Pedagogical Impasses: Posthuman Inquiry in Exhaustive Times

Abstract

Impasses are often understood as blockages, as preventing something from moving along a desired trajectory. Thinking with Lauren Berlant’s conception of the impasse in the historical present and Rosi Braidotti’s writing on exhaustion in the posthuman subject, we wonder how we might move forward in/with the overwhelmingness of the present, impasses in and always exceeding the qualitative inquiry classroom. We inquire: How does the impasse inspire a posthuman pedagogical practice? How do we teach (inquiry) in exhaustive times? To explore these questions, we turn to our classrooms as spaces conducive to impasses, discussing two examples, before opening our discussion to the posthuman pedagogical possibilities that impasses make possible. We then zigzag to the present, where a disturbance, a pandemic impasse, invokes exhaustion, uncertain pedagogical a/effects; however, we continue to seek the affirmative. Throughout, we circle in and around the impasse. Exhausted yet somehow (in)exhaustible.