Curriculum Inquiry, 2015

Vol. 45, No. 3, 245 248, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2015.1041242

EDITORIAL
Thinking beyond the human
Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandez *

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, ON, Canada

There are few concepts as central to the projects of curriculum inquiry than the figure of
the human. Taken for granted in most articulations of curriculum, the figure of the human
has given the field its object of concern curriculum is about the making of better
humans. Rare, however, have been any attempts to rethink the very notion of the human,
not just in terms of how the human is imagined, but also in terms of its boundaries as well
as how the human comes to be constituted in relationship to other beings and to the mate-
rials that surround it. In recent years, however, some scholars are beginning to challenge
the taken-for-granted conception of the human that has shaped curriculum studies for
more than a century. Drawing on a vast array of intellectual and cultural movements,
these scholars are raising critical questions about the colonial roots of how the human has
been constituted, the material and discursive bases from which human experience
emerges, and the relational boundaries between species that make the human intelligible.
In different ways and by drawing on a range of conceptual tools, the articles in this
issues of Curriculum Inquiry (CI) provide different entry points that, in some way or
another, challenge how we think about: human identification (de Freitas and Curinga);
the exteriority of human thought processes (Roth and Maheux); and the role that non-
human agents, materials and institutions play in processes of curriculum making (Lynch
and Herbert) as well as how language and literacy evolve (Lawrence, with a commentary
from Brandt). Although not necessarily in such terms, the authors in this issue of CI level
conceptual tools that in some way or another invite us to think beyond the human.
Drawing on new materialist and post-humanist frameworks, authors Elizabeth de
Freitas and Matthew Curinga lead off the issue with their article “New Materialist
Approaches to the Study of Language and Identity: Assembling the Post-Human Sub-
ject.” De Freitas and Curinga make a strong argument for the importance of moving
beyond post-structuralist conceptualizations of identification that center on language-use
as the focus of analysis. Drawing from the conceptual universe of Deleuze and Guattari
(1987), along with others who have expanded their work, the authors make the case for a
conceptualization of language as material in order to delve deeper into aspects of identifi-
cation that escape discursive analysis.
While de Freitas and Curinga do not reject the importance of language in processes of
identification or the significance of discourse analysis for examining the relationship
between social structure and human agency, they argue that a singular focus on discourse
cannot account of the materiality of human existence. More to the point, they argue not
only that materials matter, but also that these matter in ways that challenge the very
notion of individuality that underwrites the dominant conception of the human and, as

*Email: r.gaztambide.fernandez@utoronto.ca

Ó 2015 the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

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such, of learning and teaching. Indeed, they propose that a notion of “post human sub-
jectivity” is necessary in order to account for how discourse and matter interact in pro-
cesses of identification. Such a notion accounts for the instability of identification beyond
the individual as well as the centrality of interactions between various bodies and matters
“as a bodily molecular expression” (p. 250). This is particularly important, they argue, if
we are to develop strategies for examining the “micropolitical forces that are at work in
contemporary classrooms” (p. 263).
While de Freitas and Curinga propose a framework for bringing together conceptual
tools from post-structuralist analyses of identification through discourse and new materi-
alist approaches that account for aspects of the material beyond the discursive, the second
article in this issue illustrates how such an analytic approach might look like in practice.
Wolff-Michael Roth and Jean-Francois Maheux propose a way of, in their own words,
“thinking the movement of thinking … by exhibiting thinking in movement without
reducing thinking or movement to something else” (p. 276). To examine what thinking in
movement reveals about movement in thinking, Roth and Maheux bring our attention to
elements of the thinking process that are well beyond discourse and that underscore the
body as well as the materials used in the movement of thinking. The title of the article,
“The Stakes of Movement: A Dynamic Approach to Mathematical Thinking,” not only
suggests a different way of thinking about thinking beyond language, but also suggests
that there is much at stake in accounting for the physical manifestation of thinking
through the body’s movements and interactions with available materials.
In their meticulous analysis of the traces left behind by the chalk on the board, Roth
and Maheaux invite us to leave behind the notion that thinking is an internal process that
resides within the confines of an individual human brain. Through their careful account-
ing of the various physical moves and interactions between the body and the materials at
hand, the authors in a sense move our thinking as our thinking moves through the
images and the words that encapsulate the particular instances under analysis. It is not
that Roth and Maheaux want to privilege materials or bodies over thought; rather, they
want to show how the movement of thought is intimately connected to the movement of
bodies in dialectical fashion.
From the micro-analysis of the chalk marks left by the movement of thinking, our
third article in this issue brings attention to an unusual set of players who perhaps unex-
pectedly have a significant influence on how a particular curriculum scheme comes to
be implemented in different science classrooms. In “Affirming Irregular Spaces in a
School-Wide Curriculum Initiative: A Place for the Animals,” Julianne Lynch and Sandra
Herbert comment on the complicated dynamics that shape curriculum making between
what is mandated and what is enacted. While mobilizing discourse analysis to shed light
on these dynamics, their focus is not so much on the curricular texts per se, but on how
interactions with and perceptions of animals shape and what they reveal about the
curriculum implementation process.
While most approaches to teacher practice and curriculum innovation center on
teacher knowledge, Lynch and Herbert draw our attention to how animals are positioned
discursively in ways that illustrate unexpected dimensions of the implementation process.
Using de Certeau’s (1984) distinction between “strategy” and “tactic,” the authors show
how the views of curriculum experts and developers implemented “from above” are inter-
preted and implemented by teachers “from the ground.” How the teachers talk about the
animals involved in this particular science curriculum reveals important aspects of the
“everydayness of classroom innovation” and the “creation of irregular curriculum spaces”
(p. 301).
 Thinking beyond the human 247

