks these developmental ideas by juxtaposing the theories of Bruno Latour and Tim Ingold. The paper contends that both approaches endeavor to illuminate the complex processes underpinning the evolution of life forms, underscoring the significance of culture. In conclusion, the intricate postnatural landscape of the Anthropocene necessitates a more integrated human-nature relationship. This calls for not only discarding dehumanizing facets of human nature, but also fostering a renewed sensibility - a deeper form of humanizing that acknowledges and celebrates our shared existence with other species and entities.
In response to increasing calls to address “human dignity” in the Metaverse, the Royal College of Art’s MA Fashion Programme utilised Epic’s “Metahuman Creator” software to create multiple digital identities. Human dignity has its etymological root in the Latin ‘dignitas’, and is translated as worth. For the purpose of this study, its meaning is derived from the Charter of the United Nations (1945) which defines the fundamental rights of the humacy3n person, their equality, dignity and worth.
Epic’s “Metahuman Creator” is a new type of digital human configurator, based on pre-existing scans of real people where only physically plausible adjustments can be made. As it has a vast range of facial features and skin tones the user can design a variety of digital characters. However, its tools representing trans identities and invisible disabilities have limitations. Here we show the experience of two users, one with a hearing disability and the other undergoing gender-affirming therapy.
We found that tools for representing their identity fell short of expressing their inherent human dignity. The foundations of the Metaverse are therefore at risk of replicating inaccessibility and excluding persons with disabilities and gender differences.
We anticipate our paper to be the starting point for wider participatory research that involves all user groups in the design of platforms, tools and systems. We foresee the findings of our paper fulfilling the UN Charter on Human rights in the digital space through the shaping of policies and advancing existing standards (ISO).
Prompted by the recent prominence of the notion of atmosphere in the study of organization, in this paper we take a step back to discuss and reflect the underpinnings of atmospheric theory and their implications for knowing, theorizing and studying organizational atmospheres. To do so, we sketch a genealogy of the atmospheric. Drawing upon the wider remit of atmospheric thought in social and cultural theory, we then discuss the onto-epistemological, methodological and political implications of organizational atmospherics, suggesting a vocabulary and sensibility for future atmospheric inquiries.
Using a case study design, this research explores the Coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID‐19) pandemic from the perspectives and worldviews of Malawians (Black/African knowledge) through the Bawaka Yolŋu ontology of co‐becoming (Black/Indigenous knowledge). This study seeks to examine the ways in which COVID‐19 has influenced perceptions of place and the places themselves, thereby contributing to the development of policies and strategies for effectively navigating and living with the ongoing COVID‐19 pandemic. The study involved forty‐one in‐depth semi‐structured interviews and two unstructured interviews, enabling a nuanced exploration of COVID‐19's impact through the diverse perspectives of Malawian knowledge holders including religious leaders, health‐care workers, farmers, and community leaders. The findings reveal a multifaceted transformation in the relationship of Malawians with nature, place, and one another. Nature, once a source of sustenance, has become a realm of danger due to its association with airborne transmission. Place, typically a communal space, has shifted towards individualized safety, necessitating changes in how homes are adapted and perceived. The communal fabric of Malawian society, deeply ingrained in communal practices, has been strained, altering traditional gatherings and societal interactions. This research adds depth to our understanding of COVID‐19's complex impacts, emphasizing the importance of cultural and environmental contexts in shaping responses to the pandemic. The insights gained hold significance for tailored policy interventions and community‐focused strategies to navigate and adapt to the evolving challenges presented by COVID‐19.
The purpose of this paper is to provide a new-materialist theoretical commentary on disability, senescence and the life-course. Critical literature review with deductive thematic analysis was undertaken using an electronic database search strategy. For analysis, theoretical conventions of new-materialism were deductively applied to literature. New-materialism offers an approach taken by disability studies' scholars within critical disability studies and elsewhere. A hallmark of the approach is attempting to return to the focus traditionally given in disability theory to physical and material aspects of disability. This would include complex issues such as exploring the corporeality of impairment and what embodied selfhood means. The central argument is that new-materialism and critical disability studies can effectively illuminate the relationship between disability, senescence and the life-course. To substantiate this claim, we apply new-materialist theory to discuss various dimensions of disability, such as impairment and social justice, relevant to the end phase of the life-course.
