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Donna Haraway views being a cyborg rather than a ‘goddess’ desirable. This feminist slogan can be seen in terms of the democratising power of a hybrid identity facilitated by technology as a substantial alternative to traditional notions of gendered identity. This paper aims to study S. B. Divya’s 2021 novel Machinehood to analyse how technology and identity are tied up in the context of the novel. The paper benefits from the insights from critical posthumanism by analysing how the transformation into a cyborg is problematised by the moral and ethical overtones facilitated by dakinis (mythological figures in Buddhism). While providing tactical advantage, cyborg may become the negation of one’s gender and flesh. The cyborg has been viewed as a capitalist desire. Thus, a cyborg society benefits from the transformative acts that resist such erasure and preserve one’s sense of identity rooted in their body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the cybernetic utopian ideals of transhumanism and posthumanism, focusing particularly on the concept of the singularity, which incorporates both scientific and religious dimensions. This investigation subsequently leads to an in-depth examination of temporal concepts within the broader discourse surrounding the disenchantment thesis in secular modernity. Drawing on the framework of multiple temporalities proposed by Lorenz Trein and Helge Jordheim, the article suggests a perspective that enables an understanding of diverse interpretations of history and the future as a dynamic interplay that transcends the binary opposition between (secular) science and religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to examine the agentic role of the physical spaces (e.g. landing beach, fish market and fish processing kitchen) within which fishery tasks are undertaken as they entangle with human, non-human, and discursive forces to co-create gendered subjectivities in fisher couples' decision-making and practices. The paper is based on larger ethnographic study on fisher couples' decision-making and practices in Ghana's Western region, using participatory ethnographic observation including photo elicitation, vignettes and 38 in-depth interviews. Findings from the study indicate that the fish landing beach (consisting of sea water and sandy coast) played active roles in the kinds of tasks men and women could perform. The ability of the sea water to wet women's long dresses, coupled with their menstrual body and discourse of women as unclean worked together to limit women's ability to engage in activities, such as fishing. In terms of fish processing and trading, the study showed that the enclosed nature of fish processing kitchen served as a protective force which prevented public scrutiny of couples' household practices to allow for husbands to help their wives in fish processing and storage. In instances of disagreement, the bedroom played a protective role where couples settled their differences on somewhat equal ground. Tracing the agentic and constitutive role of spaces, shift our focus from a purely social understanding of gender towards a holistic view of the multiple and complex pathways through which the environment and matter combine with discourses to co-create continuous and flexible (re)iterations of gender emergences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of climate change, social theory has been subject to a surge of new materialist and posthuman approaches that reconfigure ontology and politics beyond the modern nature/culture binary which the Anthropocene has rendered untenable. But their (re-)turn to ontological speculation brackets the socio-epistemic situatedness and productivity of the way we think nature and its relationship to society. This paper reads Niklas Luhmann's systems theory as a posthuman perspective that can address the epistemological blind spot of materialist-ecological thought. Luhmann's ecology aligns with the former on the posthuman framing of shaping power, the productivity of an environmental outside that remains unknown, and the call for political modesty which follows. On the other hand, Luhmann's theory poses a critical challenge to materialist-ecological thought: the society/environment binary is here constitutively necessary, and its mapping onto a nature/culture binary functionally advantageous for subjects and social systems because it offers opportunities for complexity-reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Feminist Theory and International Law: Posthuman Perspectives" by Emily Jones explores the intersection of feminist theory, posthumanism, and international law. The book builds upon existing scholarship in the field and offers alternative ways of analyzing and approaching international law. Jones focuses on two case studies, international environmental law and the regulation of military technologies, to highlight the limitations of traditional legal concepts and the potential for posthumanist perspectives to challenge anthropocentric and patriarchal norms. The book is well-researched and relevant for international lawyers, legal theorists, and those interested in posthumanist theory and feminism. [Extracted from the article]

This study examines the challenges of humanism and education in the 21st century as addressed by the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk in his Elmau Speech (1999). In this lecture, titled Rules for the Human Zoo, Sloterdijk argues that the traditional notion of humanism, specifically "humanism as a literary society," has reached its conclusion, necessitating the development of a new humanism appropriate for the contemporary era. However, the new concept of humanism emerging from what Sloterdijk terms the "anthropotechnic turn" appears to align with the discourses surrounding human enhancement that have emerged in the 21st century, thereby influencing the realm of education. The first half of this article reports on the significant concerns and criticisms expressed by the media at that time regarding this new humanism, which seems to be associated with eugenicist ideas. Taking a step further, this study critically examines the nature of the challenges around education implied by Sloterdijk, specifically the conflict between "friend of humans and friend of Übermensch", and explores the potential roles and responsibilities of education in the latter part of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human activities have drastically altered the planet, with design playing a significant role. While design may intend to do good, its consequences are not always positive: from climate change to resource depletion to unforeseen social dynamics. These transformations also include ourselves, as our relationships with new technologies blur and complicate previous human and machine agency distinctions. Increasingly, design has become a matter of defining what it means to be human. This special issue explores the proposition that conventional human-centered design approaches may not adequately address the complex challenges we face, and