Becoming community - a posthuman perspective

Abstract

During the past decades, posthumanism has established itself as an autonomous field of study, revolving around ‘new materialism’ as a theory which centralises the role of matter in understanding reality (Coole & Frost, 2010). Posthumanism attempts to link understandings of human subjects with the non-human, in order to better understand the world. It regards matter as “not a thing, but a doing, a congealing of agency” (Barad, 2007, p. 210). Matter is not separate from meaning making, as both are entangled and “mutually articulated” (Barad, 2007, p. 152). This article draws on posthuman perspectives (Braidotti, 2019, 2012; Barad 2007, 2003) to discuss the ongoing formation of communities, as they bring people together through shared understandings of their human condition. This view regards communities as dynamic, unfinished and in a process of ‘becoming’. Posthuman knowledge recognises that the state of becoming is full of potentialities. It also regards human beings as “neither pure cause nor pure effect but part of the world in its open-ended becoming” (Barad, 2007, p. 150). I draw on this perspective to highlight the possibilities of community engagement to act as a force that creates spaces for commonalities to be productive through encounters that encourage the sharing of strengths, fears, vulnerabilities, hopes and aspirations.