Sobre el potencial crítico de los enfoques sociomateriales en educación

Abstract

This paper has as central argument that the recently emerging sociomaterial approach to education has an inherently critical potential, but that this capacity is not yet fully deployed and explored in educational studies. In order to make this argument, this paper starts, first, with a concise description of representationalist versus relational thinking, and argues that sociomaterial studies have to be situated in the latter current. Consequently, the role of critique that is largely upheld in representationalist thinking –that is, a role primarily directed at debunking and unveiling– needs to be rethought. In order to reconceive this role, the paper secondly elaborates upon the key characteristics of sociomaterial studies in education in order to show such relational thinking takes shape in and during the conduct of sociomaterial research. These characteristics are crucial in order to fully apprehend the critical prospect of sociomaterial approaches in education. The role of critique, then, amounts to an engaged attitude vis-à-vis the practices under investigation, and more particularly points to critical creativity as offering some horizons of change.