Positionality Statement

In 2023, the Postdigital Science and Education book seriesFootnote 1 published two edited volumes on postdigital research: Postdigital Research: Genealogies, Challenges, and Future Perspectives (Jandrić et al. 2023a) and Constructing Postdigital Research: Method and Emancipation (Jandrić et al. 2023c; see Poltze 2023). The books slightly differ in scope and focus. Admitting the lack of philosophical underpinning of early postdigital research, but seeing such lack as an advantage that ‘allowed the budding community to freely develop its own ideas’ (Jandrić 2023a: 17), Postdigital Research: Genealogies, Challenges, and Future Perspectives (Jandrić et al. 2023a) promises ‘an in-depth exploration of the many faces of postdigital research’ (Jandrić 2023b: vii) and ‘an important steppingstone in development of postdigital research here and now’ (v).

I assume that my perspective on postdigital research differs from many. For those with careers longer than mine, postdigital research seems to offer freedom to collaborate, write, think, or publish differently. Postdigital research seems to be an island in the stormy sea of academic work, worth landing to take a breath, join hands, and look at the world from new perspectives. For me, though, postdigital research is not a ‘temptingly different’ thing, as I accepted my academic position in October 2020 in an environment that explicitly embraces postdigital research.Footnote 2

Just a few weeks after I started my job, I attended the postdigital lunch event organized by my institute, where Felicitas Macgilchrist interviewed Sarah Hayes and Petar Jandrić about Postdigital Theory. Both made the strong point that the postdigital ‘is a participatory, flexible and inclusive [concept] in which dialogic, interdisciplinary approaches play a significant role’ (Lüpkes 2020). I found this approach incredibly charismatic, added the word ‘postdigital’ to the title of my dissertation, attended a postdigital reading circle with colleagues, and analyzed contemporary theatre pedagogy from a postdigital perspective (Traulsen and Büchner 2022).

Despite its charisma, I often felt let down by the postdigital. I found no clear definitions of what it is, what analytical potential it holds, or what world phenomena it is (not) capable of describing. As an emerging scholar in the qualification phase, I wanted unambiguity, stability, and reliability—qualities that postdigital research consistently eluded. The postdigital felt like that one charismatic friend I never quite know whether he’ll show up on time or stand next to me when I need him. Maybe he’s not my friend at all! But then I remember all his fascinating stories, how much I like listening to him, and that we always have an exciting time together.

I approach this review ethnographically, adopting the cultural anthropological concept of rich points. Rich points are ‘signal[s] of a difference between what you know and what you need to learn to understand and explain what just happened’ (Agar 2006: 64). Reading this book left me confused, surprised, and intrigued in many places. In my review, I share these emotional responses and expand them as rich points. My hope is to build a bridge between the book and the postdigital research community, encouraging further postdigital thinking, writing, and dialogue (Arndt et al. 2019; Jandrić et al. 2019).

What is Postdigital? Holding the Postdigital in Abeyance

In the first part of the book, my hopes for a clear definition of postdigital research are solemnly dashed. My urge for clarity arises not only from my own (clearly misguided) desire for structure, but also from the expectations of the academic system towards emerging scholars. We are expected to develop a clear profile, position ourselves theoretically, and strategically apply methods and concepts to our research. However, Jandrić et al. (2023b: 6) immediately clarify that the postdigital project is against definitions. ‘To define a field is necessarily to put boundaries around it, to determine which writings, conversations, people are ‘inside’ and which are ‘outside,’’ thus they ‘actively avoid defining, delineating, and canonizing postdigital research to any restrictive extent’ (7).

I feel disappointed by the lack of clarity, but then, I am also intrigued about the range of contributions that may come up. I realize that I should control my own urge to define and rather embrace ambiguity and indefiniteness. In the German language, there is an expression for this practice: etwas in der Schwebe halten or (loosely translated) ‘to hold something in abeyance.’ This describes a situation in which one does not react impulsively to unfamiliar or unclear situations, but rather sits with their ambivalence in a productive intermediate state to resonate with the unfamiliar physically, mentally, and affectively. This feeling is further reinforced when Jandrić et al. (2023b: 6) state that ‘[p]ostdigital research can employ any research methodology, yet not all research is postdigital.’ So what, then, is postdigital?

