Critical Posthuman Knowledges

Abstract

The convergence of posthumanism and postanthropocentrism is currently producing a field of posthuman critical enquiry that is more than the sum of its parts and points to a qualitative leap in new directions (Braidotti 2013). The critique of the humanist ideal of Man as the allegedly universal measure of all things, on the one hand, and the rejection of species hierarchy and human exceptionalism, on the other, are equally interdisciplinary in character, but they refer to different theoretical and disciplinary genealogies. They converge, however, in enabling the emergence of posthuman knowledges. By way of introduction, let me say that I practice critical thinking by drawing cartographies of the power operational in and immanent to the production of discourses and practices circulating in our sociopolitical order and integral to our subject formation (Foucault 1970). This approach is supported by two main theoretical pillars: the first is feminist epistemology, with its emphasis on the situated and accountable nature of knowledge (Harding 1986; Rich 1987; Haraway 1988; Hill Collins 1991). The second is a monistic neomaterialist philosophy inspired by Gilles Deleuze, which assumes all matter is one and that

Editorial

“…As another form of response-ability, feminist posthuman and new materialist research practices question traditional methodologies-which tend to be grounded in the logics of rationality and transcendence-and actively seek different ways of researching that attend to more-than-human world(ing) relations, experiment with different modes of creative expression beyond the textual, and produce situated forms of knowledge that respond to urgent ethico-political imperatives (Taylor & Hughes, 2016;Renold, 2018Renold, , 2019Niccolini andRingrose, 2019, Renold &. From a PhEmaterialist perspective, researching is a creative, experimental endeavor-acts of researchcreation (e.g., Springgay & Rotas, 2015), edu-crafting (Taylor & Hughes, 2016), performing methodology (Otterstad, 2018), and/or knowledge-production (Braidotti, 2019a).…”

“…This generative and empowering process of chimerical co/creation-cutting, drawing, and writing together/apart-formed "new (wo)monsters" and "new ways of being and wreaking havoc on hegemony and hierarchy". Braidotti (2019a) insists, posthuman perspectives must not jettison subjectivity, as some masculinist approaches to object orientated ontology have. Rather, we need to reimagine human subjectivity and exceptionalism through a rethinking of the self/other and non-human, as well as the agentic capacities produced in such assemblages.…”

Play-Doh Vulvas and Felt Tip Dick Pics: Disrupting phallocentric matter(s) in Sex Education

“…Research and teaching need to be 'more than' (Renold, 2018) an end to itself to show 'what else' (Renold and Ringrose, 2017a) is possible beyond the academy. In phEmaterial exploratory modes, the impact tied to the phallic institutional aims of metrics and hierarchies to suck worth from researchers' actions as part of cognitive capitalism (Braidotti, 2019) is disrupted. Rather, the aim is to work in zones of possibility to generate new relations of awareness and activity, rhizomatic threads that work their way out in sometimes unpredictable fashion to create the feminist becomings that we want to instantiate.…”

Posthuman Creativities: Democratizing Creative Educational Experience Beyond the Human

“…As Jane Bennett (2010, p. 116) argues, the onset of the Anthropocene has eroded the possibility of a "pure nature unpolluted by humanity" while simultaneously dissolving any meaningful endeavor to "define the self as something purely human." This constitutes what Braidotti (2013Braidotti ( , 2019 terms a "posthuman condition," a time in which the agency and status of human life is being forcibly deconstructed and reassembled by an unprecedented confluence of social, technical, and environmental events.…”