that there is instead a need to ground design in more-than-human perspectives. This introduction outlines the evolving landscape of more-than-human design in the context of HCI. Articulating a series of emerging research trajectories, we aim to illuminate the transformative potential of more-than-human orientations to design, including how they both extend and depart from familiar lines of inquiry in HCI – for example, how designers are redefining data, interfaces, and responsibility, and reshaping posthuman knowledge through design. Ultimately, this special issue aims to explore new pathways for designing in the era of the more-than-human, challenging the perceived divide between practice and theory to imagine alternative futures for HCI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In England, music education policy is deeply rooted in neoliberal ideologies, shaping classroom practice and assessments. This paper presents findings from a four-year funded longitudinal project exploring the impact of musical partnerships on young people at risk of educational exclusion. Through a posthuman lens, the researchers made a methodological shift, acknowledging the agency of non-human elements and physical spaces in musical interactions. Posthumanism offered alternative insights, challenging traditional notions of music education practice and extended human-centric perspectives and school assessment metrics. It expanded our understanding of what it means to be a musician and pedagogue. This paper proposes that posthumanism can challenge existing notions of music education practice while simultaneously moving the discussion of important matters in music education research into new areas of thinking, doing, and being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes off from the tiny injuries that accumulate, calcify and shape our academic bodies and which live in university spaces and places. The paper moves analytically with the question: how may we insert our non-normative bodies into the material architectures, places and spaces of the university, and disrupt it by our very presence? Composed in post-authorship mode, we discuss the post-personal autoethnographies, research activations, their diffractive renditions and the speculative fabulations this question generated. Drawing theoretically on posthumanism/feminist new materialism, affirmative ethics and musings on bodily disposition, we propose the slow tempo of nonchalance as a theory-praxis. In telling it slant with side-curved head and curiosity, the article offers ways of imagining otherwise, making an appeal for the university to become a more capaciously hospitable place for bodies excluded by exceptionalist hu/Man/ism and extractive knowledge practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of historical and contemporary music education research is influenced by a Cartesian ontology of opposition. This reinforces the classic function of music and music education: the exercise of possession, ownership and control. To confront these ideas, our article reimagines music education research through posthumanism and new materialism. In doing so, the focus shifts to making with nonhuman matter, posthuman bodies and the materialisation of music. Examples of cartographic research are discussed to show how the experience of musical environments is constantly reconfigured by human and nonhuman elements. This abandons the notion that music education takes place only in the mind and explores what a posthumanist approach to materiality can offer instead. As a result, normative academic conventions are disrupted by the recognition of in-the-making embodied musical learning, the intra-action of human and nonhuman sound materialising, and the materiality of the body in its experience of music as a play space, arguing that staying with the trouble of doing something new, or swimming against the tide, matters for music educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines the emergence and development of human-animal studies in Israel (HASI). It sketches the changes the field has undergone and its accomplishments to date, identifying key challenges and opportunities. The article highlights two major shifts that HASI has undergone throughout the years: the first, an initial focus on animal-assisted therapy (AAT) that eventually gave way to a multidisciplinary approach to human-animal relations; and the second, a transition from a humanistic perspective to growing critical involvement in HAS and partial post-humanistic epistemology. The past and current institutional state of human-animal studies in Israel is traced, characterized by ongoing infrastructure changes, alongside a growing group of scholars that aim to develop the field. We conclude with a contemplation of future directions and prospects for HASI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I explore the construct of the ‘natural’ voice within the context of the natural voice movement, before invoking perspectives on voice from the posthumanities and D/deaf studies in discussion of The Walk, a performance between a puppet, a natural voice choir, a refugee choir and a large audience that occurred in London in October 2021. Methodologically, this paper is an attempt at ‘thinking with theory’ (Jackson, Alecia Youngblood, and Lisa A. Mazzei. 2017. “Thinking with Theory: A New Analytic for Qualitative Inquiry.” In The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, edited by N. K. Denzin, and Y. Lincoln, 717–737. Sage) – specifically thinking voice alongside theoretical stimuli from the posthumanities through the doing of ethnography – in the hope of provoking useful flights of thought in relation to the practice and study of music education and community music. I conclude by considering my personal rationale for engaging with the posthumanities as a means of researching community singing within the natural voice movement. A protean version of this article was presented as a paper-presentation at the Grieg Research School in Bergen, Norway in 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to explore critical notions for developing a queer incarnational theology perspective. It begins by examining the concepts of "freedom" and "clandestinity" and then moves into the post-human question, drawing on ecological feminism and queer/cuir theologies. In the final section, ideas are outlined that contribute to a queer incarnational theology, recovering the prophetic sense of the Gospel. This approach integrates freedom from a queer/cuir perspective into a theological framework that resonates with human diversity and embraces the interconnectedness of all forms of life, challenging oppressive structures, and recognizing the prophetic vitality of the Gospel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the evolving landscape of virtual reality (VR) from Plato to posthumanism, focusing on VR's capacity for "presence" amid technological advancements. Topics discussed include VR's intersection with artificial intelligence development, the significance of VR presence, and the divide between humanist and posthumanist approaches.

