Ontology and Becoming: The Challenge of New Theory to Educational Research and Practice

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

One of Foucault’s enduring legacies is to set up new ways to think about ontology, and how this ontology relates to becoming. By questioning normative and historical assumptions in discourses, power-relations and inquiry, Foucault’s writing directly relates to contemporary educational research and practice, but needs to be updated given movements in new theory. In the contemporary situation, the Anthropocene, global migrations, and the divisive politics of one world capitalism, represent a convergent situation, in which educational theory and research presents an increasingly vital fulcrum to understand. This symposium will critically interrogate Foucault’s legacy via the new materialisms and post humanism for a way forward to understand ontology and becoming in education.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Foucault and Education

Chair

• David R Cole, Western Sydney University

Papers

• Foucault's Ontology for Inquiry After the Human Sciences - Elizabeth A. St. Pierre, University of Georgia

• Philosophy as a "Method" and/or the Ethics of Relational Ontologies - Marek Tesar, The University of Auckland; Mirka E. Koro-Ljungberg, Arizona State University

• Sensing Bodies Ecologically: Theorizing Onto-Epistemological Entanglements With/in an Emerging Theory of Ecological Posthumanism - Karen Malone, University of Western Sydney

• A "Vitalist-Nihilism"? The Action of Joining Bergson With Nietzsche Through Deleuze for the Contemporary Educational Moment - David R Cole, Western Sydney University

• A Study of the Philosophical Basis of Thought and Its Implications for Education From the Viewpoint of Bhaskar's Critical Realism - Mehri Mirzaeirafe, The University of Texas - Dallas

Discussant

• Sam Sellar, The University of Queensland