I'm Nebraskan Compost, Not Posthuman

• In Event: Response-able Pedagogies in Educational Research: Four Studies Using Posthuman Methodologies Across Contexts

Abstract

Objectives: In this paper, I take two moments of living theory that situate my theoretical work, Nebraskan Compost. Like Haraway (2016), I reject the term posthuman in favor of the term compost. Specifically, I am Nebraskan Compost. Nebraskan compost is an articulation of Haraway’s (2016) notion of compost that responds to how I have become-with the messmates of Nebraska living in thick co-presents that cross space and time and are situated within a complex historical, cultural, and political Nebraskan landscape. This theoretical framework consists of an ongoing “material semiotics [that] is always situated, someplace and not no place, entangled and worldly” (p. 4). To articulate Nebraskan compost, I draw on personal journals, photography, and literary analysis.

Theoretical Framework: The purpose of this paper is to articulate my theoretical framework, Nebraskan Compost. Following Haraway (2016), I reject the term posthumanism and argue for compost that recognizes the complex historical, political, and cultural milieus that situate my thinking. To do this work, I think with rhizomatic prairie grass that once dominated the plains of Nebraska. I argue for situated theoretical work that draws from personal background, novels, theories, land, animals, and so many others. As Nebraskan compost, I study the past that is being worked and reworked in the present and affirmatively working toward future becomings-with. Nebraskan compost is situated, historical, cultural, political, complex, and messy, just like the rhizomatic prairie grass roots that once dominated the plains of Nebraska.

Methods: Using thinking with theory (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012), I draw on Haraway’s (2016) call for multispecies ecojustice that embraces diverse human people to study settlerism in relationship to personal journals, photography and literature.

Data Sources: The data sources include personal journals, photography, literature, and Haraway’s (2016) text. The personal journals and photography were assembled during time spent with my father as we look with, become-with (Haraway, 2016), trees, ground cover, birds, animals, anything that captures our gaze in rural Nebraska. I analyze Willa Cather’s Nebraska series (Cather, 1989/1913; 1991/1915; 1995/1918) to think more about thick co-presents of becoming-with. In those books, Cather writes the main characters—Ántonia, Alexandra, and Thea—as each woman becoming-with the land, changing with the land and not apart from it.

Results: The results of this study articulate my iteration of Nebraskan Compost (See Theoretical Framework).

Significance: The significance of this work is three-fold. First, it provides an analysis into how a compost framework is developed. While Haraway’s (2016) rejections of posthumanism in favor of compost are brief (and arguably underdeveloped), this analysis provides how such a framework can be developed. Second, the work presented here offers that compost is a unique framework that results from the ongoing processes of becoming-with (Haraway, 2016). Such a framework cannot be replicated, but only developed with the processes of becoming-with. Third, the work responds to the critique of the idealized humanness of posthumanism (Puar, 2017) by offering the ways in which history, culture, settlerism, and politics figure into Nebraskan compost.

Author

• Susan Naomi Nordstrom, The University of Memphis