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Posthumanism in Practice Posthumanism in Practice Series editors: Matt Hayler (University of Birmingham, UK), Danielle Sands (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK) and Christine Daigle (Brock University, Canada) Ways of thinking allied with “posthumanism” have received increasing interest across a number of disciplines, predominantly in philosophy and the humanities, but also in biology, law and ethics, and art theory and creative practice. Indeed, we contend that the field’s potential implications extend to the majority of academic disciplines. Focusing on emerging trends, cutting-edge research and current debates, Posthumanism in Practice presents work in and across multiple disciplines that investigates how posthumanism can effect change. The questions that posthumanism raises, of what it means to be human, the nature of our relationship with the world, our relative importance, our obligations, entanglements, potentials and limitations, speak to every aspect of life. This series will address questions such as: What are the implications and entailed effects of the revelations of contemporary science and philosophy? Can our laws, societies, and egos hold up to our becoming less special? What can we do, and how might thinking differently enable us to act differently? Works in this series will pose these kinds of questions and offer practical answers, suggestions and provocations. The aim is to inspire work that isn’t occurring often or loudly enough, and to promote a wide variety of voices which are left outside of the arenas where they might be most usefully and importantly heard. Disciplinary conversations also often remain siloed, but posthumanism is inherently an interdisciplinary concern; the field questions (but doesn’t necessarily reject) the usefulness and stability of existing disciplinary boundaries. As such, this series will prioritize works which bring insights across those boundaries and which demonstrate the real-world potential and/or risks of posthumanist ideas. Editorial Board: Megen de Bruin-Molé (University of Southampton, UK) Emily Jones (University of Essex, UK) Yoriko Otomo (Director of Global Research Network) Pedro Oliveira (Independent Researcher) Rick Dolphijn (Utrecht University, Netherlands) Isabel Galleymore (University of Birmingham, UK) Craig N. Cipolla (Tufts University, USA) Stefan Herbrechter (Heidelberg University, Germany) Simone Bignall (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia) Olga Cielemęcka (University of Turku, Finland) Dominique Chen (Waseda University, Japan) Mickey Vallee (Athabasca University Canada) Posthumanism in Practice Edited by Christine Daigle and Matt Hayler BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2023 Copyright © Christine Daigle, Matt Hayler and Contributors, 2023 Christine Daigle and Matt Hayler have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xi constitute an extension of this copyright page. Series design: Ben Anslow Cover image: Fairy, glowing mushroom (© janiecbros / iStock) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3502-9380-9 ePDF: 978-1-3502-9381-6 eBook: 978-1-3502-9382-3 Series: Posthumanism in Practice Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www .bloomsbury .com and sign up for our newsletters. Contents List of contributors vii Acknowledgements xi Introduction: Theory into praxis Christine Daigle and Matt Hayler 1 Section I Science and Technology 1 Engineering the posthuman: Conceiving handedness and constructing disabled prostheses Stuart Murray 17 2 Posthuman(izing) biomedicine: The role of microbiota in Parkinson’s disease research Aaron Bradshaw 31 3 Posthumanism and the limits of multispecies relationality Bryan Lim 43 4 Alien embodiment and nomadic subjectivity: A speculative report Steve Klee and Kirsten McKenzie 57 Section II Art and Curation 5 Sympoietic art practice with plants: A case for posthumanist co-expression Lin Charlston 79 6 Kneading bodies Madaleine Trigg 95 7 Circus as practices of hope Marie-Andrée Robitaille 114 8 Posthumanism in play: Entangled subjects, agentic cutscenes, vibrant matter, and species hybridity Poppy Wilde 133 9 Posthumanist interfaces: Developing new conceptual frameworks for museum practices in the context of a major museum technology collection Deborah Lawler-Dormer and Christopher John Müller 147 10 Affirming future(s): Towards a posthumanist conservation in practice Hélia Marçal and Rebecca Gordon 165 Section III Education 11 Water, ice, and dead ‘tadpoles’: Discovering within undecided boundaries in early childhood education for sustainability research Debra Harwood 181 12 Reflections on a language teacher education praxis from a posthumanist viewpoint Laryssa Paulino de Queiroz Sousa and Rosane Rocha Pessoa 198 vi Contents 13 Unlearning to be human? The pedagogical implications of twenty-first-century post-anthropocentrism Stefan Herbrechter 212 14 Posthumanism and postdisciplinarity: Breaking our old teaching and research habits Christine Daigle 227 Index 241 Contributors Aaron Bradshaw is a biological scientist whose PhD and postdoctoral research focused on the cell biology of neurodegenerative diseases. Since 2020 he has been working as an Independent Scholar with interests in the role of microorganisms in neurodegeneration and environmental issues. His forthcoming article in Environmental Humanities discusses how humans and microorganisms might form new relationships to collaborate on pressing environmental issues. Lin Charlston is an independent researcher and a practising artist whose conceptual artist-books are represented in over forty public collections including Tate Britain and the Environmental Library at Berkeley. Her PhD at Manchester School of Art, MMU (2019), developed a sympoietic art practice with plants informed by posthumanist ethics. For Charlston, the artist-book is part of a collective, adaptive work which manifests during the co-expressive process. The artist-book I buried my arm (2018) relives a performative gesture of connection with the underground plant world. Christine Daigle is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Posthumanism Research Institute at Brock University. She has published extensively on existentialist thinkers such as Nietzsche, Sartre and Beauvoir, including her latest monograph, Nietzsche as Phenomenologist: Becoming What One Is (2021). She also co-edited the volume From Deleuze and Guattari to Posthumanism (2022) and is completing a monograph on the theme of posthumanist vulnerability. Rebecca Gordon is a freelance researcher and writer in modern and contemporary art and has taught in the History of Art Departments at University College London and the University of Glasgow, as well as guest lecturing at the University of Amsterdam and New York University. Her current research focuses on care and emotional labour of social practice artists, a posthumanist ethics of care and the conservation of contemporary art as a counter-extinction activity. Debra Harwood is Professor of Early Childhood Education at Brock University, Canada. Her research is situated within a framework of challenging the social, political, cultural and historical forces that have shaped central ideas such as care, professionalism, child agency, place and intra-active pedagogy. Her most recent project involved a study of young children’s entanglements within a forest, specifically examining how relationships with the more-than-human world might foster educational practices that support a more sustainable planet. viii Contributors Matt Hayler is Associate Professor in Contemporary Literature at the University of Birmingham, and Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Cultures. His past work has looked at electronic reading via cognitive science, post-phenomenology, and the philosophy of technology (Challenging the Phenomena of Technology (2015); Ambient Literature (2022)). His current work looks at the implications of posthumanism for human enhancement projects, digital cultures, and moral responsibility (see e.g. ‘Posthumanism and the Bioethics of Moral Responsibility’ in Bioethics and the Posthumanities (2022)). Stefan Herbrechter is a writer, researcher and Privatdozent at Heidelberg University. He has published widely on English and comparative literature, critical and cultural theory, and cultural and media studies. His main publications related to his current research focus, posthumanism and its critique, include Autoimmunities (with Michelle Jamieson, 2018); Narrating Life (with Elisabeth Friis, 2016); European Posthumanism (with Manuela Rossini and Ivan Callus, 2016); Posthumanism – A Critical Analysis (2013); Posthumanist Subjectivities (with Ivan Callus, 2012); Posthumanist Shakespeares (with Ivan Callus, 2012); Posthumanismus – Eine kritische Einführung (2009); Cy-Borges: Memories of the Posthuman in the Work of Jorge Luis Borges (with Ivan Callus, 2009) and Discipline and Practice (with Ivan Callus, 2004). He is Director of the Critical Posthumanism Network (cri tica lpos thumanism .net) and General Editor of its online ‘Genealogy of the Posthuman’ project (cri tica lpos thumanism .net /gen ealogy). Steve Klee is Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Lincoln, and an artist and theorist who explores the philosophical relationship between aesthetics, politics and natural science. The through-line here is the question of human agency: how do