Writing Posthumanist Subjects

Abstract

In this article I explore the problem of thinking and writing about post-humanist human subjects (as objects) who are no longer given as such. I draw on my attempts to represent such subjects in my doctoral dissertation, a study of Western teachers in Vietnam. Drawing on the work of Deleuze, I considering how representations of participants are constructed, and experiment with piecing together impressionistic vignettes that attend to the impossibilities of representation. However, in this process of careful text construction also highlights the paradox of artfully fabricating convincingly realistic and natural ethnographic description, in ways which potentially disrupt notions of transparency and verisimilitude as indicators of the quality of qualitative research.