In this article, I seek to engage the liberatory impetus of critical pedagogies through an attentiveness to body-space-time so as to enrich the former with the notion of response-ability. Several learning activities are engaged, within the context of a foundation year classroom of an Art School, to open up conceptions of the experiential nature of learning events and the ethico-onto-epistemological questions that emerge when foregrounding response-ability as a condition for learning-becoming. I pose particular interest in notions of subjectivity, agency and affect, questioning how a new materialist reading of these concepts might serve to challenge representationalist conceptions of higher learning. I commence with a proposition: engage learning as an experience—through the processual potentialities of its in-act and prompt myself by drawing attention to the performativity of body-space-time cartographies and choreographies.
In this paper we report on a teacher education co-design project that explored Australian pre-service primary generalist teachers’ ideations of the pedagogical links between health education and nature. As part of their coursework in a Master of Teaching degree at an Australian University, students were invited to design a Victorian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education (VC:HPE) activity that connected primary curriculum (F-6) with nature. We conducted a 3-hour suite of online learning activities and prompts using Zoom, Padlet and Moodle. The data consists of the students’ curriculum design artefacts as well as recordings of the group discussions and non-assessment-based presentations of their work. Drawing on theories of child-nature interaction, we present an analysis of the ways in which n = 72 pre-service teachers across 18 groups of 4–5 educators conceptualised links between ‘nature’ and HPE across their activity designs. Prior to the workshop, the majority of pre-service teachers had not previously considered links between the HPE learning area and nature. Through the activities of the co-design workshop, students were surprised with the variety of pedagogical possibilities that were able to be made. There was much student discussion about the possibilities and limitations of balancing safety and risk in their nature-based activity designs. We present a thematic analysis of the quality of student-nature interactions in the groups’ learning designs through: (i) exploration; (ii) embodiment; (iii) cultivation; (iv) appropriation; and (v) representation. The analysis and discussion has implications for the way quality health education is linked to nature-based learning environments, teacher education and contemporary curriculum enactment that incorporates nature and the environment as part of the learning design.
By looking at the works of the poet Antonella Anedda (b. Rome, 1955) and the artist Maria Lai (Ulassi, 1919–Cardedu, 2013), this study investigates the relationship between poetic texts and textiles, contending that the ‘intra-action’ – to use the feminist physicist Karen Barad’s term – between the language of poetry and that of textile can be understood through a paradigm of entanglements that expands the semantic capacity of both words and textiles. One main objective of this study is to re-think the genre of lyric poetry and some of its core generic markers, in particular apostrophe, rhythm, and repetition, in light of a focus on materiality and tactility; this shall problematise ideas of linearity and completeness in favour of notions of movement, instability, and tactility. This will enable us to propose new parameters that allow for conceptualisation of textile poems and the textile poetics of entanglement that they articulate.
Childhood drawing has long been a subject of interest for researchers, educators, and other interested adults. What children draw, how they come to engage in this work, the milieus in which it occurs, and the rationales that move them, are considerations that remain at the forefront of existing research and theory. Yet, while there is a sense of continuity among the interests reflected by those who study children’s drawing and the questions that are raised may not altogether shift or change, at least not dramatically, the conceptual orientations used to animate this work certainly have. From developmental and sociocultural perspectives to the influence of critical, poststructuralist and posthumanist new materialist approaches, our conceptual orientations give shape to the encounters we have with children and the situatedness of drawing in their lives. Yet, there will always be a need to fashion new images of thought, with the power to orientate us to children’s drawing in ways that are more vitalistic and affective and that differently attune us to the relationalities in which children and their drawing come to matter. This chapter provides a sketch of the various conceptual orientations currently structuring the study of childhood drawing. In addition to outlining what these conceptual orientations are and how they remain a shaping presence in our relations to children’s art, the chapter also explores the need to engage in the creation of new, different, and unsettling images of thought.KeywordsHistory of children’s drawingDevelopmentalismSocio-cultural perspectivesPost-philosophiesPosthumanismNew materialisms
Do Latter-day Saints (Mormons) have anything to contribute to theological conversations about the nature of God? The article explores this question through the lens of Latter-day Saint conceptions of matter and agential embodiment that may be useful in generalizing material theologies and provide a resource for other material-based views of deity. The argument will examine the question by first exploring the nature of agency articulated from three perspectives: 1) Process thinking in the life sciences; 2) materialist feminism; and 3) evolutionary biology. The article then suggests that the materialism of Mormonism, while in the first stages of theological engagement, is likely to provide possible dialogues with other religious traditions, looking at mattered and embodied conceptions of deity, including trinitarian ones.
