Introduction
This essay
conceptualizes performance from the interlocution between Actor-Network Theory
(ANT) references and discusses this construct as a theoretical operator in the
field of Education. This search for the refinement of the understanding of the
term is linked to its importance in research that assumes ANT's foundations in
descriptions and analyzes of pedagogical scenes. Performance, despite finding
centrality in the ANT discussions, seems to have its meaning diluted in
different works by Bruno Latour and other collaborators of this Theory. Thus,
this essay outlines the concept of performance from a chain of references and
imbricates this construct to the field of Education.
As a theoretical
essay, this text finds acceptance of Meneghetti's conceptions (2011, p. 321),
which indicate that, “unlike the traditional method of science, in which form
is considered more important than content, the essay requires subjects,
essayist and reader, capable of evaluating that the understanding of reality
also occurs in other ways”. It is also worth noting that this essay is not
intended to serve as an introduction to the ANT – which can be found in
different publications (Latour, 2012; Lemos, 2013; Oliveira & Porto, 2016;
Coutinho & Viana, 2019; Freire, 2021). Still, we provide a brief
description of the basics of the ANT starting from Figure 1.
Figure 1
Representation of the basic propositions of the Actor-Network Theory
Source: prepared by
the author.
Initially, it is
important to highlight that the ANT assumes “that the 'social' must be defined
as an association and understood in terms of a network, or actor-network, which
involves a heterogeneity of human and non-human elements” (Coutinho &
Viana, 2019, p. 17). In this understanding and in analytical terms, a
researcher, using the foundations of this Theory, will aim to investigate how
certain entities are associated with others, constituting networks. Figure 1
illustrates the association between humans and non-humans, who are the actors
of the Actor-Network expression. Although the term actor integrates the very
name of the Theory, Latour (2001) explains that this term has a meaning
restricted to humans, and the use of actants is preferable. Thus, an actant is
understood as any entity that, in an association, has the capacity to produce a
difference and, therefore, to change the network in which it is located.
The affectations
produced in the associations by the actants are assumed as translations, that
is: “[…] the work thanks to which the actors modify, displace and translate
their various and contradictory interests” (Latour, 2001, p. 356).
Analytically, it can be affirmed that the focus of a study based on the ANT is
translations. When studying them, it is necessary to keep in mind that every
actant has the same ontological condition (principle of symmetry). However,
Lemos (2014, p. 6) warns that “[…] symmetry is not ethical (things are worth
the same as humans), but analytical (things make us do things and have
important implications)”. In this sense, the researcher proceeds with his
study, alerting to whom, what is present in a scene of interest and how the
associations and translations (transformations) that emerged from it are
forged.
Figure 1 also favors
the understanding of the network, which is linked to the space-time formed by
the collective of actants in association, which triggers a series of
translations from their interrelationships. Heterogeneous, the networks are
said to be sociomaterial and can be considered as “[…] the very movement of
associations that form the social” (Oliveira & Porto, 2016, p. 64). In an
effort to synthesize the ANT: the interest in a network refers to the movement
and translations arising from the associations between actants. In this aspect,
the work established there translates the social into dynamism to be
investigated.
Having presented this
brief description, the objective of building a meaning for performance is
resumed in sequence. With due care, throughout the argument, the effort to
place the reader in some of the ANT concepts that subsidize the reasoning under
construction is rescued. Here, a textual texture that stimulates reflections is
valued, which favors the gathering of elements for a conceptual design of
performance and its discussion as an operator in the field of Education. To
this end, the work articulates perspectives of different authors who work with the
ANT and who contribute to the understanding of the term. In a second moment, a
brief synthesis of five researches in the field of Education is presented,
which, despite not having deepened the concept of performance, operated with it
to describe and analyze pedagogical realities.
Following traces of
performance from the ANT and its collaborators
It may seem
ambitious to try to answer what performance is. In fact, this is not a
simplistic task. However, this cannot paralyze us and prevent attempts to build
paths for its conceptualization. This particular part is based on a finding:
the word performance, despite appearing only once in the work 'Reassembling the
Social: An Introduction to the Actor-network Theory – by Bruno Latour –,
assumes undeniable relevance for researchers who assume the ANT as a
theoretical-methodological construct of their investigations. After all, for
them “[…] the rule is performance […]” (Latour, 2012, p. 60). This solitary and
laconic statement by Bruno Latour puts us in question and leaves open the
semantic delimitation for the term, considering the presuppositions of ANT.
