A Postdigital Revolt in Human/Posthuman Teacher Subject Entanglement

• In Event: 63.068 - Postdigital Science and Education

Abstract

Conceptualising the postdigital shifts notions of the subject beyond what can be taken for granted. In a time where ‘the digital revolution is over’ as Negroponte (1998) claims, this paper immerses itself in the messiness of the postdigital grand challenge (Jandrić, et al., 2018), from the perspective of teachers’ forming subjectivities. Postdigital conceptual shifts evoke notions of non-human constructions, human dependencies and desires, straddling both human-centric and posthuman paradigms. Drawing on explications of teacher Otherness, and the notion of the foreigner within, this paper inserts postdigital nuances into conceptual cracks identified in the messiness of human/posthuman conceptions of teachers’ self-Other subject formations and relationships. It follows Cramer’s (2015) suggestion that the ‘post’ in postdigital does not mean that the digital is over. Rather, that it muddies the waters, blurring the boundaries of what is and what was.
Conceptualisations of the postdigital as an ongoing process, a continuation of the digital, within the complexities of educational relationalities, are rethought through Julia Kristeva’s (1998) theory on subject formation, as the subject-in-process. Utilising the concept of revolt, as a “unique, uncompromising questioning” (Kristeva, 2014, p. 3) of pasts, presents and futures, the paper is a philosophical explication of potentialities, entangling the postdigital with Kristeva’s human-centric and a posthuman (Braidotti, 2013) perspective. Contrary to the claim by Jandrić, et al. (2018), that “the postdigital appears to adequately capture contemporary human existence” (p. 894), this paper suggests that neither contemporary human existence nor the postdigital itself, can be adequately captured, but that they are and remain, instead, in constant flux and transformation.

References
Braidotti, R. (2013). The posthuman. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Cramer, F. (2015). What is ‘post-digital’? In D.M. Berry & M. Dieter (Eds.), Postdigital aesthetics: Art, computation and design (pp. 12-26). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Jandrić, P., Knox, J., Besley, T., Ryberg, T., Suoranta, J., & Hayes, S. (2018). Postdigital science and education, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 50(10), 893-899. Doi: 10.1080/00131857.2018.1454000
Kristeva, J. (1977/1986). A new type of intellectual: The dissident. In T. Moi (Ed.), The Kristeva reader (pp. 292-300). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
Kristeva, J. (1998). The subject in process. In P. French (Ed.), The Tel Quel reader (pp. 133-178). London, UK: Routledge.
Kristeva, J. (2014). New forms of revolt. Paper presented at the The Kristeva Circle, Nashville, TN.
Negroponte, N. (1998). Beyond digital. Wired. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.12/negroponte.html

Author

• Sonja Arndt, University of Waikato