Paradoxical Potentialities: Doing Knowledge, Impact, Engagement, and Activism Differently in the Posthumanist-Humanist University

• In Event: Writing Together-Apart: Navigating the Post-Qualitative, New Materialist, and Critical Posthumanist Research Across Disciplines

Abstract

Purposes & Perspectives
This presentation focuses on the entangled relations of posthumanism and humanism in the contemporary university and how these create paradoxical potentialities for doing knowledge, impact, public engagement and activism differently. Paradoxical potentialities arise in a context in which a ‘humanist worldview is historically embedded in the Western European university’ (Author 2, 2021) but yet at the same time we recognize that ‘we are already in the middle of the posthuman condition, its forces already entangled in the humanist fibre of our lives and thinking’ (Author 1, 2016). Conceptualizing the university as a confluence space of/for posthumanism and humanism entangles us as knowledge producers at personal, political and professional dimensions, given the university’s avowed historical ethos as an institution on the side of justice but which has reproduced colonialism though its educational formation of elite, privileged ‘ideal humans’ (Author 1, Author 2). This paper focuses on doing knowledge, impact, engagement and activism differently, to shape the posthumanist-humanist university to different, more ethically affirmative ends.

Modes of Inquiry & Data
As two academics with posthumanist affiliations, we struggle within-against the performative neoliberal regime of the contemporary university machine. We try to align our practices with our posthuman sense-ings and sense/abilities; and work to contest our complicity in individualizing measurements and metrics (e.g. citation rates, grant capture and student evaluation assessments) which insistently and violently divide us. Like other papers in the symposium, we activate a posthumanist new materialist and post-qualitative theoretical framing, and enfold this with methodological and pedagogical considerations. We discuss the paradoxical potentialities of the posthumanist-humanist university though three questions:
· How do posthumanist, materialist and postqualitative approaches recast what/how knowledge matters?
· How do these approaches re-think research impact?
· What implications does this have for scholar-activism?

We use data from a number of funded and unfunded projects to explore how our posthuman positionalities rub up against political-critical allegiances in uncomfortable ways while at the same time offering unforeseen moments of disruption. Such posthuman splinters open spaces for risk, play and social justice. We share insights from the data which, through the creation of posthuman spaces/ moments that are relational, co-creative, and collaborative, illuminate fractures in the increasingly fragile façade of university business-as-usual.

Insights & Scholarly Significance
We frame five propositions for how knowledge matters in for posthumanist, feminist materialist and post-qualitative approaches. We discuss ways of producing knowledge, impact, engagement and activism in spirals not straight lines, and through partnerships, collaborations and proliferations not individual academic heroics. These modes of knowledge-ing challenge dominant ideas about what knowledge is and who has access to it. We expand focus to include the disregarded margins, activists, young people and people living with dementia. We suggest that posthuman ethics requires a more capacious university that promotes the flourishing of all. This is more urgent than ever in the light of climate chaos and right-wing nationalism. It calls for a reframing of scholar-activism which traverses theory and practice.

Authors

• Carol A. Taylor, The University of Bath

• Jocey Quinn, University of Plymouth