Introduction

This page establishes a mapping between the rich interdisciplinary vocabulary of New Materialism, Posthumanism and a research focus on the entanglement of Generative AI, technology, writing, and pedagogy in higher education. By engaging with these concepts in a postqualitative research orientation, the mapping seeks to illuminate how human and nonhuman agencies converge, whether in the affective experiences emerging from GenAI/LLM interactions, the cyborgification of modern writing practices, or in innovative pedagogical strategies. In each case, it is intended to provide a foundation for extrapolating further theoretical development and guiding empirical inquiry.

affect

Bodily Intensities, felt forces and capacities prior to narrative, label, or cognition that modulate the (human and nonhuman) body’s abilities to act and be acted upon; transpersonal forces that move across bodies, things, and environments, composing atmospheres and dispositions that render some actions and meanings possible and others less so.

affective Method

An orientation to inquiry that foregrounds attunement to affective intensities, atmospheres, and embodied resonances as constitutive of phenomena, treating affect as methodological, ethical, and analytical force in research and pedagogy.

affirmative Difference

A commitment to difference as a generative, capacity-enhancing force of becoming, oriented toward composing futures and relations that increase the power to act rather than grounding critique in negativity or lack.

agency

The capacity of phenomena, human and more-than-human, to produce effects and make a difference through their relational entanglement.

agential cut

The enactment of a temporary, contingent separation within a phenomenon that makes some things matter and become intelligible while excluding others; A situated boundary-making that enacts a temporary determinacy within an entangled phenomenon, “cutting together-apart” to produce what counts as