Lynch and Herbert view curriculum innovation as “emergent as a process of

appropriation, translation and redeployment that speaks to the situations that arise in
classrooms when new entities are encountered” (p. 301, emphasis added). Such “new
entities” might include animals as in the case of the science curriculum innovation
examined by Lynch and Herbert or might refer to the usual materials of teaching and
learning, such as chalk and board in the case of Roth and Maheux’s analysis. It might
also refer to larger institutions, like mass media or the family, suggesting that it is not
only human individuals as conceptualized through humanist philosophy that shape
learning and teaching.
The notion that humans are not the only beings involved in the teaching and learning
process and that literacy is about more than an interaction between text and individual is
central to the concept of “sponsors of literacy” as developed by Deborah Brandt (2001).
Brandt sought to extend the socio-political analysis of literacy development to examine
how power dynamics shaped what kinds of resources and opportunities are made avail-
able to learners in ways that illustrate social and economic inequality. The concept of
sponsors of literacy has been taken in various directions since Brandt first presented it, as
Ann Lawrence examines in the fourth article in this issue, “Literacy Narratives as Spon-
sors of Literacy: Past Contributions and New Directions for Literacy-Sponsorship
Research.” Lawrence observes that in this evolution, the concept has lost some of its
potential for shedding light on the complex political dynamics that shape not just literacy
skills but relationships to literacies and texts of various kinds. While Brandt was particu-
larly concerned with the economy of literacies and the material and institutional condi-
tions that in some way “sponsored” the development of literacies, Lawrence argues that
subsequent engagements with the concept by other scholars have tended to focus on the
human actors playing a role in literacy narratives.
After a careful examination of the methods as well as the analytic strategies developed
by scholars who have built on Brandt’s work, Lawrence outlines several new analytic
directions that, in her view, would capitalize on Brandt’s original intentions while taking
the notion of literacy sponsors in new directions. Focusing on the view of literacy spon-
sors as rhetorical figures, Lawrence also extends beyond the mainstream conceptualiza-
tion of human experiences and interactions with literacy to focus on the affective in
relationship to the discursive. To do this, Lawrence brings the concept of sponsors of lit-
eracy to bear on the research itself in a meta-analytic move that yields strong grounding
for recasting literacy sponsors including the research act itself as a rhetorical figure
with affective force. By reframing literacy sponsors as rhetorical figures, Lawrence high-
lights how “the affective force of narrative rhetoric”: mediates access to literacy practi-
ces; reworks the context of narrative production as well as the narrated context; and co-
constitutes the very value of literacy-related experiences.
Following a long tradition of inviting dialogue among scholars in the pages of CI, the
editors invited Deborah Brandt to provide commentary on Lawrence’s work. In her arti-
cle, “A Commentary on Literacy Narratives as Sponsors of Literacy,” Brandt acknowl-
edges her own impressions of how her work has been taken up over the years, largely
agreeing with Lawrence’s assessment. She underscores the material significance of liter-
acy experiences, observing the many ways in which “language is lifted out of the genera-
tive, material contexts in which it lives to be analyzed on its own” (p. 332). Like de
Freitas and Curinga in the first essay, Lawrence draws our attention back to the interac-
tion between bodies and the power dynamics that shape experience. While neither Brandt
nor Lawrence situate their discussion within a new materialist (or post-humanist) frame-
work, their attention to the material conditions that shape interactions and literacy
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experience are remarkably close to the kind of analysis de Freitas and Curinga are sug-
gesting as well as the kind of analysis that Roth and Maheux carry out in their article.
The chalk and the board that enable Roth and Maheux to examine the movement of
thinking are part and parcel of the thought process they are, in a sense, sponsors of liter-
acy, not just for the scientist at work, but also for both the authors and for us as readers.
This raises some important quandaries for anyone who takes on the challenging task of
editing an academic journal like Curriculum Inquiry. As a “sponsor of literacy,” the Edi-
tor-in-Chief of Curriculum Inquiry is not just an identification that the author of this arti-
cle takes on (or off) through various discursive mediations and interactions complicated
by power dynamics. It is also an institutional positioning that interacts materially and dis-
cursively through encounters (these days mostly digital) that surpass the individuals
involved: the authors, the readers, the editors and the various unstable subjectivities that
interact to produce a text like this academic journal and that in turn shape the (digital)
contexts within which they exist. But what would this all mean for yet another reconcep-
tualization of curriculum? With the human demoted to an epiphenomenon of material
interactions, what would remain at stake in the movement of thought? If there are no
human subjects, what is left to “improve” outside of the interaction? Such questions
might suggest, to various extents, the end (although not the death) of curriculum.

ORCID
Rub
en Gaztambide-Fern
andez http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3291-2816

References
Brandt, D. (2001). Literacy in American lives. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life (translated by S. Rendall). Berkeley, CA: Uni-
versity of California Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapo-
lis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.