Posthuman co-production: becoming response-able with what matters
ISSN: 1443-9883
Article publication date: 13 January 2022
Issue publication date: 7 February 2022
Abstract
Purpose
This paper introduces the concept of posthuman co-production. It explores how processual and relational onto-epistemologies inform an artful, response-able (Barad 2007) feminist new materialist praxis that decentres the human and re-centres matter.
Design/methodology/approach
Posthuman co-production gives prominence to crafting “dartaphacts” (Renold, 2018); creative research artefacts, carrying “what matters” and enacting change that can be mapped across time and multiple “problem spaces” (Lury, 2020), as an expansive, post-qualitative praxis of slow, co-production.
Findings
The paper stories this praxis across three “fugal figurations” providing glimpses into the post-qualitative journeys of assembled dartaphacts in the policy and practice field of relationships and sexuality education (RSE) in Wales. Each fugue hints at the polytical, resourceful and living potential of dartaphacts in the making and their mattering over a period of six years. Collectively, they chart a rhizomatic journey that re-configures co-production as a response-able, becoming-with what matters.
Originality/value
As more-than-human forces for change, dartaphacts continue to surface “the cries of what matters” (Stengers 2019) for children and young people well beyond the periods of funded research and engagement, giving new meaning to the sustainability and material legacies of research impact.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Funding: This study received funding from ESRC (Award No. ES/K002716/1), ESRC Impact Accelerator Account 2015-2016, ESRC Impact accelerator Account 2019-2020 and ESRC Impact Prize Money 2018.
Citation
Renold, E. and Ivinson, G. (2022), "Posthuman co-production: becoming response-able with what matters", Qualitative Research Journal, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 108-128. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-01-2021-0005
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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