Posthuman Materialities in Education: a Nomadic and Non-anthropocentric Research

For several decades, philosophy and social sciences have been affected by a radical change of cultural and scientific paradigm. In fact, theoretical and empirical research is increasingly inspired by posthumanist and new materialist perspectives. These perspectives - promoted by scholars such as Karen Barad, Jane Bennett, Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour - challenge the ontological, epistemological and ethical assumptions of the humanist paradigm and seek to go beyond a human-centered view, as they believe that such view is inadequate to understand a globalised, multiethnic and hi-tech society in which technological, scientific, cultural and existential changes have rapidly altered previous ways of living and thinking. Posthumanist and materialist perspectives redefine the agency of matter avoiding separation between matter and meaning, assume the relations between human and non-human as units of analysis, interpreting them through a non-anthropocentric approach, and allow to study the flows and interconnections that characterise the current historical scenario with new conceptual categories. These perspectives thus stimulate a transdisciplinary and nomadic research style that focuses on multiple becomings and questions the most common conceptualisations of humanity and of the relations between human, environment and non-human (objects, technologies, non-human animals, etc.). Despite being quite widespread in human sciences, these perspectives are hardly accepted in educational studies and learning studies. As a matter of fact, even today pedagogy seems very often to take inspiration from an anthropocentric frame. It is grounded on the notion of human self-determination, and overlooks the role of non-human in the learner's development; furthermore, non-humans are usually considered something to use and manipulate: they are instruments. As a result, educational research keeps focusing on human beings, while the contribution of objects and other materialities towards the transformation of educational practices and learning contexts remains largely underexplored. However, in recent years more and more scholars belonging to the educational debate (e.g. Richard Edwards, Tara Fenwick, Helena Pedersen, Nathan Snaza, Estrid Sørensen) have explicitly addressed posthuman and sociomaterial approaches. Through their work, education can be conceived as a complex and constantly changing practice, made of hybrid networks that take shape through the interaction between social and material elements. The presentation aims to foster a theoretical reflection on these issues, not only showing the limits of humanistic and anthropocentric perspectives in the field of education, but also exploring the opportunities that posthumanist and materialist approaches offer to renovate the conceptual categories of the educational debate. Specifically, the presentation will focus on how these approaches contribute to: (1) exposing the anthropocentric assumptions that - explicitly or implicitly - affect educational research; (2) studying the relation between human and non-human in formal, non-formal and informal educational processes, on a theoretical and empirical level; (3) encouraging new and experimental relations with bodies, objects, spaces, and technologies.