This inspires
us to start by considering some dictionary definitions of the term performance,
which does not have a correspondent in the Portuguese language. Although
considered as Anglicism, performance is cataloged in the indications of the
Brazilian Academy of Letters in its Orthographic Vocabulary (VOLP). The
Michaelis dictionary indicates translations for performance linked to: a) the
“execution, effectuation”; b) a “fulfillment, performance”; c) a “exploit, prowess”;
d) an “artistic representation, spectacle”; e) a “performance” (as an artist,
athlete, etc.); f) the “mechanical work capacity, income” (Michaelis, 2002, w.p.).
The Portuguese dictionary Houaiss, on the other hand, presents an entry, which
indicates performance as: a) “acting, performance”; b) “a spectacle in which
the artist acts with complete freedom and on his own, interpreting paper or
creations of his own authorship” (Houaiss, 2009, w.p.). In both cases, the term
is assumed to be a feminine noun. In this way, performance is convenient for
the denomination of shares.
The particularity
of naming actions as a way of understanding performance is in tune with the
foundations of ANT, including the one that tells us that an action is taken.
This position of Latour (2012) escapes from an anthropocentric perspective,
which admits action as an exclusively human attribute. Latourian propositions
inspire the thought that, when we act, we never do it alone or apart from a
world of things. This premise is in line with the thought of Callon (2008, pp.
307-308), which indicates that “[…] human action cannot be understood, and the
constitution of collectives cannot be understood without taking into account
materiality, technologies and non-humans”. This shows that an action carries
with it a source of uncertainty, escaping from a direction determined by social
forces; in other words: the action is always a surprise and is forged by
materialities that are not exclusively human. In this conception, the agency
comes to be understood in a configuration that involves an opportune
circumstance and that favors a meeting between associated entities, which form
heterogeneous collectives.
Actions evoke
movement, circulation, transformations and, therefore, instability. All this
leads to the conception that the ANT:
[…] it moves away from everything that is fixed:
essences, structures, unifying systems, paradigms. Its ontology […] is the one
that defines being not by substance, but by its subsistence movement.
The ANT is definitely a ‘sociology of mobility’ […] of
the associations that make up beings, things, humans, non-humans, the social. (Lemos,
2013, p. 60)
Through this,
we have evidence that, in the Actor-Network perspective, 'existence' is linked
to the ability to act and produce transformations. In this sense, it is
reiterated that the analyst needs to be attentive to the flows of actions that
are established in the associations, that is, in what causes movement and “[…]
allows knowing what material the social is made of and following its dynamics”
(Callon, 2008, p. 309). It is worth emphasizing that the act of acting refers
to the concept of actant (Latour, 2001), in other words: humans and non-humans,
who, in association, act, causing displacement and difference where they are
associated.
At this point,
it is significant to remind the reader that the ANT does not operate, suggest
or encourage a dichotomy between two ontological entities (human versus
non-human). Through another interpretation, what is evoked is the treatment of
these entities in the same analytical plane, seeking to track and express what
is established as a possible world of interactions.
From the moment we said that action passes through
distributed collectives, we reject the opposition between humans and non-humans
and all the differences appear. […] The great advantage of this approach is
that we do not have to choose between two categories of (human or instrumental)
agency, but simply observe the take-off of a multitude of different agencies
that are linked to the fact that there are numerous possible assemblages that
act differently. (Callon, 2008, p. 312)
Bearing this
in mind, it is interesting to rescue the “[…] plurality of what makes us act
[…], since all movements depend on the nature of the bonds and the recognized
ability to do […]” (Latour, 2015, p. 131). It is with this care that our
attention is directed to the translations that emerge from everything that 'making-do'
and that typifies a plurality of agencies:
Action is not what people do, but fait-faire,
the making-do, carried out together with others in an event, with the specific
opportunities provided by the circumstances. These others [… are] non-human
entities […] that have their own logical specifications […]. (Latour, 2001, p.
