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(Re)Thinking and (Re)Imagining Social(ing) With a More-Than-Human

Ontology Given the Limits of (Re)(Con)Straining Language

Article in Culture Studies &#x2194 Critical Methodologies · November 2018

DOI: 10.1177/1532708618807258

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(Re)Thinking and (Re)Imagining

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(Re)(Con)Straining Language

Candace R. Kuby1

Abstract
The aim of this manuscript is to (re)think and (re)imagine social as we work with(in) a more-than-human ontology so
something(s) different can be thought/done. Language is limiting, (re)(con)straining, and yet we are still bound to it especially
in academic publishing. However, I hope to at least open the conversation about social in a move toward overturning the
normalized ways we have conceptualized and used the term. I propose socialing, which animates the lively relations of
human, nonhuman, and more-than-humans producing socials. The article ends by discussing how and why it matters that
researchers (re)conceptualize the notion of social.

Keywords
posthuman, social, ethico-onto-epistemology, theory, literacy, more-than-human ontology, post qualitative inquiry

Elizabeth St. Pierre (2011)1 in her handbook chapter on
post qualitative research critiques conventional humanist
qualitative methodology and shares insights and difficul-
ties of the “coming after” (of qualitative research) for post-
researchers. She writes,
The difficulty for the poststructural researcher lies in trying to
function in the ruins of the structure after the theoretical move
that authorizes its foundations has been interrogated and its
limits breached so profoundly that its center no longer holds.
(p. 613)
St. Pierre and other post qualitative inquiry scholars (Koro-
Ljungberg & MacLure, 2013; Lather, 2015; Lather & St.
Pierre, 2013; St. Pierre & Jackson, 2014; St. Pierre, Jackson,
& Mazzei, 2016) are now wrestling with how to not work in
the ruins of qualitative research (St. Pierre & Pillows, 1999)
but rather how to refuse qualitative research methodologies
as we know them—for us to read, read, read theories and
philosophies—and begin inquiry, in the middle, with theo-
retical concepts (see Lenz Taguchi & St. Pierre, 2017; St.
Pierre, 2015).
Two quotes from St. Pierre called me to question the word
and definition of social, a term that inundates social science
research and has become normalized. Quote one: St. Pierre
(2011) reminds us “At the very moment, we are latched onto
descriptions that are producing us and the world, descriptions
that, over time, have become so transparent, natural, and real
that we’ve forgotten they’re fictions. We accept them as
truth” (p. 623). The words we use, their definitions, produce
us, the world, policies, pedagogies, and practices of inquiry.
We’ve used social for so long that perhaps we have forgotten
we made it up. Quote two: “We must refuse order-words that
enforce the present and, in this case, methodological order-
words like method, systematicity, transparency, representa-
tion, validity, objectivity, and so on. These words force us
into is” (St. Pierre, 2015, p. 85, emphasis in original). I add
social to this list. Social is an order-word and perhaps it is
time we refuse it or at least work at (re)imaging and (re)think-
ing what it means (and what it produces). How might a new
conceptualization of social change inquiry practices? Or per-
haps this word isn’t appropriate or needed anymore? Perhaps
we need to invent a(nother) neologism to better help us com-
municate social within a post qualitative inquiry world. It
seems neologisms are popping up a lot in post-scholarship
such as Karen Barad’s (2007) term intra-activity in response
to the human centered concept of interactions, Alexander and
Wyatt’s (2016) term in(tra)fusions instead of humanist inter-
viewing research practices, Murris’s (2016) writing of mind-
bodymatter as iii as a way to break away from the Cartesian
“I” (grayed in original), and Reinertsen’s (2016) concept of
1
University of Missouri, Columbia, USA
Corresponding Author:
Candace R. Kuby, University of Missouri, 303 Townsend Hall, Columbia,
MO 65211, USA.
Email: kubyc@missouri.edu
2 Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 00(0)
intra-observation. I think many of these scholars are doing
what St. Pierre (2011) invited us to do when she stated,
“Derrida also explained that deconstruction [in this case of
qualitative research practices] is more than working within
and against a structure. It is also the overturning and displace-
ment of a structure so that something(s) different can be
thought/done” (p. 613). As we know, language is limiting,
(re)(con)straining, and yet we are still bound to it especially
in academic publishing. However, I am hoping to at least
open the conversation on the concept of social in a move
toward overturning the naturalized ways we have conceptu-
alized and used the term (also see Kuby & Crawford, 2018).
Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines social first as an
adjective in these ways:
•• relating to or involving activities in which people
spend time talking to each other or doing enjoyable
things with each other
•• liking to be with and talk to people: happy to be with
people
•• of or relating to people or society in general
Embedded, later in the definition is a more explicit focus
on humans: “of or relating to human society, the interaction
of the individual and the group, or the welfare of human
beings as members of society.” And yet further down on the
list is this definition that accounts for animals and plants:
“tending to form cooperative and interdependent relation-
ships with others, living and breeding in more or less orga-
nized communities (i.e., social insects), of a plant: tending to
grow in groups or masses so as to form a pure stand” (all
definitions from http://www.merriam-webster.com/diction-
ary/social). However, the phrase interdependent relation-
ships and cooperative signals a different ontology than
Barad’s notion of intra-activity and other more-than-human
ontology scholars who view humans, nonhumans, and more-
than-humans in mutually constitutive relationships of the
world becoming. It is not simply about humans and other
bodies cooperating with each other (or even separately with
other like-organisms), but rather, that their entangled rela-
tionships produce the world. These more-than-human ontol-
ogy scholars perhaps would also not label insects as “less
organized communities” as this creates a hierarchical rela-
tionship between humans and nonhumans.
So how do we deconstruct, in a Derridian sense, social
and think of something altogether different, from a more-
than-human ontological perspective? I find inspiration in
(re)thinking social from St. Pierre (2011) who critiques social
science’s idea of culture as “a coherent set of people traveling
together in space and time,” a definition that she states is
unthinkable in post qualitative ways of inquiring (p. 619).
I’m also inspired by Deleuze and Guattari who demonstrated
how to question the notion of subjectivity as they put theoreti-
cal concepts to work with the idea of haecceity. “Haecceity .
. . . a nonsubjective assemblage of humans, time, space, phys-
ical objects, and everything else” (St. Pierre, 2011, p. 618).
St. Pierre takes up this idea of haecceity to think of subjectiv-
ity as a becoming—an entanglement.
These scholars as well as curriculum theorists inspire me
to (re)think social specifically in educational spaces. As
Snaza and colleagues (2014) write,
Consciously or not, we educators and educational researchers
are used to looking at schools as places where humans dwell
together to learn what it means to be human and to accumulate
the kinds of skills and habits required to participate in human
societies as adults. This occurs in spite of the fact that schools are
connected with the nonhuman world in so many explicit and
implicit ways . . . we are not the center of the universe. Indeed,
we should not be the center of conversation. (pp. 39, 40)
For me, (re)thinking of social is an ethical response-abil-
ity, especially as an educator. Meaning, I align with Donna
Haraway and Barad, who both write of our abilities to
response (i.e., response-ability) in the entanglements we
are a part of, to make agential cuts, which produce rela-
tions, realities, and ways of knowing/be(com)ing/doing.2
More-than-human ontologies are a (re)orientation to how
I understand the world coming to be, and therefore, I have
to (re)think pedagogies and relationships with/in theory
and inquiry (see Kuby & Gutshall Rucker, 2016 for dis-
cussion on the mutually constitutive relationships of
theory←→methodology ←→pedagogy). Therefore, stu-
dents and a teacher are very much a part of this article in
addition to the other bodies (human, nonhuman, more-
than-human, and discursive bodies3). However, drawing
on Deleuze and Guattari and St. Pierre’s writings as dis-
cussed in the previous paragraphs, I think of subjectivity
not as something a person possesses but as a relational
