The Vulnerable Animals That Therefore We Are : (Non-)Human Animals in D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love

Central to animal studies is the question of words and how they are used in relation to wordless beings such as non-human animals. This issue is addressed by the writer D.H. Lawrence, and the focus of this thesis is the linguistic vulnerability of humans and non-humans in his novel Women in Love, a subject that will be explored with the help of the philosopher Jacques Derrida’s text The Animal That Therefore I Am. The argument is that Women in Love illustrates the human subjection to and constitution in language, which both enables human thinking and restricts the human ability to think without words. This linguistic vulnerability causes a similar vulnerability in non-human animals in two ways. First, humans tend to imagine others, including non-verbal animals, through words, a medium they exist outside of and therefore cannot be defined through. Second, humans are often unperceptive of non-linguistic means of expression and they therefore do not discern what non-human animals may be trying to communicate to them, which often enables humans to justify abuse against non-humans. In addition, the novel shows how this shared but unequal vulnerability can sometimes be dissolved through the likewise shared but equal physical vulnerability of all animals if a human is able to imagine the experiences of a non-human animal through their shared embodiment rather than through human language. Hence the essay shows the importance of recognizing the limitations of language and of being aware of how the symbolizing effect of words influences the human treatment of its others.

‘The past was never simply there to begin with and the future is not simply what will unfold’ : a posthumanist performative approach to qualitative longitudinal research

Peer reviewed

‘The past was never simply there to begin with and the future is not simply what will unfold’ : a posthumanist performative approach to qualitative longitudinal research

Peer reviewed

‘The past was never simply there to begin with and the future is not simply what will unfold’ : a posthumanist performative approach to qualitative longitudinal research

Peer reviewed

Trials of the rhizomatic learner

How should educators respond to the whole phenomenon of ‘digital learning’? This question has been in vogue for the past twenty years or more and there is a need for a regular renewal of this question as societies change. This article will draw on some post-structuralist writing, particularly Deleuze and Guattari, to try to understand better the divide between the optimistic account and the pessimistic account of the effect of ICT on teaching and learning. It argues in particular 1) that ICT in its current form signals a paradigm shift in education—but this thesis is difficult either to prove or disprove; 2) that Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome provides us with a theoretical tool for understanding the pedagogical nature of this shift; 3) that this change is wider than literacy itself and announces posthuman elements in the socio-cultural environment of learning.

The invisible hand: transversal thinking with new materialism in curriculum design

This proposal invites participation in a design intensive, in which educators bring along an idea for a unit, seminar, lecture, lesson as the basis for a practical and creative workshop merging conceptual art, writing, poetry and curriculum planning, while engaging playfully with New Materialism. In this work we seek to move beyond merely interrogating designs for future subjects, and to embolden our thinking about curriculum, asking questions to explore how the pedagogical imagination works with both the material and immaterial, the corporeal and incorporeal, within ecologies continually transforming in the process of making. Through this, we explore ways to challenge “delivery”, or “conduit” metaphors of education, to see design as “situated” in new ways involving both human and nonhuman elements, resisting stasis, resisting closure. This workshop positions curriculum design in the realm of the artist/activist, rather than that of the bureaucrat/technician and opens up a space for reflection on the processes of making curriculum. The workshop also therefore seeks to question how knowledge around curriculum is produced, and to document the ways in which our work as educators is part of a continuous becoming, as we ourselves, and our designs, co-emerge. We remember that curriculum design is fundamentally a creative project, always taking form and transforming in relation to what surrounds us, rather residing in documents, which tend to conceal the entanglements around their making. Instead, we embody and live curriculum; it is happening now

The deep end: pedagogy and the public pool

Diving in to New Materialist theory, this paper explores what might be learnt at a public swimming pool. Writing, sitting, thinking and swimming, the learner enters new spaces and atmospheres, where learning emerges as unpredictable and involving a whole range of human and non human bodies. Public spaces, where we can think about causality and design without the strictures of school curriculum, may emerge as key sites for new understandings of learning where abiding humanist preoccupations can slip away. This presentation involves movement, touching, flesh, smelling, silicone, cotton and water. Be prepared to get changed!

Open me when you feel it's necessary

In this work, purportedly the introduction to a conference workshop, the humanist teacher figure is absent and therefore flattened into the material landscape of the auditorium, which remains open to transformation; the “stage” merely contains an envelope, lamp-lit on a plastic chair, for participants to open if they wish, playing with learner/audience expectations and disrupting conventional ideas of what a conference presentation should be. This work seeks to move beyond merely interrogating designs for future subjects to ask how the pedagogical imagination works with both the material and immaterial, with ecologies continually transforming in the process of making as the audience participates in the unfolding performance. Through this, I have sought to explore ways to challenge delivery or conduit metaphors for education, and to resist stasis and closure.

Whiteout: writing collaborative online poetry as inquiry

This article shares an experimental poem created by three poet-researchers using an online word processor to collaboratewithin a single document. We attempt to blur the line between creative and academic writing, focusing on the possibilities for writing as a method of inquiry and the opportunities for different perceptions of being that it suggests. Our project unfolds as we also produce a brief diffractive reading that does not mirror or deconstruct the poem, but thinks it in an alternative way, as a broader collaboration, or intra-action between entities, both human and non-human. We avoid determining how our purported individual voices merge to form any united voice. Rather, we are alert to agencies and flows that complicate understandings of us as three rational, discrete, fully formed human figures articulating coherent narratives. We therefore offer a response to theoretical calls to explore collaborative writing as inquiry, through sharing our practice.