341)
Bruno Latour
warned us, with his 'making-do' binomial, that action carries with it a hybrid
meaning. Therefore, it is the result of a “[…] simultaneous construction of men
and objects in which materiality and sociality are mixed, resulting in our
condition of humanity” (Melo, 2008, p. 258). Latour also tells us that this making-do
is symmetrical and develops its arguments by rescuing a comic strip of the
character Mafalda, involving her father and the act of smoking, illustrated by
Quino (1986).
When
discussing such a strip[2], Latour (2015) provokes his reader from a
question by Mafalda, which, initially, may seem naive: “– What are you doing,
Dad?” (Quino, 1986, p. 22). Looking at the scene, the father's response
suggests something obvious: “– I'm smoking a cigarette. Why?" (Quino,
1986, p. 22), he answers. However, this obviousness is deconstructed with wit
by the child character, who, when turning his back, opens wide a disconcerting
symmetry of the action of smoking: “– I thought it was the cigarette you were
smoking, but disregard” (Quino, 1986, p. 22). It is evident that the cigarette
makes you smoke and, at the same time, smokes/consumes the smoker. So much that
Mafalda's father, in the last part of the illustration, shows himself
desperately shredding his cigarette pack. This amusing and, at the same time,
disturbing passage by Mafalda shows how the associations established between
actants provide an opportunity for a hybrid and symmetrical making-do.
This comic
strip is densely explored in Latour's (2015) arguments, but it is interesting
here to explore the (inter)actions in a network to think about performance from
the making-do (Latour, 2001) that is established there. But, first, it is worth
noting that “[…] the network is not the structure, infrastructure or
sociability, it is not the place where things pass, move or are deposited, but
the place where relationships are established and transformed.” (Oliveira &
Porto, 2016, p. 64). In this understanding, the comprehension of the network is
based on movements of associations which “refer to flows, circulations and
alliances, in which the actors involved interfere and suffer constant
interference” (Freire, 2006, p. 55). Thus, “the networks are woven with
elements that are in complex interactions, so that most of the actants are
hybrids, carrying this double facet: human and non-human […]” (Latour, 2000, p.
377). Here, it is already possible to keep in mind that a network always
translates changes, hence the interest in better semantic delimitation for the
term performance according to the ANT.
In Sørensen
(2009), we can also see that the sense of performance is related to a variety
of entities intertwined with each other and that form a heterogeneous assembly.
Starting from Giddens (1984), the Danish researcher also refutes the concept of
action as an exclusive attribute of human rationality and uses Law's (2002)
propositions to assume performance as a realization of sociomaterial
assemblages. It is worth noting that an:
[…] agency has the virtue of designating agency and
not reducing it to the human body or the instruments that prolong the human
body, but designating it in the sets of configuration of arrangements in which
each element clarifies the others and allows understanding because agency works
in a certain way. (Callon, 2008, p. 310)
Thus, when the
actants associate and form a network, they start to act in order to influence,
interfere and modify each other, performing a translation work (Latour, 2012).
Expanding this understanding, Lemos (2013, p. 128) adds that
“mediation/translation is the ability of an actant to keep another involved,
modifying and reinterpreting their interests”. In this particular, a
translation indicates a change in the way of acting in the network. This aspect
seems to be fundamental to start thinking about an approach to the
understanding of performance based on the ANT.
If an actant
causes a difference in a sociomaterial relationship – an actant assumed as a
mediator (Latour, 1994; 2001; 2012) – then we are facing a process of
affectation, which suggests a new composition between the entities of a given
(inter)action. That is, the traces of a mediation allow mapping
reconfigurations for a given arrangement or intertwining of actants (Coutinho &
Viana, 2019). Following these understandings, it is reinforced that an
affectation in a state of the world (Barad, 2007) allows us to glimpse another
dimension of attribution of semantic contour to performance.
To help in
this understanding, it is noted that Moraes and Arendt (2013) use the works of
Law (2007; 2009) to signal that, in addition to the attention given to the
formation of sociomaterial networks, a new interest starts to attract
researchers affiliated to the ANT: the production of realities from entangled
practices. This conception seems to find adherence to the ideas of Mol (2008,
p. 64), who also assumes “that reality does not precede the banal practices in
which we interact with it, but is shaped by these practices”. In this way, we
are inspired to assume that this reality is not given a priori, but emerges
from routine practices (Law, 2004).