production in-between humans, nonhumans, and more-
than-humans. I don’t seek to rid my inquiries of humans,
but see them in relationship to/with other bodies espe-
cially in educational spaces.
In the same spirit, and inspired by Dolphijn and van der
Tuin’s (2012) writing on more-than-human ontologies dis-
cussed in new materialism scholarship, I don’t see more-
than-human ontologies as the next best thing in academia,
but rather an ethical response-ability:
The “new” in new materialism is not a term that accepts or
continues a classificatory historiography of (academic)
thinking that necessarily comes with a hierarchy or a kind of a
priori logic. New materialism affirms that such hierarchized
specializations creates “minds in a groove” whereas “there is
no groove of abstractions which is adequate for the
comprehension of human life” . . . New materialism does not
intend to add yet another specialized epistemology to the tree
of academic knowledge production . . . New materialism says
“yes, and” to all of these intellectual traditions, traversing them
Kuby
all, creating strings of thought that, in turn, create a remarkably
powerful and fresh “rhythm” in academia today. (p. 89,
emphasis in original)
A fresh rhythm. No grooves of abstraction. More than
human ontologies is not a new fad but rather a philosophical
orientation (which one might argue has actually been around
for a long time) in understanding how the world comes to
be, an ethical move. More-than-human ontology scholar-
ship has inspired me to read theoretical concepts with/
through/against taken-for-granted concepts, in this case,
social to see what newness might be produced. Similarly to
the scholars described earlier who deconstructed culture
and subjectivity, the aim of this manuscript is to (re)think
and (re)imagine social as we work with(in) a more-than-
human ontology so something(s) different can be thought/
done.
More-Than-Human Ontologies
The dominant focus of much social science scholarship is
on issues of epistemology, how we come to know, in my
case, educational research, which looks specifically at
teaching and learning from a logical empiricist viewpoint.
However, there is an ontological movement happening
around metaphysics, which focuses on reality(ies).
Particularly there is a movement to put to work (as inquiry)
theories and philosophies that focus on more-than-human
ontologies (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012; St. Pierre, 2011, 2013;
Snaza & Weaver, 2014; Taylor & Hughes, 2016). An
umbrella term for more-than-human ontology approaches is
posthumanism, which refuses to take the distinction
between human, nonhuman, and more-than-human for
granted. The “post” in posthumanism for most scholars is
not to signal “after the human” or “anti-human,” but as a
way to (re)think the human in relationships with nonhu-
mans and more-than-humans and to build upon and move
beyond anthropo- (human centered) and logocentric (lan-
guage centered) ways of be(com)ing, doing, and knowing
(Bennett, 2016; Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010).
This posthumanist movement is referred to by several
names, each with distinct yet overlapping features and histo-
ries, such as feminist materialism (Alaimo & Hekman, 2008;
Barad, 2007, 2008), new materialism (Braidotti, 2013;
Coole & Frost, 2010), neo-pragmatism (Rosiek, 2015),
political ecology (Bennett, 2010), and while not a new
movement, Indigenous ways of knowing and being (Tuck,
2015; Wall Kimmerer, 2013; this is not an exhaustive list,
see Taylor, 2016 for a longer list). Some scholars are even
re-entering Deleuze and Guattari’s writings, which might be
labeled as poststructural, in posthumanist ways (Kuby &
Gutshall Rucker, 2016; Leander & Boldt, 2013) although
others see this move as incompatible (Hein, 2016). In the
field of education, researchers of mathematics (De Freitas &
3
Sinclair, 2014) and most prominently early childhood edu-
cation (Davies, 2014; Holmes & Jones, 2016; Hultman &
Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Murris, 2016;
Pacini-Ketchabaw, Taylor, & Blaise, 2016; Sellers, 2013;
Somerville & Green, 2015; Thiel, 2015a, 2015b) are at the
forefront of this more-than-human ontology movement in
education.
These education scholars are thinking about how humans
and nonhumans (such as time, space, materials, animals,
plants, the environment) all intra-act or are entangled together
in producing realities, knowledges, and relationships. It is
within this movement that I situate my inquiry. This manu-
script comes from a larger inquiry project working with a
second-grade teacher, Tara Gutshall Rucker, in what she calls
Writers’ Studio (see Kuby, Gutshall, & Kirchhofer, 2015;
Kuby & Gutshall Rucker, 2015; Kuby & Gutshall Rucker,
2016). Writers’ Studio is a space within her curriculum where
students are be(com)ing writers with a range of art and digital
tools to create multimodal literacies (and new realities, ways
of being writers, knowing). Since 2010, we have co-
researched together, putting to work eight poststructural and
posthumanist concepts as methodology and pedagogy in her
classroom (see Kuby & Gutshall Rucker, 2016 for extensive
discussion of the eight concepts). We4 initially thought that
theory and methodology would have a mutually constitutive
relationship (hence a double arrow, theory←→methodology)
as Jackson and Mazzei’s (2012) book on “thinking with the-
ory” inspired us. However, through our inquiry we realized
theory←→methodology←→pedagogy are all mutually con-
stitute of each other (see Kuby & Gutshall Rucker, 2016).
This reminds us of what Barad (2007) and Lenz Taguchi
(2010) write of in relation to an ethico-onto-epistemology
or Lenz Taguchi’s writing on intra-active pedagogy. We
come to know (epistemology) through intra-dependent rela-
tionships (axiology) with the world and within material-dis-
cursive embodied realities (ontology). Therefore, it should
not be surprising that as we read theories and put them to
work with data, that differences were produced in Tara’s
teaching practices (i.e., her talk to students or even what she
didn’t say, her pedagogical beliefs, the materials available to
students in her classroom, how she conceptualized time dur-
ing the day, her relationship to school policies, and so forth).
Hence, our approach to posthumanist thinking is rooted in the
curriculum and pedagogy of humans within and a part of a
more-than-human world. Our aim is to not rid the human
from our inquiries (“post” as in after the human), but rather
inspired by Haraway’s (2016) call to use words that begin
with “re” rather than “post” (see chapter 6, p. 212, endnote
#2), we want to (re)consider and (re)think the human within
a posthumanist orientation to ­curriculum and pedagogy, spe-
cifically, in literacy education.
In our field, literacy is studied from an epistemological
perspective that focuses on knowledge production and does
not explicitly account for the ways of being (realities,
4 Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 00(0)
ontologies) and doing (relationships, axiologies). Therefore,
we conceptualized literacy desiring, building on Deleuzian
notions of desire, as an effort to stretch and push the literacy
education field in thinking of more-than-human ontologies
and new ways of knowing/be(com)ing/doing literacies. As
we (Kuby & Gutshall Rucker, 2015) wrote,
The literacy desiring we conceptualize is about the present
processes of producing—a force, a becoming, a coming
together of flows and intensities. Instead of focusing on what
desiring means we asked what was being produced or what was
becoming as children were in the process of creating. Our
intent with literacy desiring is to focus on the intra-actions of
people and materials, movements, and surprises while creating,
not necessarily a future, end product. (p. 315)
Putting this poststructural and posthumanist inspired
way of thinking about literacy helped us to (re)imagine
and (re)think social specifically in literacy teaching and
learning. Several years of thinking together generated
publications on (re)thinking what counts as writing and
literacy in Tara’s Writers’ Studio (see Kuby & Fontanella-
Nothom, 2018; Zapata, Kuby, & Thiel, 2018). Meaning,
post-theories caused us to (re)consider what is writing
and literacy when thinking-with post-concepts. For
example, what differences emerge, what new literacies
are produced, and what be(com)ing relations of new lit-
eracies do. However, our conversations shifted, or moved
beyond (re)thinking literacy to (re)thinking social.
Hence the focus of this manuscript.
An ethico-onto-epistemological stance claims that the-
ory and practice are not separate or binaries but are mutu-
ally constituted. So therefore, in this article, I use one
literacy desiring (i.e., silent puppet show) as an example
from teaching/learning/inquiring to illustrate how some of
Barad’s theoretical concepts shifted how we understand,
conceptualize, and theorize social in social science research.
Below, I share what we termed the silent puppet show—a
group of second-grade girls, stuffed animals, wooden stools,
construction paper, paper puppets, dry-erase whiteboards, a
