Pedagogical Impasses: Posthuman Inquiry in Exhaustive Times

Abstract

Impasses are often understood as blockages, as preventing something from moving along a desired trajectory. Thinking with Lauren Berlant’s conception of the impasse in the historical present and Rosi Braidotti’s writing on exhaustion in the posthuman subject, we wonder how we might move forward in/with the overwhelmingness of the present, impasses in and always exceeding the qualitative inquiry classroom. We inquire: How does the impasse inspire a posthuman pedagogical practice? How do we teach (inquiry) in exhaustive times? To explore these questions, we turn to our classrooms as spaces conducive to impasses, discussing two examples, before opening our discussion to the posthuman pedagogical possibilities that impasses make possible. We then zigzag to the present, where a disturbance, a pandemic impasse, invokes exhaustion, uncertain pedagogical a/effects; however, we continue to seek the affirmative. Throughout, we circle in and around the impasse. Exhausted yet somehow (in)exhaustible.

A Story by Academic Teachers About Distance Education in the Time of Lockdown

“…How to make the other education showing through, stories opening up opportunities, stay and flourish? How to make things really change and not stay the same (Guyotte & Flint, 2021)? What autoethnography do we need to fully realize the transformative potential of both autoethnography and the pandemic?…”

“…How to make the other education showing through, stories opening up opportunities, stay and flourish? How to make things really change and not stay the same (Guyotte & Flint, 2021)? What autoethnography do we need to fully realize the transformative potential of both autoethnography and the pandemic?And when we raise our voices trying to scream, the echo closes our mouths.Silence is the most common answer.It is the silence that closes the lid of the well.…”

Impasses of Affective Inquiry in Pandemic Times

“…With this transition to learning mediated to videoconferencing (in our case, Zoom), our field site prohibited in-person data collection and our learning community classrooms were either canceled or moved online. Online teaching and learning have their own unique challenges and opportunities (Guyotte & Flint, 2020), but what of online affective inquiry? Does observation via Zoom allow access to the conditions that make humanities, individuations, and datafications of our participants possible (Stewart et al, 2020, p. 5)?…”

Making Good Trouble: Becoming-With Critical Inquiry

“…Acting in the now to make the present, but also the future, better (and even then, we still must be oriented in the present). As Maureen wrote elsewhere, “we sense the present as a productive impasse in which affirmative and attentive gestures and habits make possible an opening to possibilitate” (Guyotte & Flint, 2020, p. 3). The present as an opening to good trouble.…”