Philosophy with Children and Critical Posthumanism: Rethinking Child(hood) and Human Subjectivity

2026-04-08

Call for Papers

 

Special Issue of childhood & philosophy

 

Philosophy with Children and Critical Posthumanism: Rethinking Child(hood) and Human Subjectivity

 

Introduction

Philosophy with children (P4C) positions children as capable of philosophical thought. Childhood has become a site for the radical democratisation of academic philosophy and a reconstruction of education (Lipman et al., 1977). However, there are (sometimes subtle) differences between P4C proponents about their views of child(hood), with some strong voices resisting efforts to include children in the rational world of adults, or to use adult philosophy as the norm for what counts as ‘real’ philosophy (see, e.g., Haynes, Murris, Kennedy, Kohan, Stanley and Lyle). In addition to profoundly questioning developmental notions of childhood (Matthews, 1996), scholars have brought other interdisciplinary fields into rich conversation with P4C, highlighting its embedded political dimensions, such as gender studies, child studies, critical race theory and decolonial scholarship (see, e.g., childhood & philosophy, v.22 (2026):  https://www.e-publicacoes.uerj.br/childhood/issue/view/3506). This Special Issue takes these critical enquiries into a different direction by bringing posthumanist perspectives into dialogue with P4C. In a sense, P4C is a living organism that absorbs the theoretical approaches of practitioners engaging with it: Vygotskyan, American pragmatist, phenomenological, postmodern and poststructuralist theories have profoundly influenced it (Rollins Gregory et al., 2017). They have shaped and continue to shape how core concepts such as thinking, community, democracy, agency, causality, voice and inclusion arise and take root in P4C. In contrast, posthumanism works with a different ontology. The difference the ontological (re-)turn makes for P4C, both theoretically and practically, is what this Special Issue aims to explore.

Inspired by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1987), we resist identifying a single origin or a unilinear genealogical development of P4C. Here, posthumanism is an umbrella term for critical posthumanist, new materialist and agential realist philosophies. Posthumanism is not an anti-humanism, rejecting its philosophical ‘predecessors’. On the contrary, it is deeply entangled with and responding to humanist theories. Posthumanism does not claim that humans do not matter, but rejects oversimplified and non-relational notions of the human as a priori (Barad, 2007). The ‘post’ in ‘posthumanism’ does not mean going beyond the human, but decentres ‘the human’ by ontologically reconfiguring relationality and interrogating power-producing binaries such as culture/nature, mind/body, inner/outer, human/matter, adult/child and so forth (Murris & Reynolds, 2018). Individualism, human-centredness and neurotypical notions of intelligence are already built into the concept of the human, although its existence is conditional upon the more-than-human (cells, blood, air, microbes, bacteria, soil, technologies, infrastructures, animals, plants, geological forces, etc.) (Colman & van der Tuin, 2024; Coole & Frost, 2010). The concept of the human is not neutral, but deeply racialised, sexualised, gendered (Braidotti, 2013), speciest (Tammi & Rautio, 2025) and ageist (Murris, 2016). Crucially, it is developmental: structured through normative temporalities that position the ‘other’ as ‘lesser human’ and ‘not-yet-fully-human’. It is here that the status of ‘the child’ becomes critical. Rather than simply adding children as another marginalised group within an already constituted human category, the child exposes how that category is itself produced through exclusion (Caetano-Silva, Pacheco-Costa & Guzmán-Simón, 2024), hierarchy and temporality (Roa-Trejo, Pacheco-Costa & Guzmán-Simón, 2024). Yet within P4C, the figure of ‘the child’ often remains grounded in modern humanist assumptions about subjectivity, rationality, development and voice (see, e.g., childhood & philosophy, v. 20 (2024): https://www.e-publicacoes.uerj.br/childhood/issue/view/3137). The field tends to presuppose an individual human subject developing towards adulthood. This Special Issue asks what happens when that figure itself is questioned.

An important dimension of rethinking human subjectivity concerns the role of children’s literature and other aesthetic resources in philosophical enquiry. Picturebooks, stories, images, music, materials and transmodal encounters often serve as provocations for philosophical dialogue with children. Yet they are rarely examined as sites where ontological, ethical and more-than-human relations are actively produced. We therefore invite contributions that explore how literature and aesthetic practices generate possibilities for philosophical enquiry that exceed narrowly language-centred or humanist conceptions of thought. 

