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Thinking beyond the humanRubén Gaztambide-Fernández

a

a Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto,

ON, CanadaPublished online: 22 May 2015.

To cite this article: Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández (2015) Thinking beyond the human, CurriculumInquiry, 45:3, 245-248

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2015.1041242

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EDITORIAL

Thinking beyond the human

Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandez   *

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, ON, Canada

There are few concepts as central to the projects of curriculum inquiry than the figure of 

the human. Taken for granted in most articulations of curriculum, the figure of the human

has given the field its object of concern     curriculum is about the making of better 

humans. Rare, however, have been any attempts to rethink the very notion of the human,

not just in terms of how the human is imagined, but also in terms of its boundaries as well

as how the human comes to be constituted in relationship to other beings and to the mate-

rials that surround it. In recent years, however, some scholars are beginning to challenge

the taken-for-granted conception of the human that has shaped curriculum studies for 

more than a century. Drawing on a vast array of intellectual and cultural movements,

these scholars are raising critical questions about the colonial roots of how the human has

 been constituted, the material and discursive bases from which human experience

emerges, and the relational boundaries between species that make the human intelligible.

In different ways and by drawing on a range of conceptual tools, the articles in this

issues of   Curriculum Inquiry   (CI) provide different entry points that, in some way or 

another, challenge how we think about: human identification (de Freitas and Curinga);the exteriority of human thought processes (Roth and Maheux); and the role that non-

human agents, materials and institutions play in processes of curriculum making (Lynch

and Herbert) as well as how language and literacy evolve (Lawrence, with a commentary

from Brandt). Although not necessarily in such terms, the authors in this issue of  CI  level

conceptual tools that in some way or another invite us to think beyond the human.

Drawing on new materialist and post-humanist frameworks, authors Elizabeth de

Freitas and Matthew Curinga lead off the issue with their article “New Materialist

Approaches to the Study of Language and Identity: Assembling the Post-Human Sub-

 ject.” De Freitas and Curinga make a strong argument for the importance of moving

 beyond post-structuralist conceptualizations of identification that center on language-useas the focus of analysis. Drawing from the conceptual universe of Deleuze and Guattari

(1987), along with others who have expanded their work, the authors make the case for a

conceptualization of  language as material  in order to delve deeper into aspects of identifi-

cation that escape discursive analysis.

While de Freitas and Curinga do not reject the importance of language in processes of 

identification or the significance of discourse analysis for examining the relationship

 between social structure and human agency, they argue that a singular focus on discourse

cannot account of the materiality of human existence. More to the point, they argue not

only that  materials matter , but also that these matter in ways that challenge the very

notion of individuality that underwrites the dominant conception of the human and, as

*Email: r.gaztambide.fernandez@utoronto.ca

2015 the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Curriculum Inquiry, 2015

Vol. 45, No. 3, 245248, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2015.1041242

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such, of learning and teaching. Indeed, they propose that a notion of “post human sub-

 jectivity” is necessary in order to account for how discourse and matter interact in pro-

cesses of identification. Such a notion accounts for the instability of identification beyond 

the individual as well as the centrality of interactions between various bodies and matters

“as a bodily molecular expression” (p. 250). This is particularly important, they argue, if 

we are to develop strategies for examining the “micropolitical forces that are at work in

contemporary classrooms” (p. 263).

While de Freitas and Curinga propose a framework for bringing together conceptual

tools from post-structuralist analyses of identification through discourse and new materi-

alist approaches that account for aspects of the material beyond the discursive, the second 

article in this issue illustrates how such an analytic approach might look like in practice.

Wolff-Michael Roth and Jean-Francois Maheux propose a way of, in their own words,

“thinking the   movement   of thinking  …   by exhibiting thinking in movement without

reducing thinking or movement to something else” (p. 276). To examine what thinking in

movement reveals about movement in thinking, Roth and Maheux bring our attention to

elements of the thinking process that are well beyond discourse and that underscore the body as well as the materials used in the movement of thinking. The title of the article,

“The Stakes of Movement: A Dynamic Approach to Mathematical Thinking,” not only

suggests a different way of thinking about thinking beyond language, but also suggests

that there is much at stake in accounting for the physical manifestation of thinking

through the body’s movements and interactions with available materials.

In their meticulous analysis of the traces left behind by the chalk on the board, Roth

and Maheaux invite us to leave behind the notion that thinking is an internal process that

resides within the confines of an individual human brain. Through their careful account-

ing of the various physical moves and interactions between the body and the materials at

hand, the authors 

  in a sense 

 move our thinking as our thinking moves   through theimages and the words that encapsulate the particular instances under analysis. It is not

that Roth and Maheaux want to privilege materials or bodies over thought; rather, they

want to show how the movement of thought is intimately connected to the movement of 

 bodies in dialectical fashion.

From the micro-analysis of the chalk marks left by the movement of thinking, our 

third article in this issue brings attention to an unusual set of players who  perhaps unex-

 pectedly have a significant influence on how a particular curriculum scheme comes to

 be implemented in different science classrooms. In “Affirming Irregular Spaces in a

School-Wide Curriculum Initiative: A Place for the Animals,” Julianne Lynch and Sandra

Herbert comment on the complicated dynamics that shape curriculum making between

what is mandated and what is enacted. While mobilizing discourse analysis to shed light

on these dynamics, their focus is not so much on the curricular texts per se, but on how

interactions with and perceptions of animals shape    and what they reveal about     the

curriculum implementation process.