To situate the
production of realities, Annemarie Mol resorts to the field of social studies
of science and recovers the work carried out in laboratories, assuming it as a
sociomaterial practice capable of evidencing transformations in the composition
of a state of the world, producing new configurations:
These forms are exported from the laboratory, not so
much as 'theory', but rather, or at least to the same extent, as vaccines,
microprocessors, valves, combustion engines, telephones, genetically modified
mice and other objects – objects that carry with them new realities [… ]. (Mol,
2008, p. 64)
Visibly, the
stable and determined character of reality assumes a status that, according to
Mol (2008), is linked to materiality and its multiple, historical and cultural
combinations. So, with the author, it is possible to understand that realities
are multifaceted and that they coexist in the present in different versions. To
expand this conception, the researcher also tells us that this multiplicity of
reality depends on a set of metaphors that evoke intervention – which would be
linked to its production – and performance, which emerges from the manipulation
of reality “[…] through various instruments, in the course of a series of
different practices” (Mol, 2008, p. 66).
In her
production, Annemarie Mol resorts to the question “[…] what is anemia?” (Mol,
2008, p. 66) and proposes a referral by indicating the inexistence of a single
and stabilized answer. Apprehending anemia would be related to different
performances. In this sense, in a clinical consultation when a doctor uses the
examination of a patient's eyelids, we would be facing the clinical performance
of anemia. When thinking about a clinical analysis to determine blood
hemoglobin levels and anemia performance, it would be the laboratory or
statistical analysis (which considers patterns to determine if a patient is
anemic). Finally, from a method that standardizes the ideal level of hemoglobin
to efficiently transport oxygen through the human body, it is possible to
verify the pathophysiological performance of anemia (Mol, 2008).
A definition for
performance according to the ANT and its lexical variation
After the
considerations and articulations presented, it is necessary to keep in mind
that the understanding of performance according to the fundamentals of the ANT
needs to take into account:
1) that an actant assures
its existence through its ability to act and produce transformations (translations)
from its associations in networks;
2) that actions are
sources of uncertainty forged by materialities that are not exclusively human,
assuming a hybrid and symmetrical meaning (making-do); and
3) that a certain state
of the world is established by entities that associate to form sociomaterial
networks.
Thus,
considering the contributions of Latour (2000; 2001; 2012; 2015), Law (2002;
2004; 2007; 2009), Callon (2008), Mol (2008) and Sørensen (2009), it is
possible to assume performance as what which, procedurally, is established from
sociomaterial assemblages and affects a state of the world, producing
multifaceted realities, which coexist in the present in different versions.
By forwarding
this understanding of the term performance from the ANT and bringing this
meaning to the universe of the Portuguese language, other questions immediately
gain a condition of existence, making it possible to ask: but, after all, how
to understand performativity, performative, perform and performed?
It can be
seen, therefore, that, once a performance has been delineated from the ANT,
variations that generate neologisms come to mind. In Schveitzer (2016). Note
that suffixes are added to adjectives to form nouns. The suffix -ity can
express an idea of state, situation or quantity (Wikipedia, 2022). Thereby,
considering all that has been discussed throughout this essay, it appears that
performativity has to do with a specific state of (inter)action in a network,
which signals that an actant has assumed the status of a promoter of sensitive
differences in its associations. Therefore, it is a mediating actant (Latour,
2012). The suffix -ive indicates capacity, possibility, utility or relationship
(Priberam, 2022). Consequently, when mediating an actant, it becomes
performative, producing transformations in its network. Likewise, if an actant
is defined by its acting (Lemos, 2013), it gains its condition of existence
when performing. Finally, with the suffix -ed – used to form the past
participle of the verb to perform –, it is assumed that something performed is
a reality that was produced by actants in a network.
Performance as production of sociomaterial
pedagogical realities
The approximation of the theoretical-methodological
constructs of ANT to the field of Education, although challenging, favors
thinking about socio-formative processes from a different perspective.
