Abstract:
The paper addresses edusemiotics as a new direction in educational theory that has important implications for educational research, teaching, and policy (Semetsky, 2010b; Stables & Semetsky, 2015). The paper explicates the distinctive features of edusemiotics while comparing and contrasting it with new materialism. New materialism is a novel direction in cultural theory (e.g., Barad, 2007). Both areas of research, while located in humanities, pay close attention to contemporary developments in natural sciences such as physics and biology. Both are strongly anti-dualist and defy the positivist trend in research. New materialism tends to draw from the continental tradition in philosophy (notably, Deleuze), while the sources feeding into the latest developments in edusemiotics are plenty, including such American pragmatists as Peirce and Dewey. Still both developments have much in common and seem to exit in parallel – their recent appearance in their respective fields (cultural studies and education) is nearly simultaneous! Being anti-dualistic, they also deny the division between ontology and epistemology. Notwithstanding that the philosophical problems are often ignored in educational research, such approach to knowledge provokes a new ethics that demonstrates a relational, partaking of feminist, bent. Edusemiotics further develops Noddings’ ethics of care and formulates its follow-up, the ethics of integration (Semetsky, 2010a) that calls for interrogating the notions of human subjectivity and agency. From the perspective of edusemiotics, an individual agency gives way to the community of inquirers. The paper presents subjectivity as emergent in the relations between “self” and “other” – while learning from experience, becoming posthuman and (ideally) equipped with semiotic competence. Selected ReferencesBarad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Semetsky, I. (2010a). Towards an ethics of integration in education. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey & N. Clement (Eds.), International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing (pp. 319-336). New York: Springer.Semetsky, I. (Ed.). (2010b). Semiotics Education Experience. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.Stables, A., & Semetsky, I. (2015). Edusemiotics: Semiotic philosophy as educational foundation. London: Routledge.