cloth globe, time, spaces (physical and curricular), peers,
Tara, myself, plus discourses on school ways of doing lit-
eracy and the politics of schooling—producing new socials,
new ways of knowing/be(com)ing/doing literacy(ies)
through the processes and production of a puppet show. We
name this literacy desiring the “silent puppet show” as there
was very little talking in it yet social(s) were being pro-
duced. Our conceptualization of social focuses on what
could be, rather than what is—in our case, what literacies
and ways of being a writer could be in school, the making
and unmaking of differences. This is intimately tied to eth-
ics; an ethics of Tara (and myself) be(com)ing-with5 stu-
dents, materials, discourses, curriculum expectations
(and so forth) and our response-abilities (or abilities to
respond) in each moment. Through this example, I aim to
show how thinking with more-than-human ontologies
demands a shift in how researchers conceptualize social and
propose the c­oncept of socialing.6 St. Pierre (2008) invites
scholars to consider how we can both—produce different
knowledge and produce knowledge differently—when we
embrace ethico-onto-epistemological ways of knowing/
be(com)ing/doing. I invite readers to imagine what/how
socialing might be otherwise in their inquiries.
Thinking With Theories: Posthumanist
Concepts as/for Inquiry
My research with Tara rests on the assumption that theory is
method or concept as method (Lenz Taguchi & St. Pierre,
2017; St. Pierre, 2014). Jackson and Mazzei (2012) describe
this process as thinking with theory and argue for research to
be a process of plugging in data and theory together. As
stated before, in the larger study, we put to work data pro-
duced from Room 203, Tara’s classroom, with poststructural
and posthumanist concepts. This body of scholarship—
thinking with theory—is situated in a growing body of quali-
tative inquiry called “post qualitative inquiry,” which
problematizes the taken-for-granted norms and ways of
doing qualitative research (St. Pierre, 2011). The “post” here
refers to both a usage of post-foundational theories (i.e.,
poststructural, posthumanist, postmodern) and a chronologi-
cal marker of qualitative research after what St. Pierre calls
“conventional humanist qualitative methodology.” As dis-
cussed earlier, this movement focuses on ontologies, ways
of being, realities, not simply epistemology.
Posthumanist theories think of humans in relation to a
more-than-human world. In other words, a posthumanist
perspective refuses to take the distinction between human
and nonhuman for granted (Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010).
Barad (2007), a feminist-physicist-philosopher states, “by
posthumanist I mean to signal the crucial ­recognition that
nonhumans play an important role in n­ aturalcultural prac-
tices, including everyday social ­practices, scientific prac-
tices, and practices that do not include humans” (p. 32). As
part of shifting the ­ anthropocentric gaze, posthumanist
scholarship also aims to shift from logocentric (language
centered) ways of knowing and being (Barad, 2008).
Dominant perspectives of socially constructed notions of
teaching and learning involve humans (i.e., language); how-
ever, nonhuman and more-than-human bodies and forces are
involved in producing literacy(ies) but have not been privi-
leged in research and/or pedagogy. What would it mean (and
what would it produce) for researchers to consider both
human (language and bodies) and nonhuman (materials,
time, space, plants, animals, technologies, discourses) as
Kuby
mutually constitutive agents in teaching and learning (in
producing social[s])?
For the purpose of this manuscript, I focus on a few post-
humanist concepts, inspired by Barad’s (2003, 2007, 2013)
scholarship:
•• enacted agency, a view of agency as a force emerging
between bodies—human, nonhuman, more-than-
human, discursive—not residing solely in individuals
•• intra-activity, is the ontological inseparability of
enacted agencies; humans, nonhumans, more-than-
humans, discourses, and so forth intra-act together in
producing knowing/being
•• entanglement, the wholeness produced when parts
are together creating newness (the physical proxim-
ity of parts isn’t necessary for an entanglement to
occur); the wholeness is not identifiable by the parts
or individual components, but as a new whole
•• material-discursive, the material (all bodies) and
the discursive (that which limits and enables lan-
guage) are mutually implicated in intra-activity
•• agential cut, in contrast to the Cartesian cut of sub-
ject and object, agential cuts are relata-within-phe-
nomena, which emerge through specific
intra-actions
Drawing on Jackson and Mazzei’s (2012) notion of ana-
lytical questions, for this manuscript, I took each of these
concepts and created analytical questions while working with
data. Analytical questions emerged in the process of analysis
(i.e., thinking with theories) not before working/thinking
with data. For example, I wondered with theory/data:
•• How is enacted agency between humans, nonhu-
mans, and more-than-humans producing new ways
of conceptualizing social?
•• How are entanglements (within the silent puppet
show) working to create new relationships? New
literacies?
•• How are agential cuts made by/between students,
Tara, nonhuman bodies, and discourses creating new
socials?
•• How do the intra-actions of the silent puppet show
shift our understandings of social?
•• How does a focus on what could be (rather than what
is) help us to (re)imagine social?
•• How does a focus on the processes that form the
forces of entanglements help us to (re)imagine
social?
•• How are socials made and unmade through
intra-actions?
I aim to not only think with theories but also write with
theories. Posthumanist concepts change the way Tara and I
produce data, write field notes, produce transcripts, and
5
(re)present research on paper (see Kuby, 2017a). Given the
limits of language, I experiment, in a Deleuzian sense, with
bold words (to illuminate theory/data as mutually consti-
tuted), various fonts, hyphens, slashes, clock icons (1 clock
 = 1 second), and margins in an attempt for readers to
experience the posthumanist concepts I am thinking and
writing with in this piece and the rhizomatic, intra-actions
of Room 203. Hyphens and slashes that join more than one
word are theoretically intentional to show an entanglement
or togetherness of concepts and/or bodies. For example,
the phrase “children working-with puppets” demonstrates
that the whole of puppeting cannot be separated as children
and puppet, but rather a relational, material-discursive
coming to be, a wholeness. This type of play-full writing is
inspired from Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) writing as
well as educators such as Sellers (2013) who experiment
with language and formats of writing.
Below, I use three different fonts to illustrate the follow-
ing: talk and human actions; materials, time, and
space; and what was produced or entangled in
the intra-action (i.e., thinking with theo-
ries). However, I recognize that by attempting to (re)pres-
ent intra-actions with these fonts that decisions (agential
cuts as Barad discusses) were made—such as deciding if an
intra-action should use a font for “human” or “nonhu-
man”—which matter in producing how one experiences the
(re)presentation. Alphabetic writing is restrictive and linear
even with attempts to (re)present the silent puppet show in
a more posthumanist “transcript” (hence, (re)(con)straining
language). Given the (re)(con)straints, I found this way of
(re)presenting more helpful in (attempting to) (re)experi-
encing the intra-actions compared to conventional humanist
transcripts. My hope is the (re)presentations feel messy,
uncertain, and intra-active, without one “right” way to read/
experience it. The “transcript” below isn’t the representa-
tion but a (incomplete, always partial) (re)presentation.
To harken back to a point made at the beginning of the
article, our work is situated in schools, inspired by curricu-
lum and child studies scholars (e.g., Blaise, Hamm, & Iorio,
2017; Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Pacini-Ketchabaw, Kind, &
Kocher, 2016; Snaza et al., 2014), who call us to think about
teaching and learning in a more than human world(s).
Snaza, Sonu, Truman, and Zaliwska (2016) write that edu-
cational spaces are “thrown togetherness, a mess of rela-
tions, pedagogical encounters full of angles [which] (does
not mean that all relations exert influence equally)” (p.
xxiii). In other words, different relations within the silent
puppet show exert different forces at different times/spaces.
At moments, I foreground the togetherness of Tara and/or
students and at times foreground other material-discursive
bodies. The purpose is to show the fluid, relational coming
to be of (a more than human) social within the silent puppet
show. As the researcher and writer of this piece, I made
cuts, agential cuts. For example, as I chose words and
6 Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 00(0)

