Elemental Writing: Toward Educational Inquiry as a Posthuman Media Ecology

• In Event: Writing Intensions in Post-Qualitative Educational Research

Abstract

Purpose: Starting from the premise that a writer is a “mode of intensity, [and] not a personal subject” (Deleuze, 1995, p. 98-99), this paper shows that “language [is] a site of multiple others” (Braidotti, 2014, p. 164). It draws attention to the “intense germinal influx” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983, p. 171) of posthuman ‘others’ - the elements of air, earth, water, and fire in historical and contemporary mediated scholarly writing practices. It engages with the concept of ‘intensity’ in two ways: a) by showing how writing, a seemingly intellectual activity, is an expression of elemental intensities, namely dense concentrated materials that enable the production of thought, and b) by arguing that the materialization of writing produces intensities (potentialities, affects, conceptual movements) which position the writer as a posthuman subject, breaking down the ontological divide between nature and culture. I extend environmental education by engaging with elements of ancient writing media (e.g., fire, water, soot, sand - Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick by the light of an oil lamp fire made from whale blubber) and contemporary media (e.g., water, air, electricity produced from elements - the water footprint of storing documents ‘in the cloud’ is immense). In demonstrating ‘elemental writing,’ the paper enacts an ecological ethic that highlights scholars’ (often environmentally and socially devastating) entanglement with the elements in the act of writing as an effort in environmental education.

Theoretical framework: The paper responds to MacLure’s (2013) call for recognition of the materiality of language and Edwards’ (2012) encouragement for education scholars to consider that thinking itself is “matter-ing practice” (p. 523). The paper draws on the philosophy of elemental media (McCormack, 2017; Peters, 2015), which considers elements as media, as well research on the geological materiality of media (Parikka, 2012, 2015). The paper additionally draws on literature specific to each of the classical elements are entangled in writing.

Modes of inquiry: This is a conceptual paper about writing practices in qualitative research. The mode of inquiry is transcorporeality (Alaimo, 2010) a feminist methodology for conceptually material crossings and transformations between non-human and human entities. Transcorporality “constitutes a rethinking of the very act of thinking that goes beyond the idea of reflexivity and interpretation” (Taguchi, 2012, p. 267), and moves towards registering the intensities of the elements.

Results and Significance: ‘Elemental writing’ (a) focuses on the elemental conditions of writing, and/or (b) takes the elements as a topic of writing. The implications of ‘elemental writing’ is in the way it enacts an ethical orientation that positions the ‘writer’ as a confluence of ecological/human media while becoming attuned to ecological devastation. By engaging with the elemental intensities that comprise writing as a practice of inquiry (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2000), the paper contributes to a new materialism focus in post-qualitative research (St. Pierre, 2011; Lenz-Taguchi, 2013; MacLure, 2013; Lather & St. Pierre, 2013). The paper specifically contributes to literature that focuses on the role of the environment in writing and research, such as ‘weather writing’ (Neimanis, 2014) and ‘writing local landscapes’ (Ulmer, 2017).

Author

• Marcelina Piotrowski, The University of British Columbia