The School bus as agentic assemblage

This paper is offered as a worked example of a piece of posthuman, vital materialist sense making, using Jane Bennett’s ideas of ‘agentic assemblages’ (Bennett, 2005). Working with these ideas has made space for new and different knowledges and offered up spaces to produce knowledge differently (Lather, 2013). As Braidotti argues ‘the posthuman predicament encourages us to undertake a leap forward into the complexities and paradoxes of our times’ which requires ‘new conceptual creativity’ (2013, p.54). Responding to Braidotti’s call, a ‘traditional’ case study was approached from a vital material perspective. The case study involved an isolated rural community in England and its education provision. Instances from the case study archive were assembled and through these entanglements with human and nonhuman actants, a particular story coalesced. This was the story of the school bus. ‘The school bus’ in this case study took the form of the buses that transport the secondary school students to the college in town. The agentic assemblage approach identifies the school bus as a complex but significant social justice issue for the young people in the case study community. The process also reveals a great deal about the agentic role of researchers. Bennett, J. (2005) The Agency of Assemblages and the North American Blackout. Public Culture 17(3), 445–465. Braidotti, R. (2013) The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press. Lather, P. (2013). Methodolgy-21: What do we do in the afterward? International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26, 634-645.