In this paper, we employ the language ontologies framework to artificial intelligence (specifically, OpenAI's ChatGPT) to investigate the 'ethnographic encounter' between human and non-human language users. Our focus is on the exchange and interplay between human language users and non-human artificial language generators in the production of written text. We analyse how such programs transform our understanding of what language is or might be; their practices to create language are unfamiliar, and yet they make sense to human interlocutors. Drawing from, and building on, the language ontologies framework, we discuss the practices involved in such encounters and suggest the need for an updated 'toolkit' in our understanding of language to account for transhuman interactions. • Language is many things, depending on how it is practiced and performed. • Ontologies allow us to approach language(s)/languaging as an anthropologist approaches an 'ethnographic encounter'. • The interaction between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) is an ethnographic encounter used to explore transhuman language ontologies. • The ways in which AI generates language is responsive to human linguistic behaviour; however, the way AI creates language is unique. • Language patterns, or wordings , constitute a significant element of the languaging process for ChatGPT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociology of personal life (SPL) has been largely untouched by sociology's ontological turn. A few scholars have attempted to retrofit SPL and new-materialist ideas, but these limited attempts have overlooked the potential for SPL to furnish its own definitive ontological contributions in dialogue with the wider turn. In response, I offer an SPL-centred ontology: the 'connective ontology' of facet methodology. Introduced in 2011, facet methodology was originally supported by 'connective ontology', briefly outlined in a preliminary text, but as facet methodology has gained popularity, connective ontology has not been explicitly discussed. I argue that, while never mentioned outright, Jennifer Mason's 2018 Affinities is about connective ontology and therefore offers an extensive, albeit tantalisingly implicit, ontological thesis, which I attempt to develop. In my interpretation, the world is made up of fluctuating layerings of vitally animated connection units. This connective ontology resonates with contemporary new-materialist sensibilities, but is from and of SPL. It also speaks to broader theoretical traditions, offering provocations for ontologically-minded, live, post-humanist, vitalist and biosocial sociologies, especially regarding longstanding critiques of apoliticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the themes of animality, coloniality, and racial affect in Mike White's series "The White Lotus," drawing connections to his previous work "Enlightened" and exploring the portrayal of Hawaii as an exotic location with complex colonial and capitalist dynamics. It also discusses the implications of posthumanist ideologies in White's narratives and their reflection on pre-industrial and pre-capitalist ontologie.

This article examines utopian elements in Thomas Stuber's 2018 film In den Gängen. Despite the neoliberal forces that constrain a group of supermarket shelf stackers in the former East Germany, the film's characters exhibit congenial bonds in the face of alienated work. Strikingly, their encounters with machines also convey an other-directedness and improvised conviviality, or energy that enables them to devise bonds in fleeting moments. As much as the film presumes a foreclosed-on socialist utopia, it also depicts a range of contemporary challenges to neoliberalism, including practices of commoning, non-normative forms of relationality, and human-machine interactions that gesture towards a posthumanist selfhood. At the same time, the three main characters' personal circumstances and histories necessarily impact their ability to benefit from these elements. Both age and gender play crucial roles in their individual fates, and not all of them thrive within their caring, other-directed community. Ultimately, In den Gängen suggests the possibility of mundane existences gesturing towards superlative futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a new sensibility to the concept of the future in recent writings in the human and social sciences. The modern idea of the future is undergoing a tremendous rupture today such that older or taken-for-granted assumptions about it can no longer be left unscrutinized. While much of the new interest in the future is about events yet to come – and the spectre of catastrophe looms large in such thinking – the challenge for social theory is to understand how the future should be conceptualized today and how it relates to other concepts, such as space, hope, possibility and utopia. Some of the major controverses about how the future should be conceptualized can be summed up around the following debates, which are explored in this introductory article: the question of the temporality of the future, the extent to which the future is open, whether utopia has been superseded by dystopia and the implications of posthumanism especially in the context of the emergence of new technologies that have far-reaching implications for the human condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores different perspectives on the future and the end of modernity. It discusses concepts such as the Anthropocene, the role of experts in understanding the future, and the potential dangers of advanced AI. The article also delves into the idea of an apocalypse and its implications for political action. Additionally, it examines the notion of post-history and the contributions of Marx, Hegel, and Weber to understanding historical progress. Overall, the article emphasizes the importance of considering the present and the past when constructing imaginaries of the future. The text mentions various sociologists and philosophers who have explored the concept of the future, including Frederic Jameson, Bruno Latour, Ulrich Beck, Zygmunt Bauman, and Charles S. Peirce. It highlights their different perspectives on the future, including ideas about fate, risk society, liquid modernity, and the role of experts. The text also mentions the concept of the singularity and its potential impact on society. Overall, the text provides a range of perspectives on the future and encourages further exploration of these ideas. [Extracted from the article]