placements of those words on paper. My hope is that the
literacy desiring and thinking-with theoretical concepts dis-
cussed will help us to (re)conceptualize a philosophical ori-
entation to/of social, educational spaces with/in humans,
nonhumans, and more-than-humans.
Producing Social(s) in Writers’ Studio:
Puppeting as an Example of Socialing
In March, Elza, Hailey, Bethany, and Raisa (all student
names pseudonyms) asked Tara if they could perform a
puppet show. The was the first time a group of children in
this class wrote a puppet show, practiced, and asked to per-
form. The example shared below happened as their second-
grade peers (7-to-8-year-olds) stood around their desks
waiting patiently as Elza turns to Hailey, Bethany, and Raisa
who are crouched behind a row of stools positioned as a
puppet show booth. Tara says, “This group has been work-
ing on a puppet show and Elza is going to give you direc-
tions on what to do.” Elza informs the class that when they
come to the floor area in front of the puppet booth, that two
people should choose one stuffed animal to share, which are
in a pile on the floor. The two people with the stuffed animal
should sit next to each other in rows. Once everyone is
seated they will start taking tickets. Tara asks for clarifica-
tion, “So you are partnered up and one of the partners has a
stuffed animal?” The four girls, all standing now answer,
“No, you share the stuffed animals.” They explain that it is
like buddy reading time when you share a book; here you
share a stuffed animal. A student asks Elza and the girls if
they get to choose their partners or if they will be assigned.
Elza responds that they get to choose. The room becomes
abuzz with students picking partners and stuffed animals
and finding spots on the floor.