Do Latter-day Saints (Mormons) have anything to contribute to theological conversations about the nature of God? The article explores this question through the lens of Latter-day Saint conceptions of matter and agential embodiment that may be useful in generalizing material theologies and provide a resource for other material-based views of deity. The argument will examine the question by first exploring the nature of agency articulated from three perspectives: 1) Process thinking in the life sciences; 2) materialist feminism; and 3) evolutionary biology. The article then suggests that the materialism of Mormonism, while in the first stages of theological engagement, is likely to provide possible dialogues with other religious traditions, looking at mattered and embodied conceptions of deity, including trinitarian ones.
In recent years, digital technologies for creating, curating, selling, and buying teaching materials have become a valuable part of many teachers’ lives within and outside schools. Rather than apply textbook contents imposed from above, researchers and tech-pioneers have promoted digital teacher-to-teacher services as pathways to increase teacher empowerment and build communities of practitioners. Building on interviews with five Danish schoolteachers engaged in sharing and selling teaching materials online, this article explores the performative effects of imbricating teacher practices in commercial assemblages based on circulating teaching materials to other teachers as commodities. Drawing on posthuman and new materialist approaches to technologies in education, the analysis illustrates how teachers’ involvements in digital economies slide into and reconfigure professional aspirations and formal institutional relations. More than merely an informal tool to gain professional recognition, these technological reconfigurations have significant pedagogical and political implications for the teaching profession as a public responsibility in Denmark and beyond.
Virginia Woolf, in her highly experimental modernist novel The Waves (1931), depicts the psychological depth and texture of human experience through a series of fragmented and disjointed images, interior monologues and soliloquies, highlighting the feeling of loss, disillusionment, and brokenness. Throughout The Waves (1931), the characters strive to express themselves, and engage in a posthuman quest for a construction of a self-image through interactions with human and nonhuman life forms, and co-existence with the environment. This paper explores The Waves from a material posthumanist approach to offer a new perspective to Woolf’s understanding of the interface of nature and culture, self and the environment, the human and nonhuman agencies. This approach would be useful means to analyze the characters’ yearning for unification and their embodiment with nature, and explore the posthuman materiality of living and non-living beings that would help them redefine their shattered images and modern way of living.
In his research with Indigenous Evenki people living in Arctic Siberia, Anderson introduces the concept of “sentient ecology”, defined as “the mutual interrelation of person and place”. This interdisciplinary article starts from the basic premise that sentient ecology is relevant for research on resilience, and it aims to demonstrate this in two key ways. First, it uses sentient ecology as a novel framework for thinking about resilience, with a particular focus on conflict‐related sexual violence (CSRV)—an area of scholarship that to date has given very little attention to the concept of resilience. The article locates resilience in the fluid and dynamic interactions between individuals and their social ecologies. What sentient ecology contributes in this regard is a different way of thinking about these interactions. In particular, it highlights some of the ways that female and male victims–/survivors of CRSV actively utilize and engage with the more‐than‐human living world around them in the process of rebuilding and moving on with their lives. Second, the article uses sentient ecology as a framework for thinking in new “sentient” ways about social‐ecological systems (SES)—and how the social and ecological parts of these systems communicate with each other. Taking this a step further, it argues that sentient ecology offers a potential basis for developing more posthumanist accounts of resilience as an extension of SES.