Teachers, students, managers and all material diversity, which integrate and
condition a pedagogical scene, are now considered in the perspective of a
performative sociomaterial assembly. So:
Observing, recording, describing and analyzing are
aimed at identifying actors (not only humans), mapping associations, tracking
the formation and breaking of bonds, the work established in the network and,
above all that, to the establishment of realities. (Ribeiro & Lima,
forthcoming)
As a result of this theoretical-methodological
construct, the interest in emerging performances of the (inter)actions between
the actants of the educational daily life unfolds. Based on this, below, a
brief synthesis of five researches guided by ANT is presented, which
encompassed, in their issues of interest (Latour, 2012), performances emerging
from interventions in the field of Education. The selection of these
productions involved: 1) the fact that the SciELO database and the Capes
Periodical Portal did not retrieve records[3] considering the theme of this essay, which required manual
screening; 2) our participation in discussions with members of different
research groups[4], whose academic productions work with performance from the perspective
of Actor-Network Theory in the field of Education; and 3) our recurring
indication of the need for a conceptual delimitation for the term performance
in different participations in boards of postgraduate works in Education.
Firstly, Allain and Coutinho (2018) discussed the
teaching professional identity articulated with ANT concepts. They presented
data produced with two focus groups formed by undergraduate[5] students in Biological Sciences from a Brazilian public university: one
composed of scholarship holders from the Institutional Scholarship Program for
Teaching Initiation and the other by non-scholarship undergraduates’ students.
The study identified, in both studied groups,
performative identities: a) the nature-identity, that would be linked to the
conception that “[…] teachers are born with the gift of teaching, with
vocation, a natural talent” (Allain & Coutinho, 2018, p. 370); b) the
identity-institution, related to the specific academic training “[…] offered by
recognized institutions, which will authorize them to teach” (Allain &
Coutinho, 2018, p. 370); c) the discourse-identity, which evokes “[…]
individual traits, which are supposedly recognized as necessary for teachers:
being communicative, enjoying dealing with people, explaining […]” (Allain
& Coutinho, 2018, p. 370). As a differential of the group formed by
scholarship students, identity-affinity was also identified, which was defined
by the authors based on the work of Gee (2000). For this last group:
[…] actors such as the school, program funding, work
projects, study meetings, the university professor and the school supervising
professor are associated in a network, forming an articulated body that adds
positive experiences in relation to teacher training. (Allain & Coutinho,
2018, p. 376)
In addition, Allain and Coutinho (2018) highlighted
that the training course of those undergraduate students had an identity, which
also exerted strength in the researched network. With a critical eye, the
researchers emphasized the responsibility of institutions and professors
forming teachers as actants, which affected the process of constitution of
those performed identities, demanding attention. In short, the authors' work
evidenced performances of teacher identity as multiple, complementary and
constructed paths in action. Notably, this finding adheres to the definition,
which was built for performance in this essay.
While in Coutinho et al. (2017), there is a research
that contributed to the understanding of the interrelationships between
academic knowledge and the knowledge and experiences of students of an Undergraduate
Degree in Rural Education at a Brazilian public university. The study analyzed
discussions from two classes in the Life and Nature Sciences class with a focus
on controversies. Based on elements of ANT, the authors highlighted that “[…]
the undergraduate students mobilize knowledge, practices and experiences that
make them initiate controversies in a formative situation and in the face of
knowledge authorized by the university” (Coutinho et al., 2017, p. 222).
In methodological terms, the production of data from
the research by Coutinho et al. (2017, p. 225) comprised “[…] non-participant
observation, by means of video recording, audio and notes in a field notebook”.
From this corpus, the researchers created a mapping of actants and identified
elements, which made up the realities produced by the students and by a
monitor, who conducted a technical visit to the class.
In relation to performance, the researchers signaled
the production of realities – assumed as ontologies in the text –, “which
emerge in the establishment of a controversy between the students of an undergraduate
degree in the field and the monitor of an activity on the mineral diversity of
Brazil” (Coutinho et al., 2017, p. 224). This performative configuration took
place during a technical visit to a university space with samples of different
rocks and minerals and, later, in class, considering the discursive
interactions between professor and undergraduate students.