Stuffed animals—in students’ hands—jostle up and down.

Excitement. Noise. Activity.
Material-discursive relations produce newness: Children, Tara,
stuffed animals, tickets, and discourses on puppet shows and literacy
in school.
Elza and Bethany talk with Bianca.
Hands-stack-of-paper-from-floor-by-easel.
Elza facing Tara but loud enough for the entire class to hear states:
Bethany is going to give out comment papers.
A mess of papers. Hailey-works-with-papers (and papers-work-with-Hailey) to straighten them.
Bethany looks at Tara who is conversing with Elza.
Bethany, squats down under the easel and
retrieves a stack of 20 or more pencils.
Uncertainty?
Tara perhaps wasn’t aware
of the plan to hand out comment papers.
Bethany picking up pencils and passing out comment papers, an agential
cut, produced an unexpected moment for Tara, however, she didn’t
say anything but waited to see what was unfolding.
Hailey with a stack of papers held high in each hand
yells above the movement and noise:
We’re going to pass out a comment sheet!
Stuffed animals-peers’ bodies-hugs-laughter-finding seats on floor.
Bethany now standing towards her peers:
We are going to pass out a comment sheet so
if you want to write a comment to us you can.
Be(com)ing teacher, doing school.
Discourses of how to be a teacher in schools intra-act with the girls,
comment sheets, pencils, and other bodies.
Papers/Hands move from Hailey/Comment Papers to peers.
Pencils/Hands move from Bethany/Pencils to peers.
Elza jumps up and down and motions for
Raisa to sit down behind the puppet booth.
Questions. A comment?
Some peers unsure.
Kuby 7

Lexie: What are we going to write on?

Hailey and Bethany: You can write comments about our play.
Lexie: I know but what, how, our pencils will poke through?
Unexpected. Not planned for.
Pencils and papers were prepared ahead of time but
not a hard surface for peers to
write on during the puppet show.
The materiality of writing: The future task of writing a
comment and needing a hard surface
(experiences from the past) is a part of the present.
Spacetimemattering.
A (new social) moment of experiences, memories, papers,
pencils, lack of hard surface, teacherly directions,
and yet-to-come responses to puppet show.
Hailey/Hands passing out papers says:
We’ll give you [small dry erase] whiteboards.
Bethany/Hands passing out pencils says:
Elza will give you whiteboards.
Elza goes to the tub of whiteboards and begins to pass them out.
Time:

 (60 seconds)
Bodies: students-whiteboards-pencils-papers-talk-movement-excitement.
Tara sits to the side, she
still hasn’t said anything to organize,
direct the movement in the classroom.
Elza: Does everybody have a whiteboard?
Several students yell out: NO! We don’t.
Hailey: Did everyone get a paper?
Bethany: Did anyone not get a pencil?
Raisa from behind the puppet booth waves
her hands to Bethany and Hailey to indicate who still needs supplies.
Bodies of three girls circle their
peers-paper-pencils-whiteboards-and move from body to body.
When Bethany realizes she has passed a pencil out
to everyone she does a little jig of excitement.
Elza walks to the front of the room after passing
out all the whiteboards and looks to Tara.
Material-discursive: Expectations after giving directions and being
teacher do not match the position of bodies in front of Elza. She had
hoped for particular ways that stuffed animals/peers would be
configured on the carpet.
Elza talks using her hands to signal directions of bodies:
Kind of what we meant is like everybody gets in a
line in front of the chair (chair is position front center,
facing the class as the ticket booth).
Elza responds by issuing more directions to clarify,
this insistence by Elza is rejected by her peers
who seem to just want to get on with the puppet show.
Agential cuts enable and restrain
(make and unmake socials) at the same time.
Bethany and Hailey: It’s OK, it doesn’t matter.
Change of plans.
New direction.
8 Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 00(0)

The material-discursive entanglements produce an (unexpected) social.

A difference in what could (is) be(ing).
All papers, pencils, and whiteboards are passed out.
Bethany: OK, if you want you can leave your things
right where you are and then line up so you can . . .
Hailey: . . . give Elza your tickets.
Elza crouches down behind the chair.
Elza’s hands-poke-through-chair-becomes-a ticket booth.
Bethany: OK, just line up and give us your tickets.
Noise. Excitement from peers.
Material-discursive:
Movement of bodies (both physical and discursive
ideas of what a puppet show is) coming to turn
in the puppet show tickets that
Hailey, Elza, Bethany, and Raisa
made and distributed earlier.
A “quantumness” in the entanglement, experiences beyond this
classroom, peers knew how to turn in tickets
and “the way” to attend a puppet show.
Tara: Elza and Bethany you have
about seven minutes for the entire show.
Material-discursive: Tara realizes how time,
pressures to move on to the next item in the day’s plan,
intra-act with the unexpected moments unfolding
between/among students and the stuff animal buddies,
comment sheets, pencils, and tickets.
Social(s) continue to be produced.
Time: Restricts.
Bethany pauses, her face shows
the realization that time is running out.
Time intra-acts with Bethany (and her expectations
for this puppet show) and seems to produce a sadness.
Bethany: Yeah, yeah, I know.
Time intra-acts with Hailey.
Hailey’s body deflates a little, thinking about the restrictions of time.
Spacetimemattering: Time—past, present, and future—are
all intra-acting together.
The girls are thinking of the past and all the rehearsals.
In the moment, things are taking longer and they had to adjust to
unexpected questions from peers.
And they are thinking of seven minutes,
will they have time for the puppet show
and to receive comments from peers?
Time:

 (60 seconds)
Classroom phone rings.
Additional noise.
Tara gets up to answer the phone.
Students continue to give tickets to the girls at the ticket booth/chair.
Elza, Bethany, Hailey, and Raisa crouch behind the stools/puppet booth.
Kuby 9

In these intra-actions of bodies (whiteboard, pencils,

papers, people, stuffed animals, spaces on the floor to sit,
chair as ticket booth as well as discourses on being teacher,
attending puppet shows, and doing literacy in school) all
produced a new reality in Room 203—a new social—a new
way of knowing/be(com)ing/doing literacy. These more-
than-human moments signaled to peers that a puppet show
was under way and produced Room 203 as a theater. A pup-
pet show could have taken place even if the teacher simply
asked students to sit down and watch, but by Tara remaining
quiet for the most part, students/peers/materials/time/space/
discourses entangled together to produce understandings
Figure 1. Silent puppet show puppeteer booth.
and ways of being in the room for this emerging puppet
show. The processes, the forces of a social(s). Unexpected
moments when humans and nonhumans intra-acted (e.g., socials then). However, it was only in the material-discur-
Lexie’s question) created spaces for the girls to rethink their sive entanglements of the moment of the puppet show per-
vision or plan such as needing whiteboards as a hard surface formance that these (the ones described earlier) (new)
to write comments on about the puppet show. social(s) were produced. In each intra-action of bodies,
The girls used stools with whiteboards propped up to discourses (human and nonhuman) socials were made
hide behind (Figure 1). A blue spiral paper chain (perhaps (and unmade), and (all) bodies responded to each other
the sky) hung between a bookcase and an easel above the (agential cuts) in various ways, sometimes unexpected,
constructed puppeteer booth. On top of the stools were which enabled and constrained ways of doing/be(com)ing
pieces of green construction paper, a tree standing verti- puppet show together.
cally that the girls had constructed out of brown and green Elza stands up with a cloth globe in her hands. The other
paper. All of these art materials, furniture, and stuffed ani- three girls are hidden between the stools/puppet booth.
mal puppets were materials the children had practiced Students are seated in partnerships on the floor, playing with
with before the day of the performance (which produced stuffed animals, but ready for the puppet show to begin.

Elza: Please be quiet. Don’t play with your stuffed animals. Don’t fight.
Student voices: SSSHHH!
Elza: OK, here is Africa (pointing on a globe) where giraffes and most of the other characters in our scene live.
We are just going to get started.
Bethany: We really hope you like our play.
Elza/hands motions for the three girls to stand up.
Elza: In our scene it is me (pointing to herself), Elza, Bethany, Hailey, and Raisa.
The girls settle in behind the stools/puppet booth
and put puppets on their hands.
Girls be(com)e puppets:
Elza becomes Gray Mouse
Hailey becomes Brown Monkey
Bethany becomes Lily’s Purple Plastic Purse Mouse
Hailey becomes Black and White Cow
Bethany becomes Tan Lion
Raisa becomes Green and Orange Butterfly
Elza becomes Stuffed Animal Giraffe
Gray Mouse scurries across the green grass.
Brown Monkey is lying face down on the grass by the tree (perhaps eating the grass).
Lily’s Purple Plastic Purse Mouse stands up moving her feet.
The girls look down, turn script papers over on the floor,
and Hailey takes Brown Monkey puppet off
and exchanges it for a Black and White Cow
with a red collar and cow bell.
10 Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 00(0)

Black and White Cow bounces up and down on the

green grass (perhaps eating the grass) and
Gray Mouse and Lily Mouse bounce up and down.
Elza still with Gray Mouse on her fingers turns to the audience and says:
And you can start writing comments along the way.
Perhaps the lack of writing by peers or the desire
to have many comment cards prompted Elza
to remind peers to write notes
as the puppet show was unfolding.
Or perhaps experiences or memories outside
of the classroom entangled with Elza’s
expectations of how the comment cards
should be functioning in this moment.
Lily’s Purple Plastic Purse Mouse keeps moving around.
On Bethany’s other hand/Tan Lion enters, roaring, bounces up and down.
Hailey exchanges Black and White Cow for
Brown Monkey—once again lying face down
on the grass by the tree.
Green and Orange Butterfly fly over the animals, flapping wings.
Brown Monkey exits the scene.
Gray Mouse exits the scene.
Lily’s Purple Plastic Purse Mouse and Tan Lion are left on the grass with Green and Orange Butterfly flying
overhead.
The students are quiet, attentively watching.
What is this producing?
Can the students follow the story line?
What is the story line?
Tara is quiet, attentively watching.
What is this producing for Tara?
Is this what she anticipated?
Socials are be(com)ing in the material-discursive intra-actions.
Socialing.
Stuffed Animal Giraffe enters the scene.
Green and Orange Butterfly flies overhead.
Lily’s Purple Plastic Purse Mouse and Tan Lion exit the scene.
Stuffed Animal Giraffe stands tall reaching up to the Green and Orange Butterfly.
Green and Orange Butterfly exits the scene.
Stuffed Animal Giraffe’s mouth taps the tree and taps the grass (perhaps eating them?).
Stuffed Animal Giraffe exits the scene.
The four girls whisper behind the stools/puppet booth.
Students and the Tara are still quiet.
Is the puppet show over?
Unsure.
New socials, new relationships, new experiences.
Time: (10 seconds)
Hailey stands up, but Elza motions for her to sit back down.
Girls put puppets on their hands again.
Some audience members/students begin to write on their paper/whiteboards.
Other students are still sitting quietly, watching.
Elza/Gray Mouse, Hailey/Brown Monkey, Bethany/Tan Lion, Bethany/Lily Mouse, and Raisa/Green and
Orange Butterfly stand on or hover over the green grass and say loudly: Aaaawwwwhhh!
Elza: ’Cause they had eaten all the grass. The giraffe.
Kuby 11

Girls pull the puppets off their hands.

Bethany starts to clap.
Elza grabs a white sheet of paper off the
easel with words written in pencil on it.
Elza shows the words on the paper to the class.
Hailey standing up says: Go ahead, say it!
The students and Tara say: Yea!!!
Elza/Paper with shouts of “Yea” produce closure.
Produces approval.
Finality.
The puppet show is over.
New relations of girls-puppets-furniture-comment cards-peers produce
new socials (and new literacies).
Elza: OK, if you liked our scene . . . if you didn’t write a comment . . .
Bethany: That is OK.
Elza: If you are still writing one, that is OK. Just drop them off here (pointing to the floor in front of her) when
you are done.
Peers, heads down, are writing on their papers/whiteboards.
The four girls are standing, moving out from behind the stools/puppet booth.
Teacherly discourses of giving directions.
Bethany: I’ll collect your comments.
Hailey: And, I will help.
Hailey and Elza walk in between the rows of students,
looking down at what they are writing.
Bethany stands in front waiting for someone to bring her a paper.
Raisa fixes the scenery that was jostled when the girls stood up.
Hailey decides to collect the pencils.
Bethany states she’ll collect the comment sheets with Elza.
The girls instruct their peers to hold up their papers when done.
Hailey gives Raisa a plastic tub to collect the white boards.
Time:

 (70 seconds)
Movement.
Noise.
Student and stuff animals come into being together through play.
Phenomena emerge to produce difference (socials).
Raisa is still collecting whiteboards.
Bethany, Hailey, and Elza stand in a line in front of their peers with the collected
pencils and comment papers in hand.
Elza: OK, that’s it.
Bethany starts to talk but there is too much noise.
Elza is reading comments on the papers.
Hailey: Can you guys pay attention?
Bethany: Are there any questions about our play?
Hailey: Questions?
Elza’s eager interest to find out what peers’
wrote on comment cards entangle with
Hailey and Bethany’s desire to hear feedback.
Teacherly ways of being/doing school.
Asking for feedback after sharing was a practice
that happened often in Room 203.
Tara: Hold on.
I know some people wrote them on the papers.
12 Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 00(0)

I wonder if you can take some time to review

the comments as a group and then if you have questions
or you want to ask for comments to do that.
Does that make sense?
Agential cut: Perhaps nervous or afraid of what
peers might write on cards, Tara wants time
for the puppet group
to review comments first, then respond.
Elza nods her head yes and puts the
comment sheets down on the chair/ticket booth.