Shane J. Ralston (2023) answers this question with a theory of postdigital parity. ‘Since postdigitalism indicates both a break and an extension of prior theories, it is necessary to supplement, hybridize, and integrate theoretical perspectives with an eye to engendering relative equality between the digital and predigital’ (Ralston 2023: 42). In the postdigital, the digital and the predigital meet without ontologically privileging either. This parity is relative and speaks to the postdigital researcher’s ability to set his or her own priorities, depending on the project and perspective.

This is liberating but also vague and messy—especially for a budding researcher! However, even the earliest publications about postdigital science and education acknowledge and embrace that messiness (Jandrić et al. 2018: 895). So I take it upon myself to hold this messiness and relativity in abeyance, as does Ralston (2023: 48), who admits that ‘many theories can potentially fill the grounding role, leave the matter of theorizing parity open-ended, and thereby empower postdigital researchers to freely select one or more suitable theories to inform the postdigital principle of parity.’

Empowerment and freedom on the one hand—uncertainty and messiness on the other. Holding it in abeyance. Helpful guidance is offered by Lesley Gourlay (2023), who critically works through the prominent postdigital metaphors of the ‘network’ and the ‘meshwork.’ ‘[W]hat both these metaphors fail to account for are the possibility of spaces between the lines, the interstices which are not composed of or concerned with connections or entanglements, or where the nature of what goes on there is somewhat different’ (Gourlay 2023: 60).

This puts together some pieces of the postdigital puzzle. The dominant images of the multifaceted and inseparable connections of the predigital and the digital obscure these very spaces that Gourlay argues for—the ‘in-between,’ the ‘remaining,’ the ‘unconnected.’ And these spaces are populated with concepts such as ephemerality, seclusion, and copresence—all of which entail radical tenderness and vulnerability. In Gourlay’s spaces, the postdigital is ‘more than’ digital (2023: 65), which seems to me the most compelling of the many interpretations of the prefix ‘post’ to date.

Postdigital Research: Reaching Outward

Tim Fawns et al. (2023) reflect on their experience with postdigital research in a university course aimed at mapping and tracing methods to more accurately capture the postdigital. The course seems to theoretically and practically address many of my questions about the postdigital, and the authors’ reflections offer some further clarification. One of the first premises expressed in the chapter is: ‘postdigital inquiry must contain some analysis of ‘digital’ technology, but this could be connected to actual, historical, hypothetical, or possible activity’ (Fawns et al. 2023: 79). This simple premise seems to be the lowest common denominator of postdigital research, and I applaud the authors for its precise formulation.

I am also curious about the kinship of sociomaterial and postdigital research, as I have heard about it often: ‘[n]ot all sociomaterial approaches are postdigital … [h]owever, given our emphasis on holism, entanglements, and the inseparability of digital and other elements, we might ask whether a postdigital perspective is necessarily a sociomaterial perspective’ (80). The authors’ answer is a masterpiece in ‘holding the postdigital in abeyance’: ‘We propose holding open both views: that postdigital is necessarily sociomaterial, and also that it isn’t’ (81). Reading their Conclusion, I cannot blame the authors for keeping the ambiguity open:

Postdigital inquiry entails a dual focus, simultaneously on-yet-around ‘digital’ technology and practices…Taking an on-yet-around approach means we do not exclusively focus on technologies, while also holding those technologies and their embeddedness within view. (Fawns et al. 2023: 83f)

The on-yet-around approach impresses with its simplicity, comprehensibility, and applicability, and combines productively with Gourlay’s (2023) interpretation of the postdigital as more-than-digital.

