Writing During and After the Holocaust: Posthuman Expressions of How Writing Moves

• In Event: 42.083 - Roundtable Session 17
  In Roundtable Session: 42.083-10 - From Posthuman Literacies to the Arts: Fictocriticism, Comics, Poetry, and Songwriting

Abstract

This paper develops posthuman theories relevant to literacy education. It uses fictocriticism to express affective dimensions of writing during and after the Holocaust. Specifically, it describes Janina Heshele’s experiences writing before and after surviving imprisonment at Janowska, a Nazi concentration camp, as a twelve-year-old girl. Narratives developed alongside Janina express singular moments when writing moved bodies to action, to record experience, and to attempt sensemaking from incomprehensible experiences. From relational theory developed through this inquiry, the paper address emerging tensions in education research: that researchers resist posthumanism because it feels somehow dehumanizing; and, that researchers only turn to materiality, ignoring the larger problems of ontology, relationality, and ethics that open the most profound potentials for posthumanism to advance the field.

Authors

• Christian Ehret, McGill University

• Daniella D'Amico, McGill University