The future has been a central object of inquiry in the twentieth-century social theory. In this essay, a first generation of intellectual concern with the future is represented in the post-war turn towards a hermeneutics of time and reflections on modernity in the writings of conceptual historian Reinhart Koselleck and philosopher Paul Ricoeur. In their writings, the future was both essential reflection on the limits of human existence and a fundamental liberation of political potential. As such they situated the future in what was defined as historical time. A second wave of scholarly thinking came in the explosion of a post-war field of futures studies. The future, to post-war futurists, was a loss of telos and an indication of the fundamental immaturity and hubris of the human subject. History was a cumbersome remnant of past destruction, and the imperative was to move beyond. In a third generation, currently taking form, the future is considered as part of a postmodern, indeed posthuman existence. 'There is no such thing as humanity' makes human history impossible and opens the question of whether it is even possible to engage with the future without a clear anchoring in the history of what it is to be human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an innovative interspecies analysis, this article explores narratives surrounding the medical treatment of humans and pet animals at the end of life among U.K. veterinary surgeons, medical practitioners, and members of the public. Contrasting the care options open to pet owners with those available to human patients, and through a thematic focus on treatments and medicines, euthanasia, and palliation, this article pays close attention to the ways that practitioners and members of the public make sense of—and express ideas about—interspecies family kinship at the end of life. We highlight the utility of interactionist approaches for understanding microsocial human‐animal kinship ties and argue that health policy and practice during end‐of‐life care should better reflect the lived reality of the multispecies family. In so doing, we highlight the significance and complexities of interspecies conversations for the development of contemporary end‐of‐life care debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis study explores the inclusion of poetry in the realm of consumer research in tourism, consumption, and sustainability, with a study of the poem “The Dolphins” by Carol Ann Duffy. It reflects on the analysis of poetry in advancing our understanding of tourism consumption, and deliberates that poetry could provide insight into complex, emotional, painful, and cruel consumption facets. The study crafts a reference point for the use of poetry as a data source and a methodological tool in tourism and sustainability research and highlights how poetry could help in advancing our understanding of ethical consumption and its confluence with animal welfare in tourism and raising ethical awareness and sensitivity. The study also reflects on the themes of expanding our consciousness as part of being better humans and tourists, and raising the social consciousness of organizations to work towards animal welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How and why did three PhD fellows become feminist posthumanist scholars within the field of music education research? Drawing on Karen Barad’s theorising of phenomena, not pre-existing entities, as the primary ontological unit and on Rosi Braidotti’s concept of the nomadic subject, we explore our research subjectivities as they are becoming in and through relations within the phenomenon of Western music education. Through the figuration of ‘voice’, we trace how and why our research voices stretch and crack as we go through a scholarly voice change transitioning from humanist to feminist posthumanist scholars. We tell performative stories that intra-actively take part in the ongoing re-configuring of the world, making matters such as children, care responsibilities, and ‘feminist killjoys’ become issues of music educational importance. Our aim is to offer companionship to others be(com)ing posthumanists, and to stretch the boundaries of music education research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article inaugurates a special issue on the critical posthumanities and postqualitative inquiry. Within psychology, more of us agree we dislike these ‘post’ approaches than can agree what they are about. The purpose of this article is not to make the ‘posts’ more likable for psychologists. Instead, we make a case for refining the contempt towards ‘post inquiry’ and raising the level of our connoisseurship in order to pass judgement on it in a fair and ethical manner. Our arguments are followed by some thoughts about the process and product of the special issue, which aims to support connoisseurship and answers essential questions about the critical posthumanities and postqualitative inquiry, while originating new ones. We hope this work contributes to expand the horizons of qualitative psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This article challenges an over‐reliance on language as the primary means to communicate knowledge by adopting a languagelessness approach to maker pedagogies and maker literacies. Having conducted makerspace and design‐based research for some time, we separately and together noticed a productive relationship between wordless relational makerspace and making moments focused on craft, tools, technologies, and materials, and ways that an absence of verbal and written communication opens possibilities within learning environments. After meetings and discussions, we co‐wrote the article to examine ways that language‐light, even language‐free pedagogical spaces allow for a different quality of design work that motivates and fosters innovation. There are three international research projects that serve as research vignettes to investigate the efficacy of languagelessness. The theory foregrounded to anchor and interpret the three vignettes draws from maker literacies research and sociomaterial orientations to knowledge development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis article discusses and elaborates on the insights gained from the teaching of a course in Environment, Literature and Culture at a university in the north of Thailand. The course was designed as an invitation to English major students to develop sustain-abilities (vulner-abilities, attend-abilities, and response-abilities). In an effort to overcome the anthropocentrism of traditional humanistic ecocritical pedagogies, both the course and this case study have been framed by posthumanist ontology and educational theory. From this standpoint, curriculum and pedagogy constitute a relational, open-ended, more-than-human entanglement of agencies, practices, discourses, matters, and encounters assembled in the process of teaching and learning. The dialogical and situated invitations of this course contributed to assemble a literacy situation that seemed to foster in students an embodied, affective, experienced, relational sense of becoming-together with nonhuman others. While it is unclear whether the participation in the course will continue to motivate their collective and individual actions beyond this literacy situation, the encounters and relations between these students and the many nonhumans assembled in the ecocritical classroom constitute by themselves bewildering learning experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In The Machine in the Garden ( 1964), Leo Marx set American studies on a search for "a distinctively American theory of society" (4). Demonstrating how an image of mechanistic modernity first occurred then recurred throughout cultural depictions of a predominantly rural landscape, Marx examines the impact of industrialization on American society. This essay argues that contemporary southern fiction is displaying a similarly recurring