The majority of literature on wars understandably focuses on the horrific aspects of war, such as death, destruction, displacement, and trauma. In this article, however, I want to highlight that life in war is not only brutal and disastrous but also is in some respects deeply joyful and at times even fun. This requires that we portray the horrific experiences of death and destruction but that we also ask: What kind of life emerges in these injured landscapes? Guided by this question, I argue that we cannot understand what war looks like and feels like if we do not understand the relationship between humans and other than humans. More specifically, I show how during the Bosnian War, in the devastated city of ruins, Bihać, shared experiences of joy, fun, and togetherness (communitas) materialized between the town's people and the Una River. Swimming in the river together provided the people of Bihać with an opportunity to create moments of play and laughter between life and death. As people in Bihać explained, these were moment‐by‐moment living situations, where generations blended and where divisions, superiority, and pride were broken down, however temporarily, and new undifferentiated bonds among people were created—communitas.
This essay explores the diffractive relationship between Aleksandr Bogdanov and Otto Neurath. Using a diffractive methodology derived from Karen Barad, these two thinkers are brought into relationship through their impact upon the German Figurative Constructivists, a political-art movement which emerged from the Council Communist current grouped around the Berlin review Die Aktion. This yields a contextualization of both Bogdanov and Neurath within the political environment that arose within Social Democracy in the first third of the twentieth century. This interpretation provides a basis for how tektological approaches can be implemented in the age of digitized information.
Existing IS research on platform work has narrowly focused on the managerial operations of algorithmic management or its business implications. Limited research has paid attention to the scalar effects and societal implications of platform work. In this study, we address the phenomenon of ‘speed’ in the on‐demand economy through a qualitative study of Chinese food delivery workers. We construct a performative view of spatiotemporality to illustrate the reconfiguration of multiple spatiotemporal orders. The paper thus broadens the theorization of time and space in IS research and provides a more nuanced and critical understanding of platform work against the backdrop of structural inequality in platform capitalism.
Interaktionen werden klassischerweise als intersubjektive Beziehungen analysiert. In der Soziologie wurde dabei die materielle Welt, ähnlich wie der Körper, lange Zeit randständig behandelt. Erst seit den material und body turns in den Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften in den letzten beiden Dekaden richtet sich die Aufmerksamkeit auf das Verhältnis von materieller Kultur und Körpern.
In his first editorial as new editor of Childhood—a flagship journal for academics and scholars interested in childhood studies—Spyros Spyrou (2017) strongly argued for the necessity to reconsider some key notions and categories that, for a long time, have been central for our current understanding of children and childhood. Mainly, he aimed at “decentering” childhood by incorporating, in a braver fashion, insights from emerging fields and theories that have been sensitive to the transformations carried on by the “ontological turn” in social sciences. This, as the need to “engage with real-life emerging concerns which escape the narrow confines of a ‘child-centered’ field of study” has become increasingly evident.
This chapter outlines the conceptual and philosophical underpinnings of Ecoscenography and explores ways in which theatre makers can consider their practice within the broader system of ecological organisation. By reviewing literature from a variety of fields across systems thinking, environmental humanities, ecomaterialism, more-than-human ontologies, Indigenous knowledge systems and aesthetics, the chapter examines how expanded ideas of material entanglement can be integrated with the ephemerality of scenographic practice to create work that encompasses environmental, social and political potential. Notions of phenomenological, ecological and evolutionary aesthetics are introduced as an important framework for sustainable design, along with examples of how eco-creativity can be incorporated into theatre practice.
This chapter introduces examples from Beer’s own practice—The Living Stage and This Is Not Rubbish—where the possibilities of Ecoscenography are explored beyond the confines of traditional theatre practice. These projects are examined through the Ecoscenography framework (outlined in Chap. 4) and demonstrate the regenerative potential of performance design to contribute to the socio-ecological health of place. Opportunities for conducting Ecoscenography in the expanded realm are explored while also problematising its potential alienation for those working in traditional theatre. The chapter closes by interrogating ideas for ecological futures where a new generation of designers are embracing wider perspectives and post-colonial worldviews to confront and reimagine societal values, ethics and biases.
