Dr And Pasley

University of Auckland/University of Oulu

Posthuman approaches to research seek to undo the sins of modern/colonial humanism: positivism, dualism, individualism, anthropocentrism, transcendentalism, temporal linearity, and the subsequent hierarchies that emerge from this order of things (Quijano, 2000; Jackson, 2016). However, critiques from Indigenous scholars (e.g., Todd, 2016; Hokowhitu, 2020) suggest that Western academia’s necromantic relationship with Indigenous thought reproduces humanism’s (white) supremacist logics in efforts to account for the relational and more-than-human. This talk asks what posthumanism would have to do to avoid perpetuating such dynamics. As a case in point, posthuman approaches to education are examined as a means of combatting the (re)production of trans necropolitics (Snorton & Haritaworn, 2013) in sexuality education. Is posthumanism enough?

Bio: And Pasley’s work entangles (trans)gender studies, temporality, coloniality, relational ontologies, and postqualitative approaches to research. Their doctoral research employed an agential realist lens to explore how trans secondary students mattered in Aotearoa New Zealand. These days, their ongoing research involves diving deeper into the coloniality of gender, exploring everyday sexisms in Australian universities, and working around rainbow young people’s wellbeing in Aotearoa New Zealand. Currently, And is reworking their thesis into a book, co-editing a book on gender and education with Profs. Jayne Osgood and Susanne Gannon, and is undertaking a fellowship at the University of Oulu.