motif of its own, a motif representative of a new perception of place for the region. Place, according to the southern studies conception as a region of constancy capable of informing our identities, no longer exists. The posthumanist subject instead inhabits a shared space suitable for their symbiotic coexistence, and contemporary authors are starting to depict this element of posthuman existence. Marx's machines recur anew, their rusting carcasses re-purposed by the coexisting elements around them. Rather than a shocking intrusion into the rural landscape, the rusting shells of the symbols of modern society are representative of the non-exceptionalism of the posthuman. Using Jesmyn Ward ' s Where the Line Bleeds, Salvage the Bones, and Sing, Unburied, Sing, this essay will consider how such imagery indicates a shift in the presentation of place in southern fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kim de l'Horizon's Blutbuch contributes to the contemporary posthumanist discourse of the German‐language literary landscape by developing an original way of narrating memory through transformative materialities. This article explores two forms of memory narration that de l'Horizon evokes and combines in their text resulting in a productive space of tension between the protagonist and their environment. On the one hand, the main character grasps narratives as layers of skin (Gehäute) that serve as a physical boundary of the figures in the text. On the other hand, de l'Horizon proposes a memory narrative that aims to permeate these skin boundaries to reconnect the human self with surrounding matter in a fluid, symbiotic way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Posthumanism points towards a relational understanding of embodied processes of becoming musical in and with the world which readily combine with existing aspects of early years music practice. In this article I describe the potential of this resonant encounter to develop alternative approaches to listening, opening further possibilities for both research and practice. Drawing on the experience of researching with young children, musicians and Zoom during COVID-19, I describe the pandemic as a ‘ruption’ (Chappell, Turner, and Wren 2024), a disturbance from which new things may emerge. I contrast listening as usual with ‘emergent listening’ (Davies 2014), describing how the latter has potential to expand our understanding of children-making-music and to make space for more diverse players to enter the scene, both human and other-than-human. I provide an example of using emergent listening in research documentation, holding the space open for divergent understandings of an emergent practice to develop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bringing together literature from music education, posthumanism, sound studies and ethnomusicology, this article considers what sound ‘does’ in music education spaces. Within posthumanism, the role of sound, as a manifestation of material-human entanglements, is under-theorised. This article, diffractively plays with the literature and evidence from a PhD project and a listening walk with pre-service music teachers, allowing the reverberations (as the continued effects and affects of bringing these materials into contact with each other), to spark generative thinking about how sound in music education is conceived. In doing so, the article presents three reverberations that challenge humanist conceptions of sound/music in education. The first considers all sound (human and non-human) as voice, which is transindividual (Chadwick in Flint [2022]. “More-than-Human Methodologies in Qualitative Research: Listening to the Leafblower.” Qualitative Research 22 (4): 521–541. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794121999028) , the second considers the role of sound as an invitation to ‘world-with’ (Barad [2007]. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press) and the third reverberation explores sound as affect (Gallagher [2016]. “Sound as Affect: Difference, Power and Spatiality.” Emotion, Space and Society 20:42–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2016.02.004). In thinking with these generative reverberations, this article is a provocation to explore how a posthuman reconceptualisation of sound in music education can help us re-state the importance of music as a curriculum subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What happens when, as scholars who have habitually been working with posthumanism and the new materialisms, we find ourselves summoned by thinkers who critique the covert coloniality present in these approaches? This work is the result of a year-long project where we set up the task of feeling our way through these critiques, exploring how they change our work and ourselves; and attempting to find a way of relating to the challenge of decoloniality. We use collaborative writing as an approach to delve into our encounters with readings, our own histories, and our ways of relating to the academy and each other. In this work, we start from our differing histories and positionalities—a Chilean woman and a British man; now colleagues and with a history of being a PhD supervisee-supervisor. Then, we grapple with how posthumanism/new materialism has neglected to think about how coloniality is entangled in who the "humans" it speaks to are and how it is further reproducing colonial dynamics of ethnocentric erasure that effectively do not allow it to go beyond the "human." After considering possibilities of integration, reparation, survival, and refusal, we conclude it is crucial to reflexively acknowledge and work with our concrete positionalities and interests, thereby making our conceptualizations necessarily provincial, limited, and in some ways problematic. Otherwise, we run the risk of engulfing decolonial, postcolonial, anticolonial, and indigenous theories without any fundamental change, thus furthering coloniality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a semiotic framework to underpin a posthumanist philosophy of education, as contrasted to technological determinism. A recent approach to educational processes as semiotic phenomena lends itself as a philosophy to understand the current interplay between education and technology. This view is aligned with the transhumanist movement to defend techno-scientific progress as fundamental to human development. Particularly, we adopt a semiotic approach to education to tackle certain tensions in current debates on the human. Transhumanism scholars share the optimistic belief that there is no limit to how the ethical use of technology can help alleviate suffering and increase our health and wisdom. From this perspective, it appears possible to acquire capacities that require rethinking the notion of human altogether. For others, this undermining of essentialist concepts of humanity entails serious risks, especially related to ethical egalitarianism. We adopte the perspective of edusemiotics, a framework that brings together semiotics, educational theory and philosophy of education. As a theoretical-practical framework, edusemiotics affords a hermeneutic and semiotic method for our approach. Peirce's logic of signs is used to analyze