What “what we know” does – a posthuman review methodology

Abstract

This article unfolds a case, an argument and methodology for a posthuman approach for doing reviews from the vantage point of knowledge-fields where educational politics and knowledge production are entangled. As case, the article draws on a review on the topic of ‘social educators in schools’, following a reform of the public school in Denmark. From this review, an analytical strategy for performing ‘extendings’, is developed. ‘Extendings’ are defined as the analytical performance of co-existing, contradictory, statements concerning the same object of knowledge, within and across publications. ‘Extendings’ are proposed as an empirically embedded concept, as posthuman reviewing is considered performative of what particular knowledge-political fields do to their objects of knowledge. A posthuman, performative review methodology, then, is suggested to afford a change in knowledge-claims. The change involves a move away from representations of “what we know”, towards analytical performances of what “what we know does” to educational practice.