biological and socio-historically constrained subjects act upon their world? What are their potentials and limitations? Exhibitions include a solo show Between a Rock and a Hard Place for Five Years gallery, London (2015), and involvement in Concrete Plastic, LAM Gallery, Los Angeles (2016), as well as Perpetual Liquidity at No.1 Smithery, Kent (2016). He has published on Jacques Rancière, and myriad contemporary artists, and is currently developing articles on the relation between science, new realist philosophy and aesthetics. Deborah Lawler-Dormer is a research manager at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. Her work is transdisciplinary and often engages art, science and technology in collaboration with industry, tertiary and community partners. She is the lead curator for the exhibition Invisible Revealed (2022) developed in partnership with Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. She is also a visiting Research Fellow with the Expanded Perception and Interaction Centre at the University of New South Wales and Adjunct Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. Recent publications include a chapter on ‘Critical posthumanist practices from within the Museum’ in The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism (2022). Bryan Lim completed his PhD on human–HIV relationalities at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is interested in probing the limits of current debates in social Contri butors ix theory regarding the scope and extent of our relations with non-human others and more broadly, the pragmatics of radical pluralism, and how practices of thinking, knowing and living differently might be encouraged to flourish. Hélia Marçal is Lecturer in History of Art, Materials and Technology at the University College London. She was the fellow in Contemporary Art Conservation and Research of the research project ‘Reshaping the Collectible: When Artworks Live in the Museum’, at Tate, London (2018–20). She is the coordinator of the Working Group on Theory, History and Ethics of Conservation of the Committee for Conservation of the International Council of Museums (ICOM-CC) since 2016. Kirsten McKenzie is Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology, University of Lincoln. Her current research has two main themes; the multisensory processes underlying body representation and spatial awareness in healthy individuals, and the cognitive and perceptual processes leading to somatic misperception in people with medically unexplained symptoms and other clinical disorders, such as autistic spectrum disorder. She uses a variety of techniques including MIRAGE virtual/augmented reality, fMRI, EEG and other psychophysical measures, structured patient interviews, physiological assessment and eye-tracking. She is also Athena Swan Assessment Panel Member for the Equality Challenge Unit. Christopher John Müller is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies and Media at Macquarie University, Sydney. His work focuses on the intersection of technology, social constellations of power and the deceptive ‘immediacy’ of feeling. He is the author of Prometheanism: Technology, Digital Culture and Human Obsolescence (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), and his articles, translations and reviews have appeared in Parallax, Thesis Eleven, CounterText, TrippleC, Textual Praxis and Modernism/modernity. Chris is part of the editorial team of The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism (2022) and co-edits the Genealogy of the Posthuman, an open access, ISSN accredited online platform on www .cri tica lpos thumanism .net. Stuart Murray is Professor of Contemporary Literatures and Film in the School of English at the University of Leeds in the UK, and Director of the University’s Centre for Medical Humanities. He has published widely on issues on cultural disability representation and his latest book is Disability and the Posthuman: Bodies, Technology and Cultural Futures (Liverpool UP, 2020). He is Principal Investigator on the Wellcome Trust-funded research project ‘Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures’, running between 2020 and 2025, and Joint Principal Investigator on ‘LivingBodiesObjects: Technology and the Spaces of Healthcare’, a Wellcome project that will run between 2022 and 2025. His next book is Medical Humanities and Disability Studies: In/Disciplines, which will be published by Bloomsbury. Rosane Rocha Pessoa is Full Professor of English at the College of Letters (Faculdade de Letras) at the Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brazil. She is currently a voluntary professor at the same university, teaching courses in the areas of language and