While Fawns et al. (2023) strive for a reflexive inward movement, the next three chapters reach outward and attempt to establish meaningful cross-connections between the postdigital and other fields of research. Ben Williamson explores bioinformational education, framing it as a research assemblage and arguing that scholarship in the field ‘represents a particular postdigital imbrication of digital technologies, biological sciences, human biology, and educational research, policy, and practice, which is assembling new biodigital objects of attention and analysis that collapse the boundary between the biological and the digital’ (Williamson 2023: 110).

Megha Summer Pappachen and Derek R. Ford (2023) note that Historical Materialism—like the postdigital—embodies a radical temporal openness. They argue for postdigital research that goes beyond critique: ‘We must build theoretical apparatuses that can give us hope for a better world system [and w]e must combine forces, unite disparate theoretical approaches, and build a united research front that can take on the postdigital challenges in front of us’ (Pappachen and Ford 2023: 127). Finally, Mark William Johnson devotes himself to Practical Axiology, using concepts from psychotherapy and cybernetics to sharpen the postdigital lens. This lens:

situates technology as contextual and observes that the effects of technology must be one of increasing uncertainty and in the contexts of education [a] shifting context means a flux in the ways values arise in the dance between the external context of education and the internal processes of a body. (Johnson 2023: 145)

These readings are fascinating in many ways, yet their respective contributions to the explicit development of postdigital theory and practice remain subtle. Reaching outward does build conceptual and theoretical bridges, but at least for me at the price of a deeper and more accessible presentation of postdigital contouring.

Postdigital Sensibilities: Being Vulnerable and Careful

The ambiguity and openness of the postdigital simultaneously fascinate and unsettle me; I feel embraced and betrayed at the same time. Michael Jopling (2023) finds perfect words for this sentiment: ‘postdigital vulnerability.’ Bringing together method and sentiment, Jopling (2023: 156) argues that ‘as postdigital and educational researchers, as human beings, we might address the uncertainty captured in the postdigital by accessing, rather than denying, our vulnerability and integrating it into our praxis as researchers.’ A framework for Vulnerable Method is proposed, where ‘admitting vulnerability can be seen as a way of enabling us to examine the complexities of our identities and entanglements with technologies, as well as exploring the complex interactions between humans and technologies in policy, research and practice’ (162f). For Jopling, postdigital vulnerability is about opening up research to the unclear and indeterminable, for which he draws on Law’s (2004) notion of the ‘in between.’

With Vulnerable Method, we find ourselves appropriately ‘after method’ and find rich references to Gourlay’s (2023) plea for the in-between spaces. Close to this review’s leitmotif of ‘holding the postdigital in abeyance,’ Jopling (2023: 168) presents Vulnerable Method as something that ‘stands in opposition to this restrictive impulse, which denies access to the uncertainty, contingency and messiness that both the postdigital and what I have called ‘in between’ conceptualizations of vulnerability afford and enable.’

Sara Mörtsell and Karin Gunnarsson bring together ‘two key notions offered from feminist thinking within ANT and posthumanism: care and cuts’ (Mörtsell and Gunnarsson 2023: 173) (emphases from the original). Building on posthuman research, echoing the postdigital as ‘more-than’ digital, and referring to assemblages and care from Relational Materialism, the authors propose a concept of cuts that ‘helps us acknowledge that what we care for counts for what in turn becomes produced’ (180). Care and Cuts are brought together as Caring Cuts which ‘conceptualizes the idea that what concerns researchers also structures how we notice the world and how we think it should be’ (181).

For me, Caring Cuts are a rich example of Jopling’s (2023) idea of vulnerability as an in-between concept. What we care about as postdigital researchers co-produces the phenomena we study. What we care about is profoundly embedded in our biographies, our experiences, and our sensibilities, which in turn are infused with the digital. Jopling (2023) and Mörtsell and Gunnarsson (2023) convince me to solemnly embrace the ambiguity of the postdigital as much as the resulting insecurity as an emerging researcher. My insecurities and vulnerabilities are not evil spirits but a method. They reflect the materiality of the postdigital condition and allow me to research, to feel, and to live in the more-than-digital in-between spaces. At this point, I find that many of my concerns are shared with others. Although my questions about postdigital research are not all answered, I now hold my unanswered questions as intrinsic to postdigital research.