We invite scholars to rethink the conceptual ‘(post)foundations’ of P4C by interrogating how child(hood), subjectivity and philosophical agency are constituted within the field. What happens when philosophical enquiry with children troubles human exceptionalism and moves beyond adultist, developmentalist and anthropocentric frameworks? This Special Issue explores how P4C is reconfigured as a relational, embodied and more-than-human worlding practice – a shift that invites new ontological ways of thinking about philosophical subjectivity, pedagogy,  methodology and ethics. Posthumanism profoundly unsettles adult-centred logics at a time of socio-economic, political and environmental crises, prompting a different relation to nature. In the shadow of climate change, global pandemics, species extinction, wars and genocide, this Special Issue calls for an urgent rethinking of philosophical enquiry as an ethical practice of relating differently in more-than-human worlds.

Possible questions to respond to

We welcome theoretical, philosophical, methodological and empirical contributions that engage with questions such as:

 

  1. What does posthumanism offer to philosophy with children (P4C) in rethinking concepts such as subjectivity, agency, community, democracy, inclusion and relationality?
  2. How might philosophy with children engage with more-than-human relations, including multispecies entanglements, materiality, ecological thinking and planetary ethics?
  3. In what ways can philosophy with children contribute to decolonising knowledge and challenging adult-centred notions of what counts as philosophy (and childhood)?
  4. How is  child(hood) conceptualised in philosophy with children, and how might this figure be rethought beyond developmentalist or humanist assumptions?
  5. How might imaginative, animist or nondualistic worldings be taken seriously as forms of philosophical thinking?
  6. What roles can literature, picturebooks, visual narratives and other artistic practices play as provocations for philosophical enquiries that invite critical posthuman subjectivities and ontologies?
  7. How might philosophical enquiry expand beyond human language-centred dialogue to include gesture, play, image, sound, affect and material-discursive engagement?
  8. What new methodological approaches are needed to study philosophical enquiry with children in ways that acknowledge performativity, relationality, in/determinacy and more-than-human entanglements?

 

Possible themes

Contributions may address, but are not limited to, the following areas:

 

Reconfiguring child subjectivity: Rethinking child(hood), agency and philosophical subjectivity beyond deficit and developmental models.

Posthuman and more-than-human philosophies with children: multispecies relations, ecological thinking, relational ontologies and planetary ethics.

Decolonising philosophy with children: adultism, onto-epistemic injustice, colonial legacies in education and philosophy.

Children’s literature and aesthetic provocations: picturebooks, stories, images, sonic productions, food, materials, walks and more-than-human encounters as philosophical resources.

Pedagogies and practices of philosophical enquiry: transmodal approaches to dialogue, play, imagination, embodiment and relational learning.

Methodological experimentation: postqualitative, arts-based, transdisciplinary, diffractive and new materialist approaches to research with children.

 

Submission guidelines

We invite original contributions, including:

  • theoretical and philosophical articles;
  • empirical studies;
  • methodological papers;
  • transdisciplinary perspectives.

 

Articles should follow the childhood & philosophy submission guidelines:

https://www.e-publicacoes.uerj.br/childhood/about/submissions

 

Timeline

Call for papers: 7 April 2026.

Full paper submission: 1 September, 2026.


Peer review process:

Reviews back: 15 October 2026.

Changes to papers: 15 November 2026.

Editorial decisions: 15 December 2026.


Publication of Special Issue: from January 2027.

 

Guest editors:

Karin Murris (PhD) is Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Oulu (Finland) and Emerita Professor of Philosophy and Education at the University of Cape Town (South Africa). She studied with Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp in 1992, is a founding member of SAPERE, organised the 16th ICPIC conference (2013) and served as elected President of ICPIC (2014–2016). She is associate editor of Childhood & Philosophy. Karin has 40 years of experience in P4C, including her doctoral research on Philosophy with Picturebooks (1992, 1997) – a now popular approach globally. She is also co-editor of the Routledge International Handbook of Philosophy for Children (2017). With a disciplinary background in philosophy, child studies and library science, her work centres on Reggio Emilia-inspired Philosophy for Children (P4C) as pedagogy and research methodology. Her research integrates P4C across numerous funded projects and teacher education curricula in the North and the South. Over the past 15 years, she has theorised and practised P4C through a posthumanist orientation, including her current project Small Matters (2023-2027), which investigates young children’s philosophies about multispecies death and dying. Karin founded and leads the Postqualitative Research Collective (PQRC) and is Chief Editor of a Routledge book series dedicated to postqualitative and posthumanist scholarship. For more information and publications, see: karinmurris.com.

