Education as sociomaterial critique

Abstract

In order to extend its scope, depth and effectiveness, critique should shift from its reliance on humanistic assumptions and be reconceptualised as a sociomaterial practice through which realities are enacted differently as multiple and tensional. This kind of critique counters the ways regimes of power are materially entrenched. This article explores such an alternative conception of critique by drawing on Butler's notion of performativity, the agential realism of Barad and the ontological politics of Mol. It explores the particular ways in which actor-network theory could be understood as a resource of critique. Because of its central role in the enactment of reality, Education is an important field within which critique is developed further in relation to ontological and epistemological assumptions behind different learning spaces and the incoherences and tensions of different ontics. IntroductionCritical traditions in education are largely characterised by rationalist and humanist assumptions which require an autonomous and rational human agent and which conceptualise transformation from a position of moral and cognitive privilege. Such humanist forms of critique mainly operate in the (linguistic) discursive sphere where ideologies and false consciousness are uncovered and where transformative praxis is based on changed beliefs. The main problem with these forms of critique lies in its inability to adequately recognise the nature of materiality, the materiality of regimes of power and to investigate more fully how possibilities of agency could be opened up.This article conceptualises critique in a way that attempts to avoid the humanism within Marxist, Neo-Marxist and postmodern approaches. It wants to avoid postmodern foci on (linguistic) discursiveness and identityformation, and the Marxist human-centred agent of critique. It accepts the postmodern modesty about emancipatory goals in contrast to the Marxist ideal of revolutionary replacement of capitalism. It represents a return to the *acknowledgement of the role of the material without equating the material with the economic (means and relations of production). Neither the material nor the discursive are taken to be determining factors in the final instance. The focus on the materiality of critique corresponds to the way forms of oppression and exclusion are embedded in material and embodied practices.It is important to investigate the critical potential of education which plays an important role in the reproduction of the conditions of oppression and exclusion. Education is also one place where the possibilities for agency could be explored because it is one of the important locations of cultural production and reproduction. An attempt is made to illustrate in a concrete and material way how critique might function in education. The investigation does not focus on an analysis and critique of dominating practices, but on the possibilities of alternative ones. The article analyses two examples of educational practices in order to establish what a sociomate...

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