Translating Complex Social Theories into a Tangible Design - Bringing Barad, Braidotti and Bennett's Post-Humanism to Life

The content of books from recognized philosophers and sociologists has been a cornerstone in the education of many generations of graduated academics. However, the influence of books in the curriculum is declining, often in favor of articles providing students with a more condensed but also a more fragmented exposure to theoretical content. In addition, it has become more difficult to motivate students to read. We asked multiple cohorts of bachelor and master students to engage with an original work of feminist scholars Karen Barad, Jane Bennett and Rosi Braidotti and translate their complex theories into a 2 or 3-dimensional creative art work. Our aim was to increase students’ sensitivity for contemporary feminist theories in the new materialist and post-human tradition, while simultaneously challenging the standard academic conventions in discussing and disseminating scholarly insights. In this paper we will theoretically situate student’s initial resistance to the assignment, describe how this affected us as teachers and explain how we gradually moved forward with the course component to encourage pro-active learning. Our findings are empirically grounded in observations of groups of students who took the course and our own auto-ethnographic experience of being criticized and reactivated into the creation of learning bridges. We identified six of those bridges that were gradually embedded in the course module over time: non-linear reading, concept maps, examplification, icebreakers, spatialisation of theory and connecting the creative design work with the idea of a social phenomenon or movement. In doing so we shaped our educational trajectory in a way that did justice to the concept matter-meaning making addressed in the books from the new-materialist feminist authors we asked the students to read.