Post‐humanism and the problem of theorizing coherence

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Lew Zipin lectures in Sociology/Policy of Education at the University of South Australia, where he is also a researcher at the Centre for Studies of Literacy, Policy and Learning Cultures. His research interests include the use of critical theories to analyse power in educational institutions; issues of governance and ethics in schools and higher education; and education for social justice. Correspondence to: Dr Lew Zipin, Lecturer, School of Education, University of South Australia, Holbrooks Road, Underdale SA 5032, Australia. E‐mail: [email protected]

In all instances in this paper where a passage is quoted for the first time, emphases within the quoted passage are from the original.

Before undertaking this, I will note that certain ‘post’ theorists, for example Butler (1990), and Davies (1990), have argued that such minimal agentic capacities can be theorized as contingently constituted by‐products of ‘discursive practices’, without need to postulate an ontologically ‘human’ basis. Elsewhere (Zipin, 1998, 1999), I have argued that their theoretical efforts fail, and slip into ‘discursive Idealism’, in ways similar to Laclau and Mouffe's theorizations of gender asymmetry. I do not have space here to recapitulate this debate.

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Lew Zipin

Lew Zipin lectures in Sociology/Policy of Education at the University of South Australia, where he is also a researcher at the Centre for Studies of Literacy, Policy and Learning Cultures. His research interests include the use of critical theories to analyse power in educational institutions; issues of governance and ethics in schools and higher education; and education for social justice. Correspondence to: Dr Lew Zipin, Lecturer, School of Education, University of South Australia, Holbrooks Road, Underdale SA 5032, Australia. E‐mail: [email protected]