Alejandra Pacheco-Costa (PhD) is Professor of Music Education at the University of Seville (Spain). Her research trajectory is characterised by a strong international profile, including research at the UCL Institute of Education, Sheffield Hallam University and the City University of New York as a Fulbright-Ruth Lee Kennedy fellow. With an interdisciplinary background in philology, pedagogy and music, her work centres on multimodal literacy from neomaterialist and posthumanist orientations. She served as Principal Investigator for the regional PAIDI project (P20-00487) on digital competence and social justice and is currently a member of the R&D project HAMLET (PID2023-148393NB-I00) investigating family literacy environments. She is an evaluator for the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in Portugal and a member of the Editorial Board for the ‘Ciencias de la Educación’ collection at the Editorial de la Universidad de Sevilla. For more information and publications, see: ORCID 0000-0001-6397-4708.

Fernando Guzmán-Simón (PhD) is a Professor in the Department of Language Education at the University of Seville (Spain). Previously, he held teaching and academic posts at the University of Huelva, the University of Costa Rica and Pompeu Fabra University. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Revista de Investigación Educativa (RIE), coordinates the Multimodal Discourse Analysis Research Network and the Language and Education Thematic Network at AIDIPE, and has previously served as deputy editor of the Revista Fuentes. His research focuses on New Literacy Studies and its transition towards new materialist and posthumanist research in childhood. Within this theoretical and methodological framework, he is the Principal Investigator of the ‘Multimodal Family Literacy Environments in Early Childhood’ project (PID2023-148393NB-I00), which explores the new materialist complexity of literacy in the home through workshops with families using philosophy with children (P4C). Fernando heads the LITERACIES research group (HUM1044) at the University of Seville and is editor of the ‘Educational Sciences’ series published by the University of Seville Press. For further information and publications, see: ORCID 0000-0001-7189-1849.

References

Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway. Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press.

Caetano-Silva, G., Pacheco-Costa, A., & Guzmán-Simón, F. (2024). Affective refusals, more-than-human identities and de-colonisation in early childhood education. In J.A. Bustillos Morales & S. Zarabadi (Eds.), Towards Posthumanism in Education (pp. 85-100). Routledge.

Colman, F. & van der Tuin, I. (Eds.) (2024). Methods and Genealogies of New Materialisms. Edinburgh University Press.

Coole, D. & Frost, S. (Eds.) (2010). New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Duke University Press.

Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.

Lipman, M., Sharp, A.M., & Oscanyan, F.S. (1977). Philosophy in the Classroom. The Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children, Montclair State College.

Matthews, G. (1996). The philosophy of childhood. Harvard University Press.

Murris, K. (2016). The posthuman child: Educational transformation through philosophy with picturebooks. Routledge.

Murris, K. [Project: Decolonizing Early Childhood Discourses]., & Reynolds, B. (Producer). (2018, September 5). A manifesto posthuman child: de/colonising childhood through reconfiguring the human [Video].  Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikN-LGhBawQ

Roa-Trejo, J. J., Pacheco-Costa, A., & Guzmán-Simón, F. (2024). ‘It’s not cardboard, it’s a house’: cartographies of agentic assemblage in the early childhood classroom. Early Years, 44(3–4), 815–829. https://doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2023.2243057

Rollins Gregory, M., Haynes, J., & Murris, K. (Eds.) (2017). The Routledge International Handbook of Philosophy for Children. Routledge.

Tammi, T., & Rautio, P. (2025). Multispecies as a concept and method. In M. Koro and K. Murris. Reconfiguring Interpretation in (Post) Qualitative Research (pp.21-37). Routledge.