This mostly silent, short puppet show could be labeled as
a flop, unsuccessful, and perhaps a waste of time as we (and
the students in the audience) weren’t sure what had hap-
pened. We couldn’t hear a story line and didn’t understand
what the purpose was of the moving puppets/girls’ hands.
As researchers, we might not have chosen to inquire into/
with these data as one might label it unsuccessful. However,
we believe this skit produced newness—new social(s)—in
the class. It opened up space to consider what could be, in
this case literacies, in Room 203. The material-discursive
intra-actions, what was physically evident in Room 203 and
aspects we couldn’t see or know but still were a part of the
silent puppet show coming to be, were productive, even if
we couldn’t “see” it at first. We also believe the silent pup-
pet show is an example of how social, within a more-than-
human ontology stance, is (re)thought as humans and
nonhumans coming into being together or producing new
relationships and territories of being. The phenomenon of
the silent puppet show did not pre-exist the relations of it
coming to be. The nonhuman parts—puppets, stools/booth,
time, small space behind puppet booth and discourses on
attending puppet shows, being a teacher—all entangled
with the humans to produce the puppet show. Socialing.
The nonhuman bodies, the animacy and agency of them
with people, were just as important (if not more) as the
humans in creating newness. A posthumanist notion of
agency is about the in-between-ness or togetherness of
humans and nonhumans (see Kuby, Gutshall Rucker, &
Darolia, 2017; Barad, 2007), agency doesn’t reside on a
human nor a nonhuman but is produced as the relations
come into being. The togetherness, the wholeness that was
the puppet show was fundamentally different in nature than
the pieces (i.e., each student, stuffed animals, Tara, paper,
pencils, and so forth). This speaks to the wholeness of entan-
glements—what seemed physically present (materials, peo-
ple) but also bodies (that do) not (seem) physically present
and discourses, which (re)constrain what is and isn’t possi-
ble in the moment. Or said another way, socials get made/
unmade and produce difference through material-discursive
relations. All of these pieces, close in physical proximity and
not, make the whole and aren’t recognizable as separate enti-
ties, but a part of whole (the entanglement).
While we (Candace and Tara) weren’t sure how to
respond in the moment (we were literally speechless),
Tara did ask the class to give a “thank you clap” to the
girls for performing a puppet show, which sent a message
that puppet shows are acceptable ways of being a writer
and sharing in Writers’ Studio. This agential cut, her abil-
ity to respond in the moment, was an ethical move perhaps
in hopes of acknowledging the new socials produced, and
even though unsure of what just happened, welcomed a
new social and ways of knowing/be(com)ing/doing litera-
cies. It also demonstrated that it was okay for literacy proj-
ects to flop so to speak, as these girls and other students
continued to try-out plays and puppet shows and used each
other’s shows as mentor texts. Over time, puppet shows
became more sophisticated, and the actors became more
aware of audience.
This literacy desiring, a silent skit of humans and nonhu-
mans, was agentic in the new socials it produced. New ter-
ritories of literacies came to be. In other words, these new
relations created a space for other students/materials to cre-
ate puppet shows in Room 203. New socials were produced
(and not just on this day but on days to come) from this
20-minutes of Writers’ Studio. However, we wondered did
the girls assume the materials (e.g., puppet booth, stuffed
animals) would work-with their audience in the same way
the materials worked-with them when they practiced? The
girls didn’t seem to think they weren’t prepared and well-
rehearsed for the performance. However, the show didn’t
seem to go as they planned. A new social was created (per-
haps unexpected to the girls), when all the parts (human and
nonhuman material-discursive bodies) came together in this
moment. Socialing.
While the (human) audience might be considered unim-
portant to this inquiry, we found the silence of the audience
an integral piece of this whole. If the peers were whisper-
ing, not paying attention, or making statements that they
couldn’t follow the storyline, it would have produced a dif-
ferent social. Perhaps the girls/puppets would not have felt
as confident and successful. Perhaps they would not have
finished the puppet show. Also, students dutifully wrote
comments on the paper when instructed instead of not writ-
ing responses. So, the silence, the respectfulness (and/or
Kuby
confusion), the writing of comments, was integral in the
social(s) that was being produced between all the bodies.
Moments such as the silent puppet show demonstrated to
us that students thought beyond a passive audience, as tra-
ditionally described in writing pedagogy literature (i.e.,
reading a text aloud to peers for compliments, suggestions,
and questions). Instead, these girls created in order for peo-
ple to become-with their artifacts (e.g., puppet show tickets,
comment sheets) and to experience (for pleasure) the pro-
duction (of a new social). They had spent days creating/
planning a puppet show for others to experience—or better
said to intra-actively become-with their puppet show (to
become a part of the material-discursive becoming of the
puppet show). Even for the puppet show’s audience mem-
bers, the girls desired to have feedback from peers and over
time used these responses to enhance other shows. So, while
in the moment we (Candace and Tara) weren’t sure of the
purpose, if there was one, or what the girls/materials had
hoped to accomplish with this puppet show, it was only over
time through thinking with theoretical concepts that we
came to see the importance of this puppet show. The puppet
show was important as a springboard for others to consider
playwriting as a valued literacy in Writers’ Studio and it
demonstrated that Room 203 was a space to take risks pub-
lically. The processes and relationships of this puppet show
produced new socials for Room 203 and new ways of
knowing/be(com)ing/doing literacies. Social was not
(solely) about humans interacting with each other but rather
the human and nonhuman entanglements.
We also learned, it was pivotal for us to embrace the unex-
pected moments. Tara could have not given the children time
in class to perform the show and insist that it had to be pol-
ished and match her adult ways of understanding puppet
shows. In other words, assume the performance should mimic
or replicate the rehearsals or assume that the more you prac-
tice the more you can control the performance. This stance
doesn’t align with Barad’s notion of performativity, that phe-
nomena do not pre-exist relations. No matter how much chil-
dren/materials practiced (and not to say they shouldn’t), we
can’t predict or control what will happen in the (new) mate-
rial-discursive relationships of the puppet show. Tara knew
that new ways of knowing/be(com)ing/doing (socials) would
happen in the processes, not necessary as an end product.
She also knew that learning wasn’t going to just happen for
the girls in the puppet show, but all students would learn
about literacy(ies) in the new socials (realities) produced
(these were ethical response-abilities of/by Tara). Social,
not solely humans doing something to nonhumans (collab-
orative, mediated), but rather a philosophical shift in how
we conceptualize social. Social not as an intentional move
or collaboration, a pre-determined future directed by
humans, but an unfolding of (newness, difference) all
(material-discursive) bodies in the moment. Students were
13
intentional (and so was Tara in asking them to do so) to
practice, gather materials, and orchestrate this literacy “les-
son.” However, it wasn’t until the silent puppet show skit
came into being, the process of lively relations—the whole
entanglement—that the social(s) of the silent puppet show
was produced. Socialing.
(Re)Imagining and (Re)Thinking Social
From a More-Than-Human Ontology
Stance
“Doing posthumanist research in education is a challenge
. . . Posthumanist research practices in education engage a
radical critique of some of the fundamental assumptions
underpinning these dominant ways of doing educational
research” (Taylor, 2016, p. 5). This is exactly what we felt
as we tried to read, read, read and engage in putting to work
posthumanist ideas in research. It is hard. Especially when
engaging in educational spaces, such as classrooms, that
appear to be (for too long) human focused. And, especially
when trying to radically question, or put under erasure in a
Derridian sense, something so fundamental as humanist
notions of social and think of something altogether differ-
ent. While in no way do we believe we’ve figured this all
out, this manuscript is an attempt to open (and add to) con-
versations that pause our thinking and call into question our
fundamental understandings in social science research—the
concept of social.
First, as social science research has taken a material
turn, it is critical that we consider how post-concepts from
more-than-human ontologies alter the way we conceptual-
ize social. (Re)conceptualizing social is significant
because it produces “a shock to thought” as Massumi
(2002) writes, in how we think about social coming to be.
This more than human social is not about humans collabo-
rating with or mediating other bodies. Collaborative or
mediated perspectives are predicated on a Cartesian divide
of subject/object. Instead, Barad invites us to consider an
ethico-onto-epistemological stance that bodies do not pre-
exist but rather come into being through/in relationships.
Socialing.
Second, a recasting of ontology, epistemology, and axi-
ology requires a shift to focus on the grammars of animacy
(Wall Kimmerer, 2013) and/or agential realist grammars
(Barad, 2007; Lenz Taguchi, 2010) of humans, nonhumans,
more-than-humans, and therefore consider how we might
need to change definitions of key concepts in our fields. For
example, Wall Kimmerer (2013), a botanist and enrolled
member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, discusses the
grammar of animacy when thinking about language and
grammar—how scientists label and put to work language in
comparison to how the language of Potawatomi discusses
plants, animals, and humans. She writes,
14
A bay is a noun only if water is dead. When bay is a noun, it is
defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained
by the word. But the verb wiikwegamaa—to be a bay—releases
the water from bondage and lets it live. (p. 55, emphasis in
original)
The language we use and/or assign to intra-actions in the
world (bay water and the lively mattering in/around/through
it) produces how we think about and know the bay (i.e., our
relations with the bay). The way we define “social” in sci-
ence social research produces how we think/know/do social
science research. Wall Kimmerer goes on to explain a point
that relates to our work as “social” science researchers,
Our toddlers speak of plants and animals as if they were people,
extending to them self and intention and compassion—until we
teach them not to. We quickly retrain them and make them
forget. When we tell them that the tree is not a who, but an it,
we make that maple an object; we put a barrier between us,
absolving ourselves of moral responsibility and opening the
door to exploitation. Saying it makes a living land into “natural
resources.” If a maple is an it, we can take up the chain saw. If
a maple is a her, we think twice . . . A language teacher I know
explained that grammar is just the way we chart relationships
in language. Maybe it also reflects our relationships with each
other. Maybe a grammar of animacy could lead us to whole
new ways of living in the world, other species a sovereign
people, a world with a democracy of species, not a tyranny of
one—with moral responsibility to water and wolves, and with
a legal system that recognizes the standing of other species. It’s
all in the pronouns. (pp. 57 & 58, emphasis in original)
The words and grammars we use matter in producing how we
conceptualize social science research. What barriers have we
created as researchers through words and grammars? What is
our ethical response-ability in changing these barriers which
could lead us to whole new ways of be(com)ing/doing/know-
ing (and the world we are entangled with producing as we
research)? As adults—as “social science researchers”—per-
haps we can learn from the Potawatomi peoples and toddlers.
How have our definitions of “things” and “people” and the
grammars we use to think/write/talk about their be(com)ing
relationships produce limiting possibilities?
For us (Tara and myself), by attending to the animacy of