The study made it possible to identify components that
integrate the material reality described by the monitor, debated/problematized
by the undergraduate students along with the teacher responsible for the
classes. The research results illustrate two “ontological topographies” with
disproportionate variations, which made the authors conclude that “the monitor
and the students of the Undergraduate Degree in Rural Education, it can be
said, inhabit different worlds” (Coutinho et al., 2017, p. 233). When considering
the performative dimension in their study, the authors approached the
definition constructed in this essay by translating multifaceted and coexisting
realities.
The third research highlighted in this essay also
worked with teachers in training in Rural Education at a public university in
the area of Life and Nature Sciences (LNS). The focus of the study involved the
description of the “performance of a space for reflection on knowledge systems”
(Freitas & Coutinho, 2018, p. 285) among undergraduate students,
considering the mobilization of different actants.
In the methodological path adopted by Freitas and
Coutinho (2018), the ANT was considered in the analysis of discursive
interactions based on sociomaterial relationships and emergence in networks.
Empirical data were built during the monitoring of disciplines and activities
involving the LNS area in January 2016, through observations, video and audio
recordings, records in a field notebook and the holding of a discussion group
with seven students from the team.
When considering performance in their approach, the
researchers assumed that one of the effects produced in the sociomaterial
assembly investigated was knowledge itself and that the knowledge systems
addressed – scientific and traditional knowledge – “[…] are different ways of
systematizing practices, which arise through the interaction between humans and
non-humans” (Freitas & Coutinho, 2018, p. 286). In the analytical passages
of the interactions described in the study, it was possible to identify guided
arguments:
[…] both common-sense conceptions of science (such as
the idea that scientific knowledge is proven knowledge, science is objective,
scientific theories are rigorously derived through observations and
experiments, etc.) as well as traditional knowledge disseminated in their
communities (such as the moon's influence in determining the sex of babies).
(Freitas & Coutinho, 2018, p. 283)
The researchers also highlighted that the practice
undertaken between teacher and students made explicit a network of
relationships between actants, which established a space for reflection “on the
importance of dialogue between knowledge that must emerge in a classroom […]”
(Freitas & Coutinho, 2018, p. 283).
On another research front, Venancio et al. (2020)
undertook a research, which studied performances in a curricular unit of
Science Teaching Practice with undergraduate students in Biological Sciences
from a Brazilian public university. Methodologically, the research data were
produced through participant observation with records in a field notebook, in
audio and video.
The study recorded performance as “assemblies between
human and non-human actors and the resulting movements, which allow reaching a certain
end” (Venancio et al., 2020, p. 1). This definition adheres to what is proposed
in this essay, but the definition assumed in the work is lacking in the aspects
of the production of multiple and coexisting realities, which were identified
and explored in the research.
In their results, Venancio et al. (2002) indicated
performances of teaching practices inspired by planning, in which elements such
as time and human and non-human materialities produced a school, which limited
the actions of those teachers in training. From this, the authors forwarded
that:
[…] in the planning of classes of undergraduate
students in Biological Sciences, hypothetical-imagined contexts arise and offer
them different possibilities of action. This school is imagined and makes
future teachers have to plan classes for a context they do not know. In
addition, [… the imagination] also proved to be contingent, as it had to deal
with different possibilities that can be found in the workplace. [… In this
sense] free imagination generates a certain 'anguish' on the part of these undergraduate
students, since the planning still needs to deal with the possibility of
something happening or not. It seems, therefore, that undergraduate students
are walking in two directions, either preparing for the different realities, or
not really knowing what lies ahead. (Venancio et al., 2020, p. 13)
The authors also indicated that, with the ANT, it was
possible to notice that the undergraduate students produced realities from
their planning in a way that involved a sociomaterial arrangement that grouped:
students, training spaces such as the classroom, formal education institutions,
teachers and curriculum content. These actants, in their associations,
constituted performances of teaching practice.
In a fifth work that involved performance in the field
of Education, Lima and Nascimento (2021) researched about the incorporation of
digital games in the initial training of Physics teachers during a curricular
component of supervised internship at a Brazilian public university. The
objective was to track the pedagogical affectations produced considering the
interrelationships established in the sociomaterial network studied, a goal
contemplated by the concept of performance of this essay.
Following methodological procedures of an Action
Research, the empirical data were generated from the record of observations of
the mapped experience and from reports prepared by the undergraduate students.
