Performing the Posthuman
Re-positioning ways in which we see children’s entangled realities with and in the world, this chapter places a posthuman lens on children’s lives and their affective relationships with human and non-human entities and things. Throughout the chapter, we p
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Performing the Posthuman
Abstract Re-positioning ways in which we see children’s entangled realities with and in the world, this chapter places a posthuman lens on children’s lives and their affective relationships with human and non-human entities and things. Throughout the chapter, we provoke the posthuman thinking which we have built up throughout the book by conceptualising how not only language, discourse and culture matter, but how matter itself matters. We rethink children’s performance of their lives as, and intra-relating with, beings and worlds, using scenarios and theorisations as illustrations of the shifts provoked throughout the book. Exploring various ways for moving beyond the discursive, beyond our linguistic thought, this chapter considers the question of whether or not language has been granted too much power. It offers ways of thinking of children and their childhoods that bypass the dominance of language, which continues to illustrate the strong reliance on social constructivist views. The chapter offers a posthuman performance of social, cultural, humanly inhabited and experienced community, built, natural and human reality, and world. Keywords Performing the posthuman · Affective relationships · Mattering of matter · Posthuman lens on children’s lives · Human and more than human
Introduction: Matters and Worlds This chapter re-positions ways in which we say Yes! to life (see Chap. 7), as it moves, acts and comes bursting forth, through children’s entangled realities with and in the world. It places a posthuman lens on children’s lives and their affective relationships with human and non-human entities and things. Barad (2003) claims that “language matters. Discourse matters. Culture matters. There is an important sense in which the only thing that does not seem to matter anymore is matter” (p. 801). In this chapter, we provoke this thinking by conceptualising how not only language, discourse and culture matter, but how matter itself matters. We rethink children’s performance of their lives as, and intra-relating with, beings and worlds. To do so, we ask Barad’s (2003) question:
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Malone et al., Theorising Posthuman Childhood Studies, Children: Global Posthumanist Perspectives and Materialist Theories, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8175-5_8
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8 Performing the Posthuman
How does one even go about inquiring after the material conditions that have led us to such a brute reversal of naturalist beliefs when materiality itself is always already figured within a linguistic domain as its condition of possibility (p. 801)?
In this chapter, we ask in what ways can we move beyond the discursive? How might we conceive of the materialities in life, if we figure them only through our linguistic thought? When we consider the question of whether or not language has been granted too much power, as Barad claims, we realise that this is not a new idea. Barad (2003) herself reminds us that German philosopher Nietzsche already warned in the 1800s again
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