This chapter explores ways of moving from a linear to circular design approach using nature or ecological systems as an inspiration for sustainable practice. It proposes three stages of Ecoscenography—co-creation (pre-production), celebration (production) and circulation (post-production)—which are considered equally fundamental to the aesthetic consideration of the work. The chapter provides examples of scenographers who have pioneered new practices and aesthetics for a sustainable future and introduces the Ecoscenography trajectory, outlining challenges and opportunities of practice. Taking inspiration from Transitions Theory, Ecoscenography is positioned as a ‘radical approach that is not rushed’, where ideas of contribution move beyond limited ideas of impact mitigation to contribute positively to the world beyond the theatre.
Many theoretical approaches to cybersecurity adopt an anthropocentric conceptualisation of agency; that is, tying the capacity to act to human subjectivity and disregarding the role of the non-human in co-constructing its own (in)security. This article argues that such approaches are insufficient in capturing the complexities of cyber incidents, particularly those that involve self-perpetuating malware and autonomous cyber attacks that can produce unintentional and unpredictable consequences. Using interdisciplinary insights from the philosophy of information and software studies, the article counters the anthropocentrism in the cybersecurity literature by investigating the agency of syntactic information (that is, codes/software) in co-producing the logics and politics of cybersecurity. It specifically studies the complexities of codes/software as informational agents, their self-organising capacities, and their autonomous properties to develop an understanding of cybersecurity as emergent security. Emergence is introduced in the article as a non-linear security logic that captures the peculiar agential capacities of codes/software and the ways in which they challenge human control and intentionality by co-constructing enmity and by co-producing the subjects and objects of cybersecurity.
This article identifies a set of practices through which multiple actors, from the European Commission to local governments, perform the concept of the metropolitan region. It specifically investigates the practices and actions which brought this concept into being in the Prague metropolitan region of Czechia. We uncover how the meanings associated with the concept of the metropolitan region evolved through material-discursive practices constitutive of regional institutionalization. The article unpacks five practices which lie behind the initial stages of regional institutionalization: advocacy, framing, customization, implementation and evaluation. It contributes to both the conceptualization and practical knowledge of metropolitan development, planning and institutionalization in three ways. First, in suggesting a set of institutionalization practices, it redirects attention towards what actors do. Second, it highlights the role of materiality mutually intertwined with discursive elements. Finally, it documents how the intersection of multiple governance levels provides key actors with the resources needed to engage in the reconceptualization and institutionalization of the metropolitan region.
Der Beitrag entwickelt Merkmale einer materialitätstheoretisch informierten Kulturgerontologie, die in der Idee des verteilten Alter(n)s zusammengefasst werden. Ausgangspunkt ist die Kritik an der Humanzentrierung von sozial- und kulturgerontologischen Ansätzen und deren konzeptioneller Vernachlässigung von nicht-menschlichen Materialitäten. Zur Überwindung dieser Problematik werden im Sinne einer Material Gerontology folgende Weiterentwicklungen vorgeschlagen: von der Humanzentrierung zur Anerkennung und Berücksichtigung materieller Vielfalt von Alter(n); von der Kritik am Dualismus Subjekt/Objekt zur Symmetrisierung von Materialitäten; von der Kritik an intentionalen und kausalen Setzungen zu Verkörperung und Relationalität; von der scheinbar gegebenen Ontologie des alternden Körpers zur Re-Ontologisierung von Alter(n); von der Gegenwart zu den pluralen Zeitlichkeiten von Alter(n). Der Erkenntnisgewinn, Alter(n) verteilt zu konzeptualisieren, zeigt sich in der Bedeutung von menschlichen Körpern und Artefakten als Gegenstände kulturgerontologischer Ansätze, in der Möglichkeit zur Generierung neuer Einsichten zum Alter(n), in der kritischen Reflexion von als normal geltenden Setzungen zum Alter(n) und in der Möglichkeit zur Kritik an idealisierenden Vorstellungen zum erfolgreichen, aktiven und produktiven Alter(n).
