Posthumanism, New Materialism, and Philosophy as a Method

• In Event: 34.061 - Putting Theory to Work: Social Justice, the New Materialisms, and Posthumanism

Abstract

Objectives

This paper discusses new empiricism in relation to philosophy as a method, as an ontological, epistemological, and ethical relationship with thought (Koro-Ljungberg et al., 2014). This method carries theories and thoughts into practices, questions each and every ontology, and up-roots established epistemologies. Philosophy as a method covers a vast territory of thinking and methods, and allows for our thinking through and with new empiricist orientations.

Theoretical Framework

As St. Pierre, Jackson & Mazzei (2016) argue, “the empirical and the material are so imbricated they must change together, and with those changes comes a rethinking of ontology, which considers the nature of being and the basic categories of existence (e.g., subject/object, essence/appearance, substance/quality, identity/difference) as well as the nature of human being” (p. 99). Philosophy as a method has diverse epistemological and ontological commitments, and they are not linear or compatible with each other. In this paper, I trace the histories of philosophy as a method, and question how this method can perhaps deterritorialize educational spaces as places of social justice. I work with the turn to new empiricist methodologies and methods, and how they can become an entrapment that desensitizes, if not paralyses, researchers. As Moses (2002) points out, “policy, methods, and practice in education presuppose philosophy and theory, though they often remain hidden” (p. 17). A recent special issue of the British Journal of Philosophy of Education was devoted to method in philosophy of education (Standish, 2009; Smith, 2009; Ruitenberg, 2009). According to the last of these authors, ‘Methods’ refers to “the various ways and modes in which philosophers of education think, read, write, speak and listen, that make their work systematic, purposeful and responsive to past and present philosophical and educational concerns and conversations” (Ruitenberg, 2009, p. 316).

Modes of Inquiry

Numerous classical examples demonstrate how philosophy was used as a method (for instance, Plato, Aristotle), however exciting contemporary developments reflect how qualitative inquiry has embraced philosophy as a method through post-qualitative methodologies (Lather, 2013; St Pierre, 2013). This paper ambitiously traces the histories of philosophy as method, and through a genealogical exercise it considers how ‘philosophy’ and ‘method’ are brought to work and play together with new empiricism’ in contemporary conceptualisations.

Scholarly Significance

Multiplicities and non-singular conceptualisations and performances exist of what it means to engage in philosophy as a method. New empiricism enriches and complicates these conceptualisations and urges a rethinking of method as an ethical encounter, with thought and matter alike.

Author

• Marek Tesar, The University of Auckland