Gratuitous Posthumanism in Education ‘There Is No Thought Not Yet Thought’

Abstract

This chapter wrestles with the tensions between posthuman thought and the colonialities of knowledge that maintain extractivist relationships with Indigenous onto-epistemologies. Drawing on Māori, Quechua and Filipinx worlds, the authors tease out various problematic posthuman tendencies, including requiring a disavowal of non-Western worlds to enter Politics, the violence of ‘humanising’ education, and the fungibility of those who exceed the colonialities of being. Subsequently, we query what would be necessary for posthumanism to foster education that can un/settle humanism, resist recolonisation and uphold plural worlds. In each instance, we find that the wilful ignorance that sustains posthumanism’s sense of exceptionalism and nuance is what leads it to reproduce the humanist hegemonies that it seeks to undo. For posthumanism to achieve what it sets out to do, we argue that it needs to enact justice for more-than-Western ways of knowing and/in being by ceasing to undermine the capacity for Other worlds to exist, acknowledging their legitimacy without appropriating their insight, and honouring their legacy, recognising that ‘there is no thought not yet thought’.