Technikentwicklung für ältere Menschen ist ein ambivalentes Feld: Einerseits verspricht sie Lösungen für die mit dem demografischen Wandel verbundenen Probleme, andererseits gehen mit der Technologieorientierung neue Problemlagen für ältere Menschen einher. Der Artikel untersucht diese Ambivalenz aus einer kulturanthropologischen Perspektive unter Bezugnahme auf Konzepte aus den Science and Technology Studies und dem New Materialism. Anhand eines ethnografischen Fallbeispiels wird gezeigt, welche kulturellen Vorstellungen und Annahmen über Alter(n) digitalen Assistenztechnologien zu Grunde liegen, wie diese Vorstellungen und Bilder in die Materialität des Artefaktes eingeschrieben werden und welche Konsequenzen sich daraus für die älteren Menschen als Nutzer und Nutzerinnen dieser Technologien ergeben.
In late Victorian Britain, questions of legibility were intrinsic both to the medical study of skin diseases and to their sociocultural and political significance. Tracing these complexities, this chapter aims to (1) highlight the difficulties characteristic of Victorian hermeneutics of skin while also drawing attention to the multimedial and transmedial character of knowledge that was produced in the course of such readings. It also (2) maps out the trends in critical interpretations that these acts have generated. Against this background, I propose (3) a model in critical medical humanities, anchored in cultural and material studies, which makes it possible to expand the types of inspected materials and spotlight the practices and processes that shaped the production, circulation, and reception of knowledge about Victorian skin and its diseases.
Data infrastructures are suffused with stories of their past, present, and future that govern their use. This article draws on research into ‘OneSchool’, the state schooling data infrastructure used to manage student data in Queensland, Australia. The political, social, and technical histories of OneSchool’s development are shown to govern its current use. In interviews, users from across Queensland’s education system shared stories of the ways OneSchool developed to both impede and create problematic truths about students, teachers and systems. The ways in which OneSchool became known as the single point of truth are used to illustrate how the narratives that accompany data infrastructures govern data, those who record the data, and those who are represented within the data. Identifying the governance of stories that travel with data infrastructures facilitates the development of protective and productive data behaviours for educational practitioners globally who are negotiating the discourse of digital educational governance.
This chapter explores possible connections among discourse analysis, materiality and biographical research in the context of subjectivation. The extant methodological/epistemological concepts linking the Foucauldian idea of discourse with biographical research do not provide clear openings for the incorporation of materiality, specifically those in digital form. This chapter proposes an adapted, modified approach to the analysis of material-discursive practices to the end of investigating the materiality and mediality of relationally understood processes of Bildung. In so doing, it identifies a need for a post-anthropocentric understanding of the biographical that focuses on the variety of socio-medial relational reconfigurations.
Die untersuchungsleitende These dieses Textes ist, dass Theater und Performance im Kontext von Digitalität seit den 1960er-Jahren federführend daran beteiligt sind, mithilfe von Diskursen, Modellen und Praktiken der Posthumanisierung eine Reformulierung von u. a.Mensch, Weltordnungen, Subjekt, Technik, des Politischen oder der Sozialität vorzunehmen.Diese Überschreitung moderner Konzepte aus dem 18.Jahrhundert kann als Antwort auf die technohumane Konstitution digitaler Kulturen gelten, die auf eine nahtlose Ko-Operation von Mensch und Technik setzen.Posthumanisierung sowie die posthumanen Performances sind dabei als eine unauflösbare Ordnung der Ambivalenz zur Kenntnis zu nehmen, mit der es umzugehen gilt.Denn sie stellen auf der einen Seite Begriffe und Modelle für die Beschreibung und Analyse digitaler Kulturen sowie für Spekulationen über z. B.gleichberechtigte Gesellschaftsformen oder technologische Bedingungen zur Verfügung.Auf der anderen Seite generiert die in Theater und Performance vorgenommene Posthumanisierung eine technoide Faszinationsgeschichte, die eine freudvolle Unterwerfung unter ein Regime technischer Dinge befördert.
