Haraway's ‘bag lady story-telling’: relocating childhood and learning within a ‘post-human landscape’

Abstract

In this article, we explore some alternate ways of approaching childhood and learning by taking three short forays into what Donna Haraway calls a ‘post-human landscape’. This exploration takes us beyond the horizons of orthodox educational approaches, in which the individual child is typically seen to be developing and learning within his/her (exclusively human) sociocultural context. The post-human landscape relocates childhood within a world that is much bigger than us (humans) and about more than our (human) concerns. It allows us to reconsider the ways in which children are both constituted by and learn within this more-than-human world. Adopting Haraway's feminist narrative strategy, we offer three very different ‘bag lady’ stories that consider the ethics and politics of child/non-human animal cross-species encounters. Each of these stories gestures towards the ways in which we can learn to live with ‘companion species’ rather than only ever learn about them.

Keywords:

• Donna Haraway
• post-human
• feminist method
• companion species
• relational ethics

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Patricia Piccinini, Haunch of Venison, Tolarno and Roslyn Oxley9 Galleries for permission to use the images in this article, and Lesley Instone for her mentoring in post-human methods.

Notes

1. Haraway, like others (e.g. Clifford, 1997; Somerville, 2007) is building on Pratt's (1992) notion of a contact zone.

2. This is the English-language term used for dog-friendly spaces. According to a press release made by the Hong Kong Leisure and Cultural Services Department on 4 May 2011, there are currently 23 dog gardens in Hong Kong.

3. Haraway is drawing on Karen Barad's (2007) term, intra-action.

4. ‘Chook’ is a common Australian expression for chicken.

5. Maria is an early childhood teacher with whom I have a long standing working relationships with as a teacher-researcher.