Osborn, Maia and Widdop Quinton, Helen ORCID: 0000-0002-1020-2672 (2022) Playing with Posthumanism with/in/as/for Communities: Generative, Messy, Uncomfortable Thought Experiments. In: Arts-Based Thought Experiments for a Posthuman Earth: A Touchstones Companion. Lasczik, A and Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, A, eds. Imagination and Praxis: Criticality and Creativity in Education and Educational Research,, 16 . Brill, Netherlands, pp. 121-137.

Abstract

Theorising to disrupt humancentric ways of knowing, doing and being is increasingly pursued in these eco-catastrophic times. Building on previous conceptualisations of human-non-human community learning, this chapter experiments with the practicalities of thinking and being with an entangled, beyond-human sense of community. The intention is to re-frame learning and being with/in/as/for all community. Posthuman concepts and perspectives are engaged with through multimodal, embodied, abstracted and layered thought experiments. By bringing ourselves as authors into purposeful, sensory, artful ‘conversation’ with the living and material co-dependents of our ecology, we experiment with ways of thinking and being in a world not centred on the human. Beyond-human physical and metaphorical experiences are entangled with body, self, other (human and non-human), concepts, place, space and time. These practices extend thinking, knowing, doing and being with/in/as/for community. Notably, these efforts unsettle our deeply held prejudices of being human that are difficult to detach from. These generative thought experiments reveal rich, embodied and creative ways of knowing and being, as well as provocations and tensions shared with the aim to spark beyond-human conversations with/in/as/for human-non-human socioecological learning communities.

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