socio- educational interactions as environmental. We observe two lines of thought. On the one hand, technological transhumanism enhances Cartesian mind–body dualism. On the other hand, philosophical posthumanism seeks to overcome this dichotomy. The former proposal construes human transformation as an artifactualization derived from techno-scientific enhancements. The latter position proposes an integrative posthumanism, capable not only to include edusemiotic theory but also to rethink the concept of learning as mutual to that of human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ethical value of artistic artifacts in challenging the unequal valuation of working bodies with a focus on the contemporary art exhibition 'Useless bodies?' by Danish artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. Drawing on Judith Butler's work and posthuman theory, particularly Braidotti's contributions, the paper argues that this exhibition exemplifies how art can foster an ethics of interdependency, one that both critiques dynamics of misrecognition and imagines alternative futures. Furthermore, the paper proposes that this affirmative and critical ethics provides theoretical and methodological foundations for work and organization studies, prompting new questions about the significance of embodiment, esthetics, and artifacts for conducting (ethical) research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay addresses the problem of how to formally differentiate between oppressive and emancipatory infrastructures. In doing so, it develops an analysis of speculative science-fiction novel The Book of Joan (2017) to explore how infrastructure is characterized in its vertical-fascist, insurgent, and horizontal-egalitarian modes. I will make and explore three central claims. Firstly, the material infrastructure of patriarchal white supremacy is intimately bound up with semiotic infrastructure in ways that are extremely difficult to untangle. Secondly, vertical-fascist infrastructure functions as a means of capturing, appropriating, and homogenizing human and nonhuman life, while insurgent infrastructures that give rise to horizontal formations are characterized by a reversal of this process insofar as they seek to maximize living diversity and bodily autonomy. Finally, and relatedly, the difference between vertical-fascist and horizontal-egalitarian synthetic infrastructures must be understood in relation to the nonhuman-natural infrastructures into which they intervene, and which they can either synthesize with or overwrite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although encompassing a variety of research approaches, qualitative research in music education shares the assumption that reality is socially constructed; it takes this construction to be based on the specific perspective of the individual human; and it considers epistemology and ontology to be different fields of study. The posthuman theory of agential realism, on the other hand, argues that the world is becoming through intra-actions; it decentres the individual humanist subject; and it studies onto-epistemology – practices of knowing-in-being. Considering these fundamental differences, the quality criteria of qualitative research are not applicable to posthuman music education research. Nevertheless, posthuman research is concerned with the ethics of research and how to response-ably and ethically take part in the world’s becoming. Thus, the emerging field of posthuman music education research must develop other ways of evaluating research beyond the quality criteria found in qualitative methodologies. This paper argues that diffraction – both as a physical and musical phenomenon and as a philosophical concept – might be a fruitful approach. By reading quality criteria diffractively through the agential realist concept of response-ability, it poses critical and creative questions, moving us towards evaluating the quality of posthuman music education research on its own terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kim de l'Horizon's Blutbuch contributes to the contemporary posthumanist discourse of the German‐language literary landscape by developing an original way of narrating memory through transformative materialities. This article explores two forms of memory narration that de l'Horizon evokes and combines in their text resulting in a productive space of tension between the protagonist and their environment. On the one hand, the main character grasps narratives as layers of skin (Gehäute) that serve as a physical boundary of the figures in the text. On the other hand, de l'Horizon proposes a memory narrative that aims to permeate these skin boundaries to reconnect the human self with surrounding matter in a fluid, symbiotic way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a broad but comprehensive foundation for understanding the widespread practice of using the bioelectric properties of plants to create music and sound. We begin by describing how plant biosignals are harvested by several commercial electronic devices and a custom-designed interface. Then, we analyze large data samples of potential musical content generated by such technologies. Next we investigate the artistic and musical choices artists make when they interpret this data, analyzing work by British sonic artist Augustine Leudar, the Philadelphia Museum of Art7s Data Garden Quartet, and Japanese composer Mamoru Fujieda. Finally we position the entire enterprise within a posthumanist semiotic framework, specifically referencing work by Uexkull, Deleuze, Krampen, Watkins, and Marder. This interpretation allows us to speculate on the nature of communication and musical collaboration that can potentially take place between the human and vegetative domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary debates on posthumanism and the planetary environmental crisis have led to the questioning of the dichotomies and anthropocentrism of Western modernity. The Indigenous peoples of the Gran Chaco of Argentina, specifically the Qom or Toba, neither privileged the human above other beings that make up the world nor created nature/culture dichotomies. In other words they were, as other Amerindian peoples, neither humanists nor posthumanists. However, in recent decades, the Qom—who since 1960 have combined Pentecostal evangelicalism with shamanism and their particular animism—have begun to differentiate, at least discursively, religion from spirituality. If religion refers to the institutionalized evangelical universe, spirituality corresponds to what international Indigenist norms place within the "ancestral," which tends to be condemned as savage, demonic, dark, and, therefore, as something to be eradicated. The non-human beings of the natural world, the shamanic practices of healing, and the universe of vengeance and of witchcraft were always present—though questioned by official evangelicalism, now they gain greater visibility in religious spaces. This article analyzes aspects of Qom spirituality that challenge the dichotomies that the Indigenous themselves internalized and that destabilizes their perspectives. It considers how advocating a continuity that does not destroy plurality upholds the exceptionality of the human being