Posthumanist education: the limits of the Freirean approach and the rise of object-oriented pedagogy

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Posthumanist education: the limits of the Freirean approach and the rise of object-oriented pedagogy

Thiago Pinho

Brasil

Abstract

This essay aims to explore the impact of Object- Oriented Ontology (O.O.O) within the realm of pedagogy, critically examining its departure from humanistic and traditional paradigms. Simultaneously, it presents an alternative perspective on education that decenters the human as an inevitable ground. In a contrasting move, attention is directed towards Bruno Latour and Graham Harman, elucidating key facets of their ideas. This shift also signifies a departure from the conventional realm of “critical pedagogy”, as championed by Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire. However, it is crucial to acknowledge and appreciate the contributions and significance of Freire's work. This essay adopts a left-wing stance, with no intention of launching moral attacks on Paulo Freire, as is sometimes witnessed when reactionaries and conservatives enter the academic arena. Criticisms within these pages focus on the content of Freire's writings, tracing the trajectory from his seminal work, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, published in 1968, to his final piece, “Pedagogy of Autonomy” written in 1996. The aim is not to exhaust all arguments put forth by Freire but to engage with select ideas, since his oeuvre is extremely complex and full of different layers. It is essential to clarify that the critique presented here does not target the character of Paulo Freire but rather delves into some of the theoretical references behind the scenes, particularly the anthropocentrism associated with his ideas. Consequently, this essay emerges as an interdisciplinary endeavor, a conjunction between philosophy and social theory. What doors will this discussion open? What new field of possibilities awaits us? I invite you to dive into this debate, exploring the potential for an Object-Oriented Pedagogy (O.O.P) on the horizon. humanistic oriented ontology

Keywords: Object-Oriented Ontology, Bruno Latour, Graham Harman, Paulo Freire, Posthumanism.

Àíîòàö³ÿ

Òüÿãî ϳíüî. Ïîñòãóìàí³ñòè÷íà îñâ³òà: ìåæ³ ï³äõîäó Ôðåéðå òà âèíèêíåííÿ îá'ºêòíî-îð³ºíòîâàííî¿ ïåäàãîã³êè

Öå åñå ìຠíà ìåò³ äîñë³äèòè âïëèâ îá'ºêòíî-îð³ºíòîâàíî¿ îíòîëî㳿 (Î.Î.Î.) íà ñôåðó ïåäàãîã³êè, êðèòè÷íî ðîçãëÿäàþ÷è ¿¿ â³äõ³ä â³ä ãóìàí³ñòè÷íèõ ³ òðàäèö³éíèõ ïàðàäèãì. Âîäíî÷àñ âîíî ïðåäñòàâëÿº àëüòåðíàòèâíó òî÷êó çîðó íà îñâ³òó, ÿêà äåöåíòðóº ëþäèíó ÿê íåìèíó÷ó ¿¿ îñíîâó. Ó êîíòðàñòíîìó õîä³ óâàãà ñïðÿìîâàíà íà Áðóíî Ëàòóðà òà Ãðåìà Ãàðìàíà, ç'ÿñîâóþ÷è êëþ÷îâ³ àñïåêòè ¿õí³õ ³äåé. Öåé çñóâ òàêîæ îçíà÷ຠâ³äõ³ä â³ä òðàäèö³éíî¿ ñôåðè «êðèòè÷íî¿ ïåäàãîã³êè», ÿêó â³äñòîþâàâ áðàçèëüñüêèé ïåäàãîã Ïàóëî Ôðåéðå. Îäíàê, íàäçâè÷àéíî âàæëèâî âèçíàòè òà îö³íèòè âíåñîê ³ çíà÷åííÿ ðîáîòè Ôðåéðå. Öå åñå ïðèéìຠë³âó ïîçèö³þ, íå ìàþ÷è íàì³ðó çàïóñêàòè ìîðàëüí³ íàïàäêè íà Ïàóëî Ôðåéðå, ÿê öå ³íîä³ ìîæíà ïîáà÷èòè, êîëè íà àêàäåì³÷íó àðåíó âèõîäÿòü ðåàêö³îíåðè òà êîíñåðâàòîðè. Êðèòèêà íà öèõ ñòîð³íêàõ çîñåðåäæåíà íà çì³ñò³ òâîð³â Ôðåéðå, ïðîñòåæóþ÷è òðàºêòîð³þ â³ä éîãî ôóíäàìåíòàëüíî¿ ïðàö³ «Ïåäàãîã³êà ïðèãíîáëåíèõ», îïóáë³êîâàíî¿ â 1968 ðîö³, äî éîãî îñòàííüî¿ ñòàòò³ «Ïåäàãîã³êà àâòîíî쳿», íàïèñàíî¿ â 1996 ðîö³. Ìåòà ïîëÿãຠíå â òîìó, ùîá âèñíàæèòè âñ³ àðãóìåíòè, âèñóíóò³ Ôðåéðîì, àëå äîëó÷èòèñÿ äî äåÿêèõ ç éîãî ³äåé, îñê³ëüêè éîãî òâîð÷³ñòü º íàäçâè÷àéíî ñêëàäíîþ òà ïîâíîþ ð³çíèõ øàð³â. Âàæëèâî ïîÿñíèòè, ùî ïðåäñòàâëåíà òóò êðèòèêà íå ñïðÿìîâàíà íà Ïàóëî Ôðåéðå ÿê íà ô³ëîñîôà, à ñêîð³øå çàãëèáëþºòüñÿ â äåÿê³ òåîðåòè÷í³ ïîñèëàííÿ ïîçà ñöåíîþ, çîêðåìà â àíòðîïîöåíòðèçì, ïîâ'ÿçàíèé ç éîãî ³äåÿìè. Îòæå, öå åñå ïîñòຠÿê ì³æäèñöèïë³íàðíà ñïðîáà, ïîºäíàííÿ ô³ëîñîô³¿ òà ñîö³àëüíî¿ òåîð³¿. ßê³ äâåð³ â³äêðèº öÿ äèñêóñ³ÿ? ßêå íîâå ïîëå ìîæëèâîñòåé íàñ ÷åêàº? ß çàïðîøóþ âàñ çàíóðèòèñÿ â öþ äèñêóñ³þ, äîñë³äæóþ÷è ïîòåíö³àë îá'ºêòíî- îð³ºíòîâàíî¿ ïåäàãîã³êè (Î.Î.Ï.) íà ãîðèçîíò³.

Êëþ÷îâ³ ñëîâà: îá'ºêòíî-îð³ºíòîâàíà îíòîëîã³ÿ, Áðóíî Ëàòóð, Ãðåì Ãàðìàí, Ïàóëî Ôðåéðå, ïîñòãóìàí³çì.

“The pedagogy of the oppressed, animated by authentic humanist generosity [...] presents itselfas a pedagogy of humanity” [Freire 2005: 54].

Paulo Freire is a reference in every sense of the word, as well as the patron saint of Brazilian education since 2012. There is no person in Brazil, and no academic in the humanities and social sciences in the world, who has not come across the name “Paulo Freire” in books, lectures, magazines or TV programs. His career is not only admirable, with several titles and national and international recognition, such as the UNESCO Prize for Education and Peace (1986), but also inspiring in every detail. Despite his importance, and even his gentle and contagious personality, Paulo Freire remains a thinker, a figure with certain premises within the pedagogical field, be they ethical, philosophical, sociological, in other words, a specific package of approaches open to analysis and even criticism.

As will become clear in these lines, this is a progressive essay, so do not expect moral attacks on Paulo Freire, as happens when reactionaries and conservatives appear on the horizon. All the criticisms throughout these few pages are about the content of what was written, the background to his arguments, starting with the “pedagogy of the oppressed” and landing on the “pedagogy of autonomy”, in other words, from his “first” to his last work. Therefore, what is criticized in these lines is not the character of Paulo Freire, but some of the theoretical references behind the scenes. As a kind of contrast, I invite Bruno Latour and Graham Harman onto the stage, accompanied by some of their main ideas, while at the same time moving a little away from classic “critical pedagogy”, although always recognizing their contributions and relevance.

Critical thinking

In the pedagogical field, from Marxism (Lukacs1, Paulo Freire) to liberalism (Popper “It is precisely in this sense and for this reason that we need the dialectical method in order not to succumb to the social illusion thus produced and to be able to glimpse the essence behind this illusion” [Lukacs 2003: 71]. (Here and further all the necessary translations were made by me - T. P.) “This transition [from a closed society to an open and liberal one] takes place when one consciously recognizes, for the first time, that social institutions are man-made and when one discusses their voluntary modification according to their greater or lesser desirability for the attainment of human goals or purposes” [Popper 1974: 322].), passing through (post)structuralist authors (Bell Hooks, Bourdieu), the reasoning always seems to be the same, a kind of anthropocentric, very humanist version Freire's proposal, for example, is avowedly a “humanist pedagogy” [Freire 2005: 54]. In other words, “I am talking about a universal ethics of human beings” [Freire 1994: 2].. “Educating” means liberating, it means offering the student the unique chance to see the truth, the things behind the scenes, the real enemies hidden in the shadows, in other words, “educating”, since Book VII of Plato's Republic, is an important “exit from the cave”, an escape from the dense fog around us. Right now, for example, there is a dark cloth over my eyes, a metaphorical fabric of ideology preventing me from seeing things as they really are. Being critical means removing this visual obstacle, this epistemic atrophy, revealing the hidden essence of the depths of the world, while freeing ourselves from a shallow and alienating life. Sooner or later, we have to choose “between acting or having the illusion of acting” [Freire 2005: 48], being an object or a subject, having a legitimate or false life. Thanks to this “critical pedagogy”, it is possible to think for ourselves, no longer as puppets of forces beyond us, of treacherous elements operating between the lines of language and institutions. Finally, Freedom!!!!

“We will be truly critical if we live the fullness of praxis. That is, if our action involves a critical reflection which, by organizing our thinking each time, leads us to overcome a strictly naive knowledge of reality. This needs to reach a higher level, with which people arrive at the reason for reality. But this requires constant thinking, which cannot be denied to the popular masses if the aim is liberation” [Freire 1987: 81].

It seems obvious, I know, but things are more complex than they appear. Taking a different path, in Latour's view “to educate” is a posthumanist verb, decentered and even dangerous. It is not a gesture of liberation from structural, systemic ties, a kind of exit from the matrix, as “critical pedagogy” likes to suggest. “Educating” means affecting, as well as remaining available to certain parts of the world previously unexplored or unnoticed by me. For example, when we think of feminism, the goal, according to Latour, is not the emancipation of individuals, making each of them freer, happier, nobler, but to affect their bodies, allowing each of them greater contact with the experiences of the world. A feminist is able to be affected in new ways, broadening her experiential field, a rare circumstance in a reactionary religious person. This does not mean that the feminist is freer, more intelligent, happier or nobler than the reactionary. It is not about revelation, much less freedom, but affection.

Imagine Latour's favorite example, the “Sommelier”, the wine connoisseur. What is the difference between him and me, someone with no training in the world of grapes, a complete beginner? The Sommelier is not someone who has revealed some hidden essence of the world, a noble and free creature, beyond the experience of the idiots out there. In fact, the Sommelier has a richer body, more available when affected by the grape, observing various details that go beyond the perception of any layman, such as its acidity, temperature, vintage, consistency and many other interesting details. Undoubtedly, this show that takes place on your taste buds is not an epistemic or ethical merit. On this journey in the art of tasting “[...] you have to be trained through a one-week course. Starting with a stupid nose, capable only of differentiating between `sweet' and `fetid' smells, we quickly become a `nose' (un nez), in other words, someone capable of highlighting increasingly subtle differences and distinguishing them from each other, even when they are masked or mixed together. It's no coincidence that the person is defined as a “nose”, as if, with practice, he had acquired an organ that defined his ability to detect chemical differences, as well as others. Through training, he has learned to have a nose that allows him to inhabit a richly differentiated and odoriferous world” [Latour 2004: 206-207].

Note that the trajectory of the “nose” does not have to do with “awareness” [Freire 1998: 19), “true reflection” [Freire 1987: 10), “human essence” [Freire 1987: 12], “conquest of freedom” [Freire 1987: 33], “authentic life” [Freire 2005: 48], or any other existing humanist trait, but with the broadening of experiences, in other words, the axis is always horizontal, not vertical; it is not upwards, but sideways. After a lesson with me, a sociologist, my student does not become freer, or more intelligent, or more ethical... he becomes “more affected” by certain previously unexplored portions of reality. This “affective tone” does not give my student, at least in advance, any kind of merit, other than what I call “aesthetic”, involving the potential to affect and be affected. Just like the sommelier, your body can digest new tones of the world, expanding its field of affection. This means that before my class, even before any study in the humanities and social sciences, my student did not walk around “alienated”, but “inarticulate” [Latour 2004: 209].

When students finish another lesson in biology, chemistry, physics, architecture,music, cinema, political science, botany, sociology, they broaden their experiential fields, with each of these disciplines expanding their bodies beyond what was expected. A new part of the world opens up before the curious eyes of children, teenagers and adults, a new spectrum of colors, tastes and smells. If before things out there seemed dull and homogeneous, nothing more than an empty, lifeless canvas, now they are populated by molecules, mammals, stars, Bhaskara formulas, the culture industry, the digestive system, international agreements, electrical structures, cumulus nimbus, photosynthesis, gender relations, tectonic plates and so many other actants, in the Latourian sense. In other words, the subject “[...] learns to be affected by more and more elements” [Latour 2004: 206]. Note that the point here is not to reveal the truth behind the illusions, climbing beyond the ideological clouds towards the legitimate (real) world, but to “horizontalize” the possibilities, learning to affect oneself with new people, circumstances, objects and relationships. This is the role of the teacher, even those in the humanities and social sciences, that is, even us, the “enlightened ones”, whose main goal is to “unmask the false beliefs that ordinary people hold” [Latour 2000: 4]. Posthumanist teaching does not emancipate anyone, but only enhances their fields of affect, which reveals throughout the pedagogical process a much more aesthetic trait than an epistemic (theory) or ethical (practice) one. Beyond the theoretical and the practical, beyond even the fusion of the two in some dialectically colored pot, we have aesthetics as a more constitutive ground. The goal is always to horizontalize bodies, not to verticalize consciousnesses, at least this is what I call posthumanist pedagogy, represented very well by Bruno Latour.

The critical subject

What's more, in the universe of “critical pedagogies” there is a very curious picture of how things work, making its humanist undertones even clearer. Apparently, there are two types of humans out there, two irreducible creatures: 1) people with an “open mind”1 [Hooks 1994: 54; Popper 1974], capable of reflecting on themselves and the world around them, putting their own arguments at risk in the name of a good and productive debate and, at the other extreme, 2) beings incapable of this type of openness. The reason for this incapacity has various contours, whether ethical (people are evil or authoritarian) or epistemic (people are stupid or alienated). According to Popper, there are people out there with the ability “to expose themselves to [...] challenges, to accept the possibility that [their] predictions will be contradicted” [Stengers 1949: 42]. In any case, the boundary is very clear: critical people vs. non-critical people. On the other hand, at the frontiers of the posthumanist Latourian edifice, the protagonist is in the world and not in certain special subjects. In practice, if you look at it calmly, nobody out there, nobody at all, is willing to put their values and their sense of reality at risk on purpose. After all, “[...] in this matter of beliefs we are extreme conservatives” [James 2019: 27]. We think critically not because there is something incredible in our heads, or by choice, or by merit, but as a defense mechanism in a threatening world “I, too, feel myself more strongly committed to a practice of open-mindedness” [Hooks 1994: 54]. “Facts don't penetrate the world in which our beliefs live, they don't give birth to them, they don't destroy them [...] a flood of misfortunes or illnesses, following one family uninterruptedly, won't make them doubt the generosity of their God or the talent of their doctor” [Proust 2006: 76]..

Just like the classic example of the hammer in “Being and Time”, the world manifests itself before my eyes as an object of reflection only when something fails, when an instrument breaks, when something stalls, atrophies, explodes or frustrates. Critical thinking, therefore, is not the result of “theoretical or practical merit”, much less some kind of dialectical dance between the two. The “critical subject” is nothing more than a body thrown into the world, trapped by the overflowing flux of circumstances, in other words, critical thinking is always a symptom, an effect of external impacts, of a persistent “Real”. “Knowledge” is not a product of “word and action” [Freire 1987: 13], but something that escapes even this dialectical proposal. As in Graham Harman's Object-Oriented Ontology (O.O.O), something overflows the very attempt at synthesis between the theoretical and the practical, a kind of “surplus value” seeping out of the corners of the pedagogical edifice.

In Latour, the universe is not separated into critical and non-critical people, since “critical thinking” is a characteristic of the world itself, of the resistance produced by circumstances on me. The leading role, therefore, is not epistemic (theory), nor even ethical (practice), but ontological, in the sense of the world. Why does the humanities field carry so many reflections, so many post-structuralist, systemic, pragmatic and decolonial analyses? According to Latour, it does not have to do with the initiative of incredible and open creatures, but thanks to the countless obstacles in the way of our desire. Put differently, nobody likes contingency, complexity or contradiction, but we are forced by the world to digest this characteristic, to look behind the scenes of certain practices, discourses and images, investigating the contours of what is said and what is done. As with the Heideggerian hammer, only when the world breaks does my critical energy come into play. In a poetic sense, almost a post-structural juggling act, we can say that the world thinks, not me; or rather, it thinks through me. There is no gulf here between enlightened creatures open to criticism and stupid creatures closed in on themselves. I only think because I am forced to by a world that goes beyond me, challenges me, insults me and provokes me. The protagonist, in Bruno Latour's posthumanist reasoning, is always in the world, not in teachers, students, much less in the relationship between the two. They are undoubtedly part of the pedagogical cake recipe, but only as necessary complements and not as transcendental matrices. In this kind of curious pedagogy, you have to “learn to be affected, which means `effected', moved, set in motion by other entities, human or non-human. If you are not engaged in this teaching, you will become insensitive, stupid, you will drop dead” [Latour 2004: 205].

Correlationist pedagogy

As a result of this autonomy of things, this challenging character, the pedagogical process does not aim to put us in control of circumstances, as a more anthropocentric approach would imagine This anthropocentric tone is clear several times in Paulo Freire's works, especially when he tries to combat the “dehumanization of the world” [Freire 2005: 44], interpreted as a space where humans are not aware of the circumstances, let alone their ability to intervene. The aim, in this pedagogical model, is to rehabilitate the subject as a practical conscience, at the same time as their neglected protagonist. , but rather to recognize how much the world goes beyond us, how much contingency is part of the structure of reality, rather than a simple temporary and vertical problem. The apprentice, according to Latour, needs to digest this recalcitrant detail of life, however indigestible it may be, all within a world that is resistant to my practical or theoretical categories, imploding my expectations. The main word in the Latourian dictionary is not “empowerment”, a very anthropocentric term, but “diplomacy”, a creative practice in the face of a complex and distressing world. We must always negotiate with human and non- human forces, in a decentered space where we are not incredible creatures capable of creating the universe in our image and likeness, but simple negotiators in an overflowing field. This “art of diplomacy [...] is not about goodwill, unity, sharing a common language or intersubjective understanding” [Stengers 2010: 28-29], but rather a tense exercise in the face of an inconvenient world.

Posthumanist pedagogy decenters the student and the teacher, rather than centralizing their attacks, displacing all their pretensions, whether good or bad, democratic or authoritarian. The outside world is not a practical and theoretical product of humans, as humanist pedagogy suggests, but a complex space of intense negotiation, a flow of experiences that escapes, overflows and threatens the whole of this all too human universe. In the eyes of speculative realists1 humanist pedagogy plunges into correlational waters, by thinking of reality always, and necessarily, as a direct product of implicated humans “Latour has, however, been an important figure in the recent speculative turn” [Bryant et al. 2011: 5]. “The world and human beings do not exist separately” [Freire 2005: 50]., all in an inescapable bond, at least when the critical subject lifts the veil of circumstance. The aim of this pedagogy is to allow humans to recognize themselves in things, welcoming correlationism as a kind of merit, a reward at the end of the pedagogical exercise. To talk about the world, therefore, is to talk about our role as protagonists, as thinking subjects and agents. In this sense, “humans produce social reality” [Freire 2005: 51]. Undoubtedly, they do not produce as they wish, as any Marxist will always remind us, but in any case, they continue to produce, they continue to be the owners of the place called life, despite some obstacles in the way of this possession. The outside world is not an autonomous space, with its own rhythm, much less an unknown and strange path, but an extension of our practical and theoretical interventions, an atmosphere that can (and should) be known and modified, at least when we free ourselves from ideological ties.

In the posthumanist pedagogy of figures like Bruno Latour, humans continue to participate in things, but as simple negotiators in a space that goes beyond them, that provokes them, that escapes them. Rewriting the words of Paulo Freire himself, Latour would say: “The world and humans do not exist separately, except when that same world overflows, resists". In this instant of resistance, of ontological confrontation, reality reminds us of something precious, a fundamental posthumanist teaching: it is not out there for us, for me, just waiting for our theory or well-directed practice. “The world waits for no one, least of all the artist or the anthropologist, and the description of the latter, like the description of the former, can do no more than catch a fleeting moment in an endless process” [Ingold 2011: 232]. The universe, in all its complexity and contingency, overflows the boundaries of all our pretensions, no matter how good or bad, authoritarian or progressive, healthy or harmful. Something simply overflows...

We need to move beyond the humanism that has always been part of the Western path, as well as its pedagogical developments, making room for other agencies on the horizon. This way of experiencing the world is not a utopia proposed by figures such as Bruno Latour, Graham Harman or Whitehead, but something already experienced by other realities, other ontological arrangements where the human is just one piece on a complex board. In a world like those of the Arawete, an indigenous people located in the north of Brazil, it is possible to observe this posthumanist scenario, since nature, spirits and other elements not only exist, but also have agency, transforming reality in various ways. If in the “West” humans have the power to see and intervene in things, other peoples, on the other hand, follow other paths. In our westernizing eyes, the outside world is available to be “known” and “modified” by humans. We are the matrix that organizes the boundaries of existence, as well as the existents out there, whether with good or bad intentions. In other words, the outside world is vulnerable to our epistemic (theoretical) and ethical (practical) onslaughts. People like the Arawet, on the contrary, follow a different path, already experimenting with a kind of posthumanist pedagogy, at least in the way they interact with themselves and their own world. “To say, therefore, that animals and spirits are persons [...] is to attribute to non- humans the capacities of conscious intentionality and agency that define the position of the subject” [Castro 1998: 476]. They act, interfere and carry specific trajectories. In this “Amerindian perspectivism”, humans undoubtedly exist, they are certainly part of the ontological scenario, but not as inevitable transcendentals operating behind the scenes, but as “diplomats” negotiating with forces beyond them.

I don't know if you noticed, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, which lasted from 2020 to 2022, no one blamed the virus, even though it was responsible for the fifteen million deaths around the world. The spotlight always falls on humans, whether they have good or bad intentions, right, left, center or any specific political position. Never mind the ideological clashes, never mind the ethical tensions placed on the table, after all, everyone agrees on a kind of underlying humanism, a belief in the human and its potential to transform the world outside. Since in the “West” nature is seen as passive, without any trace of agency, it cannot be blamed. I cannot blame an animal, a spirit or an object, at least within the boundaries of our European “naturalism”1. That's why in a hypothetical scenario where my dog bites you, I am responsible, not my dog. Apparently, I am the only one in this equation who acts, while my canine partner is only acted upon, that is, moved by other forces, such as instinct. But on the posthumanist frontiers of this essay, “I consider human affections and their properties in the same way as other natural things” [Espinosa 2009: 194].

The two humans

From the pragmatic waters of Uncle Sam's land to the sophisticated walls of the structuralists, passing through the existential cafes of France in the 1960s, there are always two types of humanism roaming the halls, lectures, events and books. There is, on the one hand, the epistemological human, the one who masters all the cognitive tools, overcoming the barriers of ideology and various structures of illusion, as with “the critical sociologist” [Latour 2013]. And, on the other hand, there is the ethical human, the one who uses his well-intentioned practice, which often implies radical forms of intervention in reality. Despite the differences, these two models of the human, both contained in Social Theory and its pedagogical ramifications, share the same operating matrix, the same belief in the human capacity to control variables, whether epistemologically (theoretically) and/or ethically (practically). Humans are always “in the process of transforming the world - giving it meaning” [Hooks 1994: 48].

Of course, the human is an important and often decisive element in the process of intervening in reality, but this human, according to the Object- Oriented Pedagogy In this “bifurcation of nature”, as the British philosopher Whitehead (1978) would say, there is, on the one hand, the natural, seen as passive and external, and, on the other, the sphere of culture, of humans and everything related to them. According to Savransky, “a world divided into two realms that distribute and organize causes and effects, subjects and objects, facts and values, nature and culture, appearance and the really real, and so on” [Savransky 2016: 213]. Bruno Latour's posthumanist line, at least within the limits of a pedagogical debate, can also be seen as an Object-Oriented Pedagogy (O.O.P.), following Graham Harman and his contemporary posthumanism. (O.O.P.) of Latour, Graham Harman Whitehead and many others, is not the epistemic or even the ethical, but the Aesthetic Human. Remember that aesthetics here is not just in the vulgar and classic sense of “art”, but also following a more specific and even Spinozian approach, that is, aesthetics in the sense of the Body, sensitivity, involving a certain potential for affection. We are talking about everything that “disposes your body to be able to be affected in many ways, or that makes it capable of affecting external bodies in many ways” [Espinosa 2009: 184]. This aesthetic human, unlike the epistemic and ethical, is much more of a negotiator, a kind of diplomat [Latour 2013). In other words, they become part of a democracy of objects [Bryant 2011], in a horizontal space of experiences, and no longer in a dictatorship where everything comes down to their monopoly of meaning, as happens in humanist pedagogical lines. Therefore, in the words of George Orwell, it is necessary to go beyond the “tyranny of human beings” [Orwell 2000: 8]. As a result, “it is not only the objects of science that resist, but all the others too, [even] those that should have been ground to dust by the mighty teeth of the deconstructionists [...]” [Latour 2004b: 243). Because of this character of resistance, or stubbornness, the human is not an inevitable transcendental, an insurmountable condition of possibility, but a negotiator, just a participant in a complex and even contingent scenario. In this “art of diplomacy” [Stengers 2010: 28], instead of a passive nature, just waiting for the human with its epistemic and ethical fingers, as wise and well-intentioned creatures, we now have, on the contrary, an active, dynamic and, above all, stubborn world. Without a doubt, we humans “...are capable of doing incredible things that even plants and animals seem incapable of doing, let alone inanimate matter. We've launched spaceships, split the atom, cracked the genetic code: and these are just our most recent feats after millennia of discovering the wheel, brewing beer, making glass, farming, using fire, domesticating animals, as well as developing the oldest surgical techniques. But all these incredible achievements, even believing that animals can't do anything so complex [...] doesn't automatically make humans worthy of filling fifty percent of the ontology” [Harman 2017: 56].

This means that humans are not a privileged part of the universe, much less an all- powerful transcendental that organizes the meaning of things around it, but a living organism like any other, in a complex space of interactions and stubbornness. In practice, all this aesthetic profile in the bowels of the world so guarantees objectivity itself that the post- structuralists have abdicated at the Foucauldian altar, without giving in to the positivists and their idea of science as mere tautology. In other words, “the goal is an achievement that cannot be reduced to general, purely human categories, an achievement that requires humans not to feel that they are the masters of the situation, that they are responsible for what is achieved” [Stengers 2010: 22]. The world, in this scenario, undoubtedly exists, but not for me, regardless of whether my motivations are progressive or reactionary, positive or negative, right or wrong. The most I can do is negotiate with overflowing people, things and circumstances.

Conclusion

We can't be like Mr. Goliadkin in the story “The Double”, especially if our goal is a posthumanist pedagogy. He always “spoke in a tone that indicated that he was content to be as he was, that he had never learned to be affected, quite the opposite” [Dostoievski 1963: 294]. This aesthetic criterion is of fundamental importance when we think about the pedagogical field. For a long time, the main parameters were the epistemic and the ethical, theory and practice, but something now pushes the boundaries of these criteria, offering aesthetics as a possible way out in times of such complexity.

Although this essay has been critical of what I have called humanist pedagogies, it is necessary to make clear their importance in the past, as well as their relevance today. The aim of these pages has not been to demolish the edifice of their contributions, much less that of Paulo Freire himself, but only to highlight some specific problems that still lurk within its walls. Object-Oriented Pedagogy (O.O.P.), the thesis raised here, is much more an implosion of humanist lineages, a kind of internal seed, than something alien and unprecedented. Paulo Freire, for example, despite the humanism that accompanies all his writings, always highlighted the role of affections, even a certain aesthetic potential in the educational field. There are several possible connections between his theory and O.O.P, although for methodological reasons we have decided to emphasize the differences. In simpler terms, this does not prevent others in the future from drawing important parallels between the two traditions. In any case, both offer different answers to different questions. Faced with the contemporary world, with its environmental crises and decolonizing reflections, a more appropriate pedagogy is needed, which does not mean an absolute, eternal or universal option. It simply means the need for a more relevant tool in the face of specific problems. The hammer is no better than the saw, Bruno Latour is no better than Paulo Freire, since both have different purposes and often answer different questions.

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