This corpus was systematized in an open coding in the ATLAS.ti software, which
formed the basis for the formation of two analytical categories: “[…] initial
meaning and translated meaning of/by the undergraduate students about digital
games and their incorporation into a teaching proposal” (Lima & Nascimento,
2021, p. 7). Based on the ANT, the analytical discussion of the categories
formed described a performance “[…] of the transition of pedagogical meanings
of the undergraduates related to digital games and their association with the
teaching of Physics” (Lima & Nascimento, 2021, p. 9).
The researchers indicate that, in addition to working
with theoretical frameworks of digital games, the curricular unit culminated in
the production of a game by the undergraduate students. This movement provided
an opportunity for a series of (inter)actions, which revealed a dense process
of pedagogical affectations among teachers in training:
The positions of the undergraduate students were
destabilized as readings, activities, debates and, especially, the production
of the digital game in the CU [curricular unit] took place. When circulating on
the network, these experiences were shared by the actants, which set in motion
a reconfiguration process, which favored the establishment of new pedagogical
meanings, provided a break with previous representations and gave rise to a new
modus vivendi. (Lima & Nascimento, 2021, p. 14)
The results of the study highlighted that the affectations
mapped started from a place of skepticism, incipience, distrust or even the
impossibility of approaching game-pedagogical practice, to a new reality, which
included: 1) game as a cultural product; 2) game design as a complex process
that involves time, creativity, theoretical frameworks, intermediations, etc.;
3) development of a digital game as a form of collective and collaborative
work; 4) digital game as a way of including digital culture in the school
space; and 5) digital games as a space for teaching and promoting learning and
skills (Lima & Nascimento, 2021).
Some final words
In tracking elements that favor the understanding of
the term 'performance' from the Actor-Network Theory, it is important to
reaffirm that the translations produced in a network of actants are what assign
a place of understanding to the word. This network assumes existence in the
form of a hybrid and (inter)active collective from which flows of translations
emerge. Without the making-do established by the actants, there is no
performance and, consequently, there is no production of realities. The social,
therefore, is produced by this collective in its (dis)association movements,
revealing a space-time, where humans and non-humans are constituted and act
mutually, engendering performances.
By situating performance as a conceptual operator of
Education, it is possible to think about affectations, which can translate:
diversification of ways of teaching curriculum content, production of
intelligibility from the recognition of non-human agencies in a pedagogical
scene (no longer as supporting actors, but as co-producers of this network),
reconfigurations in training practices, new ways of being in the world and,
therefore, of teaching and learning.
Considering the field of research in Education and its
multiple methodologies, performance – as a theoretical operator linked to the
ANT – stands out in the analysis of empirical incursions, especially those
involving intervention strategies (an Action Research, for example). It is
understood that this perspective is viable for the fact it is common to some
methodological procedures to integrate a researcher into a network to study it.
In this movement, the researcher can observe, affect and be affected, track and
describe performativities that shape a situated reality. It is understood,
therefore, that this construct favors the perception of intermediations and the
capture of nuances of a pedagogical experience collectively constructed and
under investigation.
Even so, it is necessary to keep in mind that the ANT
was not conceived in the field of Education and its approach to this area
requires openness, methodological shifts and new analytical forms: all this is
challenging! We share Sørensen's (2009) perception that research in Education
is marked by anthropocentric approaches, which ends up making invisible the
extent to which socio-formative processes are affected by non-human
materiality. The study of the ANT makes us more sensitive to this perception,
since it is not possible to produce education without non-humans. When assuming
the conceptual operator performance in an investigation in Education, the
researcher is encouraged to review his position, recognizing that teaching,
learning, practices, wisdom and knowledge are affectations forged in
sociomaterial assemblies, which produce realities to be mapped and discussed.
Finally, it is noteworthy that this work also evokes a
network, which seeks in the word performance a way of expressing the academic
making-do, attributing conditions of existence to it. The definition of
performance, constructed here, enlists allies to mature the theme, improving
and substantiating it. This text, as a product of the performance of an
essayist researcher, also outlines a reality, which is now shared with other
actants. Thus, the emergence of new socio-educational translations is expected.
By using the ANT as a platform for debate, this production begins to circulate
in the academic sphere as an actor-network, always being subject to the
instabilities and impermanences of the associations where it is present and
promoting affectations.
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