to cause and solve a planetary crisis that, in regions such as the Gran Chaco, is directly associated with extractivism. Resumen: Los debates contemporáneos sobre el posthumanismo y la crisis medioambiental planetaria han llevado a cuestionar las dicotomías y el antropocentrismo de la modernidad occidental. Los pueblos indígenas del Gran Chaco de Argentina, concretamente los qom o toba, no privilegiaron lo humano por encima de los demás seres que conforman el mundo ni crearon dicotomías como naturaleza/cultura. En otras palabras, no son ni fueron, al igual que otros pueblos amerindios, humanistas ni posthumanistas. Sin embargo, en las últimas décadas, los qom–que desde 1960 combinan el evangelicalismo pentecostal con el chamanismo y su particular animismo- han empezado a diferenciar, al menos discursivamente, religión de espiritualidad. Si la religión se refiere al universo evangélico institucionalizado, la espiritualidad corresponde a lo que las normas indigenistas internacionales sitúan dentro de lo "ancestral", que tiende a ser condenado como salvaje, demoníaco, oscuro y, por tanto, como algo a erradicar. Los seres no-humanos del mundo natural, las prácticas chamánicas de curación y el universo de la venganza y de la brujería siempre estuvieron presentes -aunque cuestionados por el evangelismo oficial- ahora ganan mayor visibilidad en los rituales religiosos. En este artículo despliego aspectos de esta espiritualidad qom, que desafían las dicotomías que los propios indígenas internalizaron y que desestabilizan perspectivas, con el fin de considerar cómo abogar por una continuidad que no destruya la pluralidad, no sostenga la excepcionalidad del ser humano para causar y resolver una crisis planetaria que, en regiones como el Gran Chaco, están asociadas al extractivismo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While developments in GIS technology and methodologies continue to add great value to archaeological research, they have often fallen somewhat out of step with theoretical developments elsewhere in the discipline. The result is a technology that focuses on the practically possible—new questions emerge as and when the technology allows. While more experimental approaches exist in some sub-disciplines, such as studies of the North American Southwest or contemporary archaeology, these are not regularly incorporated elsewhere. This paper explores the possibilities for GIS-based research to engage with current theoretical debates surrounding posthumanism, and particularly assemblage thinking. A case study focuses on the European prehistoric heathlands, arguing that limiting our investigations to traditional realms of GIS practice means that much of the detail that defines different types of landscape disappears from view. By taking inspiration from assemblage thinking, I explore the multiple species that make up heathlands and define how they were experienced and interacted with in the Early Bronze Age of Denmark. Thus, I argue that GIS and posthumanism have much to offer one another in archaeological practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY: There is a widening gap between the medical model of dementia and critical sociological perspectives of the condition. Given the relative failure of reductionism in dementia and its rising prevalence, consideration of the utility of these critical viewpoints is warranted. This article considers how these ideas, which challenge some prevailing assumptions about dementia, can be meaningfully applied in conjunction, rather than in competition, with conventional clinical ideas. To illustrate this, current perspectives on selfhood, biopolitics, citizenship and post-humanism are discussed. This article may also help to articulate sociologically oriented approaches already used by some clinicians and legitimise the time and attention needed to explore and deliver these. We support the view that dementia is an episteme in the making and that different traditions and dispositions can fruitfully collide to enliven interdisciplinary conversations about dementia and dementia care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who or what might be the illegitimate offspring of the "bad girl" as a figure for post-qualitative research? I consider the witch as a figure of posthuman efficacy and affective relationality, drawing on recent invocations of witchcraft and divination as theoretic practice. The witch might help post-qualitative methodology fulfil its own aspirations to get beyond language and the closures of coding by infusing method with divinatory practices. Examples of such practices in recent qualitative research studies are discussed. Divination does not seek to understand, but to transform from within, by sensing and redirecting the flows and intensities of that which is coming into existence. I also consider, more briefly, the witch's near relation, the crone—a figure that feels more befitting to my own age and status. As an anomaly in the networks that sustain human conviviality, the crone's uselessness might also have some disruptive force. I suggest that post-qualitative method might learn from the witch the arts of transformation and resistance, and from the crone the power of desistance and the passion of disinterest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This autotheoretical paper exploring a collaborative project we engaged in during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic (March–May 2020) is structured as two intertwined stories. The first, a series of autotheoretical vignettes, expresses our process of sense-making about affect as well as multiple affective productions that spurred learning, personal and relational growth, and becomings-otherwise. The second delves into posthuman methodology, autotheory, affect, and affirmative ethics. Together these highlight the ways that our collaborative work of attending to affect helped us enact an affirmative ethics by tapping into traumatic lived experiences of COVID-19, isolation, and academic work, and transforming them into knowledge-producing, connection-creating, hopeful encounters. These encounters gesture to ways that enacting affirmative ethics as a collaborative critical posthuman praxis can help us collectively thrive in neoliberal conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I start from a posthumanist understanding of subjectivity to stress how our ways of relating do not follow from previously formed intentions but emerge in assemblages. The fact that we hold certain theoretical ascriptions does not assure that we will relate in ways that are consistent with them. We might intend to embrace diffractive, decentring and performative perspectives, and effectively do so at a content level. However, we might unwittingly reproduce representational, dichotomous, centring and identitarian ways of relating to ourselves, others, our work and so on. These ways of relating are often unacknowledged. I offer my concept of performative meta-reflexivity to interrogate which ways of relating are implicitly operating and to think about what they are producing. I suggest that this practice can be helpful to become response-able for the ways of relating that we find ourselves engaged in and what they generate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on data collected from a secondary school in Florida to explore how temporally disjointed aesthetics (e.g. (re)photographs) impact constructions of historical knowledge. Using posthuman concepts (e.g. assemblage, rhizome, spacetimematter(ing), hauntology), this study relied on visual methodologies—specifically photo-elicitation—to attend to the question: How do engagements with (re)photographs contribute to the development secondary students' historical consciousness/thinking? Data consisted of artifacts reflecting engagements with three collections of (re)photographs featuring ghosts/hauntings and semi-structured focus group interviews. Rhizomatic assemblages re-presenting entanglements with what was produced during this study suggest that (re)photographs not only fostered historical consciousness/thinking by exposing the in-between/ness of temporality and materiality, but that (re)photography extends the boundaries historical consciousness/thinking through students' emerging relationships to the pastpresentfuture(ing). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper centres the colonial pre-histories of 'the digital' to complicate posthumanist theorisations of subjectivity. Posthumanism helpfully undercuts human exceptionalism by presenting subjectivity as always-already co-constituted by technology. However, this paper argues that it insufficiently engages the human as the historico-political effect of negating the assumed non-technological colonial Other. Focusing on liberal humanism between the 16th and 19th centuries, the paper theorises the modern human as bound up in 'technological onticide'. The presumed absence of technology became a (theo-centric, ratio-centric, bio-centric) measure of the Other's sub-humanity, at the same time as this Other was expected to be humanised through its technologisation. An emphasis on technological onticide complicates universalist theories of subjectivity that take it as always a matter of human-technology co-constitution. The paper argues that, to confront the legacies of ontological murder, conceptual room needs to be made for in human, counter human or un human theories of subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital technologies are receiving increased attention in outdoor and environmental education (OEE). Historically, debates on digital technology in these fields have tended to focus on how technology might hinder authentic relationships with the outdoors or how it might be used instrumentally to meet educational aims or support pedagogy. More recent postdigital perspectives understand digital technology as something that is deeply embedded, entangled, throughout society and by extension the daily life of OEE participants. The idea that we are entangled with technology is congruent with the emerging theories of new materialism; theories that are increasingly influencing OEE research and pedagogy. In this paper, we argue that new materialism is a useful way to conceptualise the entangled nature of digital technology in OEE. We show some ways we have tried to embrace technology as entangled in our OEE practice, drawing upon theoretical insights and practice-based examples from tertiary outdoor education contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arriving in the era of Second - or Liquid - Modernity, man succeeds in breaking the shackles of tradition, and relying on his own forces promotes the model of the free, self-sufficient man. The desire of man to evolve into a more gifted being in order to improve his conditions of life is not new, but inherent in mankind. Philosophy and religion tried to provide solutions to the ardent demand of improving human nature, each one from its own perspective. In the era of Late (Liquid) Modernity, man has managed to break the limitations of tradition and, based on his own resources, to promote the model of the free man who voluntarily determines his own destiny. In our time through the extremely rapid progress of Science and Technology, man redefines his identity as a human person and his overall relationship with God and the environment as well. The holistic transformation of the structure elements that formed the foundations of modernity is typical of the transition to a post-modern era that requires a new identity for man, that of the post-human. The posthuman is no longer an utopian vision but is sought through Transhumanism and interfaces. The question is whether mankind will preserve its identity as a “human person” with the characteristics of the being created by God or whether it will be transformed into a narcissistic, omnipotent and autonomous existence, separating mankind from its humanity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: This research focuses on the perception of residents and tourists from the tourist resorts in Prahova Valley, Romania, on human–bear interactions. As a foundation for an integrative analysis of the presence of bears in this space, we used questionnaires, interviews, mass media, and the local toponymy including bear-related names and souvenirs that embody the bear. Our results have highlighted the beginning of the coexistence between humans and bears and the seeds of a posthumanist vision. Our research focuses on a complex and integrative analysis of bear presence in four tourist resorts in Prahova Valley, Romania: Sinaia, Bușteni, Azuga and Predeal. Employing innovative mixed methods, including questionnaires, interviews, newspaper analysis, and consideration of the local toponymy, including bear-related names and souvenirs, we aim to highlight the extent to which a posthumanist attitude is evident in the region. The sustained appearance of bears is attributed to habitat invasion through deforestation, road construction, residential neighborhoods, and tourist infrastructure. Ambiguity arises from the presence of food sources and voluntary feeding both by locals and tourists. The mass media initially heightened fear and panic during the onset of human–bear interactions but later adopted a more tolerant tone regarding the bear's presence in tourist resorts, reflecting an openness to the posthumanist approach in Prahova Valley. That is why locals express fear and concern about bear encounters, advocating for a clear separation between animal and human spaces. Tourists exhibit attitudes ranging from unconscious appreciation to ambivalence, often contributing to the problem through practices such as feeding bears for fun. The use of bear-related names for tourist establishments is identified as anthropocentric, despite their appeal for attracting tourists. Souvenir sales, through increasing socio-economic value and contributing to tourist experiences, are also recognized as anthropocentric. However, souvenirs can provide elements of support for bear conservation efforts and the equal consideration of human and non-human entities. This study concludes that a successful adaptive coexistence requires a posthumanist vision, overcoming anthropocentrism in a landscape altered by human activities, supported by bear management programs in Bucegi Natural Park, and conservation efforts in Prahova Valley in a landscape altered by people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]