Postdigital Agencies: Rounding Off the Postdigital

The last part of the book deals with the question of postdigital agency. While I find these reflections somewhat difficult and less applicable, they successfully round off previous examinations.

John Reader (2023) works through deterministic and instrumental understandings of human agency and positions postdigital research between those extremes. Instead of assuming full or partial presence of human agency, he proposes the concept of ‘affirmative presence’ (Reader 2023: 229). Such ‘flat ontology’ assumes ‘distributed agency.’ Although I agree with Reader in that ‘[p]ostdigital research will benefit from this philosophical approach as it tackles the role of both human and nonhuman agents’ (229), I feel that flat ontologies and distributed agencies are more tangibly elaborated in some previous chapters that draw inspiration from ANT or Assemblage Theory (Gourlay 2023; Jopling 2023; Mörtsell and Gunnarsson 2023).

Terrie Lynn Thompson (2023) also turns to ontological considerations and reinterpretations, proposing ‘more-than-human’ sensibilities: ‘the intent is to see the digital not in the abstract or in isolation but in the unfoldings and part of the doings of everyday practices and bodies—including those of the researcher’ (Thompson 2023: 233). ‘More-than-human’ sensibilities are methodologically convincing and innovatively presented through various anecdotes, which are ‘short descriptive accounts that depict specific micro-encounters between [research participants] and their digital surround’ (236). Here, fruitful cross-connections with previous chapters emerge—also noted in Selwyn’s Afterword, identifying ‘recurring nods to the traditions of historical materialism, feminist posthumanism, sociomaterialism, and other similar lines of thought’ (Selwyn 2023: 297).

Throughout the book, the field of postdigital research is contoured broadly but far from randomly. All lines of thought are invited to participate in postdigital research, yet the research community naturally leans towards those traditions that feel addressed and inspired by the concept. The capabilities of this community are demonstrated in the final chapter by Jandrić and (seventeen!) colleagues reflecting upon collective writing from a wide variety of perspectives (Jandrić et al. 2019, 2023a, b, c). The chapter is a testament to contemporary postdigital research practice, showing how interest in a common subject can bring together researchers and perspectives across disciplines without shying away from formal hurdles or academic boundaries. As an emerging researcher who often finds academic writing a terribly lonely affair, this project inspires me immensely. Here, postdigital research is clearly designed as a space of possibilities rather than a space of boundaries.

Conclusion

Postdigital Research: Genealogies, Challenges, and Future Perspectives (Jandrić et al. 2023a) leaves me ambivalent. I am scattered and settled. Lost and found. Oversaturated and yet full of drive. And how could it be otherwise? Postdigital research confronts a societal condition characterized by ambiguity, uncertainty, and fundamental hybridity. And it does so with a term that holds this complexity in abeyance. Postdigital’s abeyance is productive, because of the postdigital community’s belief in dialogue and collaboration. And despite, the community agrees on some common inspirations such as sociomaterialism or feminist posthumanism (to mention just a few) so that even though we as postdigital researchers are held in abeyance, we are not left hanging in the air.

The book is a powerful collection of theoretically rich and conceptually ambitious contributions. It will serve as a compass of orientation and quarry of ideas for future postdigital research. Emerging researchers like myself will find sufficient inspiration and provocation in the book to shape their own (postdigital) research profile. More experienced researchers will appreciate the book as a colorful and melodious resonance space. Certainly, the density and versatility of the collection will also deter some readers from intensive engagement with the book. In this case, I recommend embracing one’s vulnerability while reading and making it part of the postdigital engagement, that is, not shying away from affective entanglement with the book’s contents. This confrontation with postdigital sensibilities is a key takeaway from my reading, which I equally wish to future readers.