Human presence: Towards a posthumanist approach to experience

Abstract

Actor–Network Theory and Latour's principle of symmetry between human and nonhuman creatures was developed as a methodological 'grip' to encourage analysts to investigate sociomaterial configurations rather than defining them before empirical study. In order to adjust the principle of symmetry to the scale of experience, it is argued that what is co-present must be in focus in empirical research as this is what experience relies on. In discussion with Marxist empirical materialism and with studies from the affective turn, the article analyses experience as presence, based on classroom ethnography. The term is suggested as a contribution to an empirical posthumanist methodology that reaches beyond anthropocentric studies where the human is given a privileged position or is a distant judging observer of the world, to move towards a methodology of human and nonhuman symmetry.