Citizenship matters: Young citizen becoming in the posthuman present

Abstract

This article contributes new insights to research on citizenship and young citizen subject formation in the context of the posthuman condition. Bringing a feminist materialist sensibility to bear, we explore citizenship as materially mobilised and produced. Considering the constitutive role that embodied and affective phenomena play in this production, we attend particularly to acts of citizenship. We show by way of vignettes how human subjects and material and natural objects ‘intra-act’ to produce civic capacities and bring citizen subjectivity into effect. The forces by which these capacities are produced come into view inviting challenge to normative, human-centred framings of (youth) citizenship. The forces in question are various—affective, corporeal, temporal, spatial, spectral—but it is affect that provides the main impetus to action. Supplementing the more conventional frame of citizenship as belonging, we propose a framework of citizen becoming as a generative way to think and do citizenship in the posthuman present. The argument is made that analytic frames that attune to citizenship as an affective movement of becoming best address current conditions for producing citizen subjects and usefully extend individualised models of citizenship that have long influenced education.

Keywords:

• Citizenship
• citizen subjectivity
• affect
• becoming
• matter
• posthuman

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Martin Awa Clarke Langdon, Chris Booth and Tiffany Singh for their generous contributions to this research. It is only by entering into conversation with them and their arts practice that this work could take place. We would also like to thank Kelly Carmichael who facilitated access to the sculpture site and introduced everybody. We acknowledge that the research in Aotearoa New Zealand took place on Waiheke Island, which has been the home of many Māori tribes, including Ngāti Maru and the people of Ngāti Pāoa. We acknowledge that our work in Australia is conducted on the unceded lands and waters of the Boonwurrung and Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation. We offer our deep gratitude to the First Nations artists and scholars who have informed our work and extend our respects to the past and present elders of Aotearoa New Zealand and all Aboriginal people of what is now known as Australia, thanking them for their custodianship spanning tens of thousands of years.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 This fieldnote forms part of the data generated for a study in which the affective dynamics of pedagogy in a range of intense learning environments were investigated (Healy, 2019).

2 The first vignette extends research by the authors on pedagogic affect and affirmative ethics. See Healy and Mulcahy (2021b).

3 An excerpt from Chris Booth’s entry in the sculpture event catalogue.

4 The second vignette extends research by the authors on ordinary affect and pedagogies of response-ability. See Mulcahy and Healy (2021).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dianne Mulcahy

Dianne Mulcahy A Senior Lecturer at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, Dianne’s research and teaching interests centre on pedagogy, education policy and materialist methodological approaches to research as examined and explored through empirical contexts. Issues of difference, disadvantage and in/exclusions are at the heart of these interests and studied chiefly using the conceptual resources of affect and critical materialist theories. Presently, Dianne is researching aspects of the ethics and politics of affect, and their implications for pedagogy and professional practice in school and museum settings.

Sarah Healy

Sarah Healy A Lecturer and Melbourne Postdoctoral Fellow at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, Sarah works at the intersection of studio pedagogies, affect theory and materialist ontomethodologies. A focus on practice is at the heart of Sarah’s research endeavours, as is a critical and creative approach to ‘doing da(r)ta’ in a more-than-human world. Presently, Sarah is researching aspects of practice within digital learning environments and how it might respond more equitably and affirmatively to children’s learning and wellbeing needs.