materials with humans, we had to (re)think not only social
but also what literacy is or what counts as literacy (see Kuby
& Gutshall Rucker, 2016, pp. 188-191 for further d­ iscussion
and Kuby & Fontanella-Nothom, 2018; Kuby, Spector, &
Thiel, 2019; Zapata, Kuby, & Thiel, 2018).7 Literacy for the
silent puppet show group was about ­engaging-with human
peers and nonhumans in the entire puppet show experience—
from tickets, to buddy stuffed animals, to sitting with a friend
during the show, to c­ omment papers to offer feedback—the
puppet show was more than the puppet show. It was puppet-
ing (a doing, an ethico-onto-epistemological experience). It
Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 00(0)
was a social, an intra-action of time, space, nonhumans,
peers, discourses, Tara, and myself. It wasn’t solely limited to
alphabetic writing by an individual. It was a puppeting; a
lively entangled doing(s) with materials-discourses. Our
notions of writing, a fundamental concept in literacy educa-
tion, had to be called into question. What are concepts and
definitions in your own areas of study that might need to be
called into question when working within a posthumanist
paradigm?
Third, a more-than-human ontology stance encourages
(perhaps demands) researchers to (re)think how we go
about inquiring (Kuby, 2017a). As Taylor’s quote above
urges, we have to (re)think how we define and do research.
Scholars are beginning to write and question inquiry prac-
tices as discussed in the opening section of this manuscript.
The material turn articulated by posthumanist theorists
moves beyond (and builds on) the linguistic turn of research
that focuses on anthropocentric and logocentric interactions
and instead embraces materials as active agents (Hultman
& Lenz Taguchi, 2010). This changes the way we research.
How do we (re)present intra-activity or the entangled-new-
ness-togetherness in print and/or alphabetically? What do
field notes look like when understanding social from a post-
humanist paradigm (and even, what is the “field”)? How do
we write transcripts (do we let go of this altogether, if so,
what if anything replaces it)? I attempted to use various
fonts, bolded words, and different margins alignments;
however, in an article, this is still read linearly, and it is still
a representation through language. How might images,
three-dimensional figures, and/or videos better help to
(re)present the ways social(s) comes into being (and how
will journals accommodate this)? How do interview ques-
tions change when working within a posthumanist para-
digm (would we interview humans at all)? These are all
questions we wrestle with as we attempted to put into prac-
tice, to truly live-out as teachers/researchers, more-than-
human ontology concepts.
Taylor (2016) writes,
Posthumanist research is an enactment of knowing-in-being
that emerges in the event of doing research itself. In opening
new means to integrate thinking and doing, it offers an
invitation to come as you are and to experiment, invent and
create both with what is (already) at hand and by bringing that
which might (or might not) be useful, because you don’t yet
know, into the orbit of research. (p. 18, emphasis in original)
For us, we began with what was at hand—trying to
(re)present classroom relationships on paper to not only
publish and communicate with other scholars but also as a
way to analyze, process, inquire, and think about the know-
ing/be(com)ing/doing of/in Writers’ Studio—we began
with the idea of a transcript and tried to think of how to do
Kuby
transcript in a posthumanist way. We knew it might be use-
ful (or perhaps not); however, we had to give it a try. And
when we did, it transformed our analyses (such as turning
off the sound of the video to focus on materials, move-
ments, and nonhumans), our thinking of relationships, and
ways of (re)presenting on paper. We hope the “transcript”
felt like an intra-transcript. We agree with Taylor (2016)
that “you can’t simply mix and stir posthumanism into a
research design” (p. 18). It isn’t an add on, but a new way
of thinking about inquiry and about (re)presenting (which
at this point we can’t let go of in the world of academia).
Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, at the heart of
this work is the ethics, justice, and response-ability from (a)
more-than-human ontological perspectives, especially in
(re)thinking social. As Taylor and Hughes (2016) write in
their book’s introduction, the central aim of the book is a
concern with ethics—accountabilities to human, more than
human, and other than human actors. Ethics becomes an
ethics of mutual relation with nonhumans. When we define
social from a more-than-human ontological perspective, we
have to also (re)think ethics, justice, and response-ability
(see Barad in Dolphijn & van der Tuin, 2012). Tara has to
(re)consider ethics and response-ability to/with children
and materials in her classroom (and larger material-
discursive relationships). What is a response-able literacy
pedagogy of mutual relation with all bodies (materials-
discourses)? How does this ethics and justice shift not only
pedagogy but also our research projects? Who are we
response-able to/for/with? For us, we realized our response-
ability was not only to the girls in the puppet show but also
to the materials they worked-with, their peers, and how
spacetimemattering (see Barad, 2013) came into being in
Room 203. It was also our response-ability to give the
students curricular spaces to produce new ways of
be(com)ing/doing/knowing literacies (e.g., puppeting) even
if it was a fissure to current Writers’ Studio practices and
ways of defining what counts as “school literacy” or “writ-
ing.” Puppeting, this new social, opened up difference, new
processes, territories, and relationships.
Even within a movement, the material turn (and all the
promise and excitement it brings), we have to remember or
caution as Jones and Hoskins (2016) state that “we have to
add, parenthetically for the moment, in case we forget, we
are all speaking here in a language that contains and deter-
mines what we can think and say” (p. 85). So even if we
theoretically understand posthumanist theories, we are
speaking an academic language with publishing practices
that are already material-discursive in producing certain cri-
tiques, grammars, and ways of knowing/be(com)ing/doing/
writing/(re)presenting/inquiry. Jones and Hoskins (2016) also
say, “it seems we must reach towards something that exceeds
language: an attitude, a sympathy, a feeling, an openness”
15
(p. 83, emphasis in original). So while we acknowledge the
shortcomings of trying to (re)imagine and (re)think social in
this article, given the various (re)constraints we are working-
with, we believe as inquirers we must each reach/stretch
toward something that exceeds language, an attitude.
Jones and Hoskins (2016) also write that when working
within/against Western ontologies, it becomes necessary to
create a new vocabulary and to trouble the familiar language of
empiricist or interpretivist social science in order to open up a
space where objects can express their vitality and agency—or,
at least, where humans can experience their (“objects”) vitality.
(pp. 85-86)
This quote, along with Jane Bennett’s (2010) notion of
vibrant matter, helps us think about how objects have
forces, flows, and ways of producing the world with oth-
ers—a togetherness, a with-ness of humans, nonhumans,
more-than-humans. So while we haven’t completely
shaken or gotten rid of the word social, we are arguing for
a different attitude toward humans and nonhumans in pro-
ducing social realities (ways of knowing/be(com)ing/
doing). Perhaps like puppeting, we could think of social as
socialing—knowing/be(com)ing/doing-with as a way to
animate the grammars and theoretical thinking about
social. We hope we’ve demonstrated the vitality of (all)
“objects” as we (re)conceptualized social (socialing) in
Room 203’s Writers’ Studio through the silent puppet show
(puppeting). Taylor (2016) invites us all to the challenge:
“Putting posthuman theory to work is both exciting and
daunting. Posthumanism invites us (humans) to undo the
current ways of doing—and then imagine, invent and do
the doing differently” (p. 6, emphasis in original). Imagine,
invent, and do differently. What might it produce for social
science research if we (you) (re)imagine and (re)think
social (socialing) even with(in) working the limits of
(re)(con)straining language? What is (y)our ethical
response-ability to do so?
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Tara Gutshall Rucker for opening your classroom to me
(Candace) since 2010. The collaborative partnership as teachers/
researchers has challenged us to both stretch and grow not only
pedagogically as literacy educators but also as researchers. Thanks
also to Dr. Shonna Crawford for your contributions to analysis
over the past few years around the silent puppet show. Thank you
both for your insights on various drafts of this manuscript.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
16
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
1. I draw primarily on the scholarship of Elizabeth St. Pierre
when discussing post qualitative inquiry as she conceptual-
ized and coined that term (St. Pierre, 2011). While I have read
others who build on her scholarship as cited in the opening
paragraph and throughout the manuscript, I sought to read
closely her body of scholarship as a starting point to under-
stand this phrase and its doings in the field of qualitative
research. My interest is not to move beyond St. Pierre, but
rather sit-with her writing as I also read others’ views on post
qualitative inquiry.
2. I write know/be(com)e/do together in this way to demonstrate
that in a relational ontology, these cannot be separated; knowing,
being, becoming, and doing are co-constituted (Barad, 2007).
3. See Barad (2003, 2007) for writing on material-discursive.
4. I use “our” and “we” throughout the manuscript to signify
and honor the collaborative teacher/researcher partnership
with Tara Gutshall Rucker. We have spent countless hours
reading, thinking, writing, analyzing, teaching, and concep-
tualizing literacy desiring. Even though I am solo authoring
this manuscript, the thinking was collaborative with Tara. She
has spent time analyzing with me the data in this manuscript
and read numerous drafts, offering feedback. “We” refers to
the collaborative researching/teaching/writing partnership
between Tara and myself.
5. I am inspired by Haraway’s (2016) writing on becoming-
with. She writes “ontologically heterogeneous partners
become who and what they are in relational material-semiotic
worlding. Natures, cultures, subjects, and objects do not pre-
exist their intertwined worldings” (p. 12, 13).
6. I do not propose socialing as a way to close off or “define”
social in a new way as all words can become normalized and
close off thinking. Rather, socialing might be a useful tool or
concept to (re)think social within a posthumanist philosophy
in an effort to (re)conceptualize the lively relations coming to
be of humans, nonhumans, and more-than-humans. Deleuze
and Guattari (1991/1994) state that concepts are not ready-
made, waiting for us. Smith (2012) writes of Deleuze and
Guattari’s notion of a concept, “concepts do not have an iden-
tity but only a becoming” (pp. 122-123, emphasis in original).
Therefore, I did not seek to define social(ing). As Colebrook
(2002) writes, philosophical “concepts are not labels or
names that we attach to things; they [concepts] produce an
orientation or a direction of thinking” (p. 15). My hope is that
socialing produces a new orientation and direction of think-
ing for social science researchers.
7. I acknowledge the large field of literacy scholars who dis-
cuss social from a socio-cultural theory and/or New Literacy
Studies perspective (as these have been instrumental in my
researching/teaching). However, these are both rooted in the
philosophical tradition of a Cartesian divide (subject and
object). I’ve written elsewhere about how these perspectives
are paradigmatically different than more-than-human ontolo-
gies (see Kuby & Gutshall Rucker, 2016; Kuby, 2017a, b). I
Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 00(0)
was first inspired to consider these theoretical differences by
Lenz Taguchi’s (2010) book in which she offers a thorough
discussion on how constructivism and constructionism differ
from more-than-human ontologies.
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Author Biography
Candace R. Kuby is the director of Qualitative Inquiry and an
­associate professor in the Department of Learning, Teaching, and
Curriculum at the University of Missouri. Her research interests are:
1) ethico-onto-epistemologies of literacy desiring(s) when children
work with materials to create texts and 2) approaches to qualitative
inquiry drawing upon poststructural and posthumanist theories.