While most approaches to teacher practice and curriculum innovation center on

teacher knowledge, Lynch and Herbert draw our attention to how animals are positioned 

discursively in ways that illustrate unexpected dimensions of the implementation process.

Using de Certeau’s (1984) distinction between “strategy” and “tactic,” the authors show

how the views of curriculum experts and developers implemented “from above” are inter-

 preted and implemented by teachers “from the ground.” How the teachers talk about the

animals involved in this particular science curriculum reveals important aspects of the“everydayness of classroom innovation” and the “creation of irregular curriculum spaces”

(p. 301).

246   Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandez 

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Lynch and Herbert view curriculum innovation as “emergent     as a process of 

appropriation, translation and redeployment that speaks to the situations that arise in

classrooms when   new entities  are encountered” (p. 301, emphasis added). Such “new

entities” might include animals    as in the case of the science curriculum innovation

examined by Lynch and Herbert  or might refer to the usual materials of teaching and 

learning, such as chalk and board in the case of Roth and Maheux’s analysis. It might

also refer to larger institutions, like mass media or the family, suggesting that it is not

only human individuals     as conceptualized through humanist philosophy    that shape

learning and teaching.

The notion that humans are not the only beings involved in the teaching and learning

 process and that literacy is about more than an interaction between text and individual is

central to the concept of “sponsors of literacy” as developed by Deborah Brandt (2001).

Brandt sought to extend the socio-political analysis of literacy development to examine

how power dynamics shaped what kinds of resources and opportunities are made avail-

able to learners in ways that illustrate social and economic inequality. The concept of 

sponsors of literacy has been taken in various directions since Brandt first presented it, asAnn Lawrence examines in the fourth article in this issue, “Literacy Narratives as Spon-

sors of Literacy: Past Contributions and New Directions for Literacy-Sponsorship

Research.” Lawrence observes that in this evolution, the concept has lost some of its

 potential for shedding light on the complex political dynamics that shape not just literacy

skills but relationships to literacies and texts of various kinds. While Brandt was particu-

larly concerned with the economy of literacies and the material and institutional condi-

tions that in some way “sponsored” the development of literacies, Lawrence argues that

subsequent engagements with the concept by other scholars have tended to focus on the

human actors playing a role in literacy narratives.

After a careful examination of the methods as well as the analytic strategies developed  by scholars who have built on Brandt’s work, Lawrence outlines several new analytic

directions that, in her view, would capitalize on Brandt’s original intentions while taking

the notion of literacy sponsors in new directions. Focusing on the view of literacy spon-

sors as rhetorical figures, Lawrence also extends beyond the mainstream conceptualiza-

tion of human experiences and interactions with literacy to focus on the affective in

relationship to the discursive. To do this, Lawrence brings the concept of sponsors of lit-

eracy to bear on the research itself in a meta-analytic move that yields strong grounding

for recasting literacy sponsors including the research act itself  as a rhetorical figure

with affective force. By reframing literacy sponsors as rhetorical figures, Lawrence high-

lights how “the affective force of narrative rhetoric”: mediates access to literacy practi-

ces; reworks the context of narrative production as well as the narrated context; and co-

constitutes the very value of literacy-related experiences.

Following a long tradition of inviting dialogue among scholars in the pages of  CI , the

editors invited Deborah Brandt to provide commentary on Lawrence’s work. In her arti-

cle, “A Commentary on Literacy Narratives as Sponsors of Literacy,” Brandt acknowl-

edges her own impressions of how her work has been taken up over the years, largely

agreeing with Lawrence’s assessment. She underscores the material significance of liter-

acy experiences, observing the many ways in which “language is lifted out of the genera-

tive, material contexts in which it lives to be analyzed on its own” (p. 332). Like de

Freitas and Curinga in the first essay, Lawrence draws our attention back to the interac-

tion between bodies and the power dynamics that shape experience. While neither Brandtnor Lawrence situate their discussion within a new materialist (or post-humanist) frame-

work, their attention to the material conditions that shape interactions and literacy

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experience are remarkably close to the kind of analysis de Freitas and Curinga are sug-

gesting as well as the kind of analysis that Roth and Maheux carry out in their article.

The chalk and the board that enable Roth and Maheux to examine the movement of 

thinking are part and parcel of the thought process they are, in a sense, sponsors of liter-

acy, not just for the scientist at work, but also for both the authors and for us as readers.

This raises some important quandaries for anyone who takes on the challenging task of 

editing an academic journal like  Curriculum Inquiry.  As a “sponsor of literacy,” the Edi-

tor-in-Chief of  Curriculum Inquiry is not just an identification that the author of this arti-

cle takes on (or off) through various discursive mediations and interactions complicated 

 by power dynamics. It is also an institutional positioning that interacts materially and dis-

cursively through encounters (these days mostly digital) that surpass the individuals

involved: the authors, the readers, the editors and the various unstable subjectivities that

interact to produce a text like this academic journal and that in turn shape the (digital)

contexts within which they exist. But what would this all mean for yet another reconcep-

tualization of curriculum? With the human demoted to an epiphenomenon of material

interactions, what would remain at stake in the movement of thought? If there are nohuman subjects, what is left to “improve” outside of the interaction? Such questions

might suggest, to various extents, the end (although not the death) of curriculum.

ORCID

 Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandez    http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3291-2816

References

Brandt, D. (2001). Literacy in American lives. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life  (translated by S. Rendall). Berkeley, CA: Uni-versity of California Press.

Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapo-lis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

248   Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandez