Storytelling the Multiple Self: Posthuman Autoethnography as Critical Praxis

Wilde, Poppy (2022) Storytelling the Multiple Self: Posthuman Autoethnography as Critical Praxis. In: Children and the Power of Stories: Posthuman and Autoethnographic Perspectives in Early Childhood Education. Children: Global Posthumanist Perspectives and Materialist Theories . Springer, pp. 1-16. ISBN 9789811692864

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Abstract

This chapter will argue for the autoethnographic-I and its use as a capturing of multiplicity and as a site for discovery. Drawing on Braidotti’s argument that we are constituted of a multiplicity of ‘others’ and that the notion of ‘self’ is ‘laziness of habit’, (Braidotti, 2013, p. 100) I extend these ideas to consider in more critical detail how the autoethnographic-I can embrace the idea of ‘non-unitary subjectivity’ (Braidotti, 2013, p. 93) whilst working within the humanist capacities that formed it in order to dismantle humanistic notions from within. Ultimately, this means a newfound definition and appreciation for what is meant by the posthuman-I, and an exploration of how storytelling the ‘self’ can allow an opportunity for acknowledgement of the entangled and distributed nature of self-as-emergent. Considering this in pedagogical terms, I argue that storytelling the multiple self allows an opportunity to radically reconsider what ‘self’ means and to disrupt humanistic hierarchies and the sanctity of the individual. Furthermore, I suggest that this aligns with Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) notion of becoming-child, and that through the posthuman-I we are able to unlearn the problematic aspects of self, such that we might begin to recognise how to teach children and students in more deterritorialized ways. This piece will draw together both critical and creative writing as an opportunity for different modes of expression that also breakdown binaries and boundaries between academic and affective writing. In many ways, this praxis will offer different insights into both lines of consistency and lines of flight. Rather than dismissing humanistic practices in their entirety, this work sees humanism as always-already entangled within us, and therefore a part of the assemblage of what we become. Yet by giving space to lines of flight, different provocations for the reader are intended to allow different journeys through the work.

Item Type: Book Section
Dates:
DateEvent
5 March 2022Published Online
Uncontrolled Keywords: Critical posthumanism, Writing as praxis, Autoethnography, Non-linear writing, Lines of flight
Subjects: CAH22 - education and teaching > CAH22-01 - education and teaching > CAH22-01-01 - education
CAH24 - media, journalism and communications > CAH24-01 - media, journalism and communications > CAH24-01-05 - media studies
Divisions: Faculty of Arts, Design and Media > College of English and Media
Depositing User: Poppy Wilde
Date Deposited: 10 Mar 2022 10:51
Last Modified: 05 Mar 2024 03:00
URI: https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/12940

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