ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the merit of a model of citizenship which departs from thinking it as exclusively human-centred is explored. Set within the context of the posthuman present and bringing feminist materialist perspectives to bear, it demonstrates how a posthuman de-centring of human subjects and re-centring of human and more-than-human relations challenges received views of civics and citizenship. Working empirical material generated from an arts-based, ethnographic project undertaken in Aotearoa New Zealand, it documents how pedagogies of a relational and decolonialising kind can set this challenge in motion – with affects playing a predominant role. The chapter promotes thinking with the notion of becoming-citizen to reveal unrecognised aspects of citizenship and civic participation and what they imply for formal citizenship curriculum. Emerging as more than what people do and whether and how they belong to a given community, a becoming approach to citizenship attunes to affective material acts regarding right practice. The argument is made that changing the foundational narrative of citizenship and citizen subjectivity brings along with it an ethics and an educative praxis that accents human interdependency with the more-than-human world such that complex issues of social and ecological justice can be addressed.
