Doing sociomaterial studies: the circuit of agency

Abstract

In recent sociomaterialist, materialist and post-human theorizing which foregrounds the importance of objects and bodies, ideas of consciousness and intentionality are seen as potentially tainted either with Cartesian mind-body splits or with subjectivities that are too discursively constructed. At the same time, new theories of affect as something pre-personal and corporeal further marginalize the notion of human agency. But could the pendulum have swung too far in outlawing the human in favour of the pre-human and post-human? How can sociomaterial theories be reconciled with educators’ ongoing commitment to give their pupils voice and identify effective pedagogies for teaching digital media? This paper analyses data from a study of online multimodal writing practices in a London primary school to expand current theorizing about agency. It proposes the idea of a phenomenologically-inspired circuit of (sociomaterial) agency as a way to bring back the ‘human’ and incorporate the middle ranges of agency.