The morning after giving an invited lecture on the socially constructed nature of scientific knowledge, I had the privilege of watching as a STM (scanning tunneling microscope) operator zoomed in on a sample of graphite, and as we approached a scale of thousands of nanometers… hundreds of nanometers… tens of nanometers… down to fractions of a nanometer, individual carbon atoms were imaged before our very eyes. The experience was so sublime that it sent chills through my body — and I stood there, a theoretical physicist who, like most of my kind, rarely ventures into the basements of physics buildings experimental colleagues call “home”, conscious that this was one of those life moments when the amorphous jumble of history seems to crystallize in a single instant. How many times had I recounted for my students the evidence for the existence of atoms? And there they were — just the right size and grouped in a hexagonal structure with the interatomic spacings as predicted by theory! “If only Einstein, Rutherford, Bohr, and especially Mach, could have seen this!” I found myself exclaiming.
This text offers an understanding of the nature of scientific, mathematical and engineering practice, and the production of scientific knowledge. The author presents an approach to the unpredictable nature of change in science, taking into account the number of factors - social, technological, conceptual and natural - that interact to affect the creation of scientific knowledge. In his view, machines, instruments, facts, theories, conceptual and mathematical structures, disciplined practices and human beings are in constantly shifting relationships with one another - "mangled" together in ways that are shaped by the contingencies of culture, time and place. Situating material as well as human agency in their larger cultural context, Pickering uses case studies to show how this picture of the open, changeable nature of science advances a greater understanding of scientific work both past and present. He examines the building of the bubble chamber in particle physics, the search for the quark, the construction of the quarternion system in mathematics and the introduction of computer-controlled machine tools in industry. He uses these examples to address the most basic elements of scientific practice - the development of experimental apparatus, the production of facts, the development of theory and the interrelation of machines and social organization.
Analytical table of contents Preface Introduction: rationality Part I. Representing: 1. What is scientific realism? 2. Building and causing 3. Positivism 4. Pragmatism 5. Incommensurability 6. Reference 7. Internal realism 8. A surrogate for truth Part II. Intervening: 9. Experiment 10. Observation 11. Microscopes 12. Speculation, calculation, models, approximations 13. The creation of phenomena 14. Measurement 15. Baconian topics 16. Experimentation and scientific realism Further reading Index.
How can we understand the world as a whole instead of separate natural and human realms? Joseph T. Rouse proposes an approach to this classic problem based on radical new conceptions of both philosophical naturalism and scientific practice. Rouse begins with a detailed critique of modern thought on naturalism, from Neurath and Heidegger to Charles Taylor, Thomas Kuhn, and W. V. O. Quine. He identifies two constraints central to a philosophically robust naturalism: it must impose no arbitrarily philosophical restrictions on science, and it must shun even the most subtle appeals to mysterious or supernatural forces. Thus a naturalistic approach requires philosophers to show that their preferred conception of nature is what scientific inquiry discloses, and that their conception of scientific understanding is itself intelligible as part of the natural world. Finally, Rouse draws on feminist science studies and other recent work on causality and discourse to demonstrate the crucial role that closer attention to scientific practice can play in reclaiming naturalism. A bold and ambitious book, How Scientific Practices Matter seeks to provide a viableâyet nontraditionalâdefense of a naturalistic conception of philosophy and science. Its daring proposals will spark much discussion and debate among philosophers, historians, and sociologists of science.
D. Haraway observa el mundo contemporáneo de las neurociencias como un drama en donede las ciencias de la información y la vida científica están en el centro de la acción. Hay muchos actores y no todos son humanos. El panoráma es de los cyborgs, formas de vida patentadas, representaciones mediadas por la computadora, reproducción de tecnología, ingeniería genética e investigaciones nucleares. La vida dentro de este panorama, no es una opción es un hecho donde se debate el conocimiento, la relaciones de género y raza así como la injusticia e injusticia. En este trabajo se entrelazan estudios de la cultura y de la ciencia hoy día.
A feminist approach to teaching quantum physics
- Karen Barad
Performing culture/performing nature: using the piezoelectric crystal of ultrasound technologies as a transducer between science studies and queer theories
- Karen Barad