Fraying the Edges of Literacies: What Do Post‐Philosophies Produce for Early Childhood Literacies?

As two scholars who have read and thought with post‐philosophies, such as posthumanism, we invite a discussion on how post‐philosophies have, and could, open up possibilities for thinking about early literacies. The paper traces the development and contribution of post‐perspectives in relation to early childhood literacies, before identifying three interconnected threads via which post‐philosophies invite us to conceptualize, teach, and research literacies: uncertainty, mundanity, and movement. Concepts such as these, we argue, have frayed the edges of “the box” that defines literacy via humanist logics, thus serving as gathering points for a growing critique of the assumption that “human” is a fixed and unproblematic category. Through personal reflections on how post‐philosophical concepts have forced us to think differently, we ask: what have, and could, post‐philosophies, specifically those that align with posthumanism, contribute to the field of early childhood literacies?