Schooling entanglements: clipboards, write-ups, and resignation letters

This article describes how schooling – the oppressive, disciplinary force of much U.S. education – is a lively actor, with the agency to change in response to efforts to resist it. Using an agential realist account, the article traces how humans, nonhumans, and discourses intra-act to shape the ongoing power of schooling. The posthumanist framing decenters the human and affords the possibility of acknowledging the agency of more than human actors – clipboards, write-ups, resignation letters, schooling discourses, racialized discourses – that may not be accounted for within humanist framings. In doing so, it also offers a unique perspective on how efforts to challenge or resist schooling must take a broader range of actors into account, from clipboards and handouts to adultism and racism.