Reflections on an interactive posthumanist panel: A model for future nursing philosophy conference engagement?

In this short dialogue contribution, I elaborate on three groups of ideas that crossed my mind while I attended an interactive panel on posthumanism (Laurin et al., 2023, in this issue) at the 2022 international nursing philosophy conference, held in Irvine California. These groups of ideas are (1) Haraway's string figures, (2) nursing critical pedagogies, and (3) the materiality of nursing practice. Beyond this immediate goal, however, I would like to invite the readers to use their imagination and view this kind of panel session as a potential new direction for doing scholarship, at least in the context of conferences—a point to which I return at the end of the paper. First, the panel session seemed to me to express very well Donna Haraway's (2016) concept of string figures. Theorizing our era as the Chthulucene, or a “compost” of human and other-than-human entities as a preferred and urgently needed alternative to the (hu)man-centric Anthropocene, Haraway employs “string figures, SF” as a literal and metaphorical device. Imagine multi-species creatures playing a string figure game: figures are created and passed/stretched through hands, paws, talons, hooves, fins… These string figures are about “companion practice”: They “sketch an ethical system of epistemic consequences that is based on the ongoingness of never-innocent relations” (SF: string figures, 2023). Any “point of departure” for any endeavour and every “solid ground” on which something can be constructed, must be thought as always already within a troubled world. Staying with the trouble and learn[ing] to be companions to each other, seems to be the ethical choice that is left in this situation. (SF: string figures, 2023) Haraway's books include photographs and drawings of such string figures. Yet, Haraway says that SF stands equally for science fiction, science fact, speculative feminism, and speculative fabulation, to name a few. At the panel, something of a companion practice was enacted as participants passed yarn and crayons to each other. (I refer the reader to Laurin et al., 2023, in this issue, for a description of the session.) Leaving Haraway aside, my next thought as I listened at the session, related to the nursing courses I took or was aware of, when students were invited to experiment with nontraditional assignments such as sewing a patchwork blanket as a collective activity. Each piece or patch was meant to symbolize a person's sense of identity or understanding of nursing. Often, these activities were underpinned by Peggy Chinn's writings on emancipatory curriculum and women's (i.e., second-wave feminism) Peace and Power processes. For some teachers–learners, these activities helped shift the traditional emphasis on written papers as the only acceptable form of scholarly discourse. Similarly, this session disrupted some conference hegemonic practices like the separation of speaker and audience. However, considering my recollection of those nonconventional (yet perfectly humanistic) pedagogical approaches already used by my open-minded colleagues in their teaching of nursing students in Canada, I wondered about the radical edge of posthumanism. What do posthumanist theories offer that sets them apart? One of the central tenets of posthumanism, although not unique, is a critique of capitalism, as the panel presenters emphasized. Yet, every time I teach a graduate course, I rediscover that the learners have a difficult time understanding Marx and his critiques of capitalism (not to mention post-Marxist critiques of capitalism) and cannot readily link Marx's ideas to the workings of healthcare in Canada. We read basic secondary sources, watch YouTube videos, and try to analyze the organization of healthcare to make this theoretical orientation more accessible, yet the challenge is tangible. (One of the reasons for my observation, perhaps, is that it is the first time the students have been exposed to a critique of a Canadian—officially public—healthcare system where a growing private ownership and service provision escapes nurses' view.) How, then, can posthumanist references to capitalism and other theoretical jargon be made accessible to our intended audiences? Scholars from the humanities and social sciences (e.g., Braidotti, Haraway) have been working with anticapitalist and socio-material theories for a long time. In their work, many philosophical ideas (e.g., capitalism, Marx's dialectics, neo-Spinozian immanence, relationality, the nature-culture continuum) became “black boxed,” or disappeared from view as already settled, to use language from actor network theory (Latour, 1999). In contrast to philosophically well-versed audiences of Braidotti and Haraway, nurses should not assume a high degree of familiarity with these philosophical ideas among nurse readers. My invitation to nursing scholars interested in posthumanism then is to help unpack to understand Marx's dialectical materialism and other key philosophical notions, to help elucidate the concrete mechanisms of the nursing profession's entanglements in the political economy of capitalist society. This resurfacing can also help ground more recent theories built on Marx's work while at the same time recognizing the limitations of his analyses for the 21st century. What can be taken forward from this particular session in terms of the process it used? When I asked a colleague about the idea of alternative approaches to sharing and debating scholarship at conferences, here is what she said. The idea of group activities as a way to lower the threshold for dialogue and discussion is not new and shouldn't be ignored in the context of nursing philosophy. Why not use our expert nursing practices in co-creating contexts of trust, communication, and care (when it can be achieved) in the venue of scholarship? Nursing philosophy as “companion practice”? Of course, and why not! (M. Bender, personal communication, May 19, 2023). In conclusion, my critical comments aside, I left the panel session thinking that future conference planners should consider these alternate modes as a way of promoting diversity of thought and trusting spaces for discussion. The authors have nothing to report. The author declares no conflict of interest. No new empirical data were generated or used in the process of writing this commentary.

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