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.

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