Vol. 1 (2025)
Practice Theory: Past, Present, Future

Essays

What is the Place of the Human Being in Practice Theories? An Answer from a Posthumanist Position

Published 01-03-2025

  • Silvia Gherardi

Silvia Gherardi
Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento

An ammended version of Giorgio de Chirico's Hector and Andromache (1918).

Abstract

This paper sets out a response to the journal’s question - what is the place of the human being in practice theories? - from a posthumanist position. The article is positioned within the so-called re-turn to practice theories after the 2000s, inside work and organization studies. It explores the conception of 'the human being' once practice is assumed as the unit of analysis. The discussion is organised around three arguments. The first focuses on the decentring of the human subject, no longer universal, pre-given and the only seat of agency. The second articulates a processual vision of the human as becoming-with nonhuman, more-than-human, and earth. The third proposes a conception of the human multiple, emerging from ethic-onto-epistemic practices of knowledge production grounded in the concepts of sociomateriality and naturecultural. In conclusion, the article argues that the decentralisation of the human subject in posthumanist theories of practice opens up methodological possibilities that do not depend ontologically, epistemologically, or ethically on the figure of the human subject.

Keywords

agencement, becoming-with, nonhuman-human relations, natureculture, sociomateriality

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