Post-humanism and Educational Research ed. by Nathan Snaza, John Weaver (review)
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Nathan Snaza and John Weaver’s edited collection Posthumanism and Educational Research challenges educational researchers, educators, practitioners, and posthumanist philosophers—although I would argue all who inherit written word literacy—to dwell in possibilities of research and education beyond traditional methodological, theoretical, and disciplinary orientations of the modernist era. Weaver refers to posthumanism as “a new ground for thought” (p. 189); Snaza as “an intellectual assemblage connecting diverse expressions of political and affective engagement in rhizomatic ways” (p. xiii). Both editors build on earlier individual work examining possibilities of posthumanist turns in research (Snaza, 2010; 2013; Weaver, 2010), inviting voices, forces, inorganic material objects, intellectual and philosophical traditions, policy positions, and organic sentient beings into epistemological and ontological entanglement with the ‘disciplinary’ field of education and educational inquiry.
However, posthumanism challenges academic disciplinary structure, as do the chapters in Snaza and Weaver’s text. One overarching theme within the book centers on the aims and bounded definitions of education—in other words, what is education? How has it been defined? What are its aims? Who is it for? In struggling to answer these questions, each of the contributors challenges traditional notions of education as disciplinary humanist project, reduced to concern solely for the ‘human.’ In various ways, each contributor asks readers to question humanist assumptions embedded in current educational structures and approaches to research: the ‘subject,’ learning, thinking, linear causal relations, bounded educational spaces, [End Page 470] thinking as solely embodied human endeavor, and ‘knowing’ as the outcomes of ‘educational research’ or ‘inquiry.’ In many ways, this book should be read not as a series of prescriptive answers, but rather as provocations—fractals or rhizomes leading toward possibilities of educational inquiry and education in a posthumanist space/time. The authors invite us to seek not answers, but rather, to ask more questions.
Higher education scholars, researchers, and practitioners need to engage this text. The book’s contributors adequately challenge our continued adherence to objective, empirical, and increasingly rigid methodization in higher education research, largely influenced by the neoliberal assaults on higher education globally. Within the study of higher education, there are few scholars or researchers willing to engage with posthumanist philosophy or theorizing. Use of this text can open critically important discussions within our field, offering new language and possibilities for addressing transdisciplinary issues. In fact, the text aligns well with many concerns currently discussed in higher education: issues of access, the purpose of postsecondary education, subjectivity, technology, policy, governmental relations, and political participation. Importantly, the text asks us to question our ethical responsibility beyond the human—to organic sentient beings such as animals, as embedded participants intra-acting within ecosystems, and with inorganic objects—such as technological gadgetry, architecture, or geographic and virtual space.
The text is robust, offering multiple perspectives on educational history as humanist project, educational inquiry, pedagogical practice, and researcher affiliation with posthumanist inquiry. A shortcoming in the text is the exclusion of discussions related to organic systems often considered non-sentient (though this, too, could be challenged). For example, there is little overt discussion of plants or microbes—and what they may offer to discussions of education and inquiry in the posthuman space. While there are discussions of ecosystems, even these chapters harness environments as metaphor—undermining one of the central arguments of several book chapter authors—that environments and ecosystems should be considered posthuman spaces capable of defining themselves without human intervention.
Despite this minor shortcoming, the book offers a rich variety of questions and perspectives on posthumanism in education and educational inquiry. The book is divided into four parts. Part 1 situates the rise of posthumanism not as rejection of humanism, but rather as a critical ethical questioning of limitations imposed by humanist thought—particularly in relation to what has been termed education/educational research.
Nathan Snaza begins this discussion, taking up a genealogical inquiry on how education became a solely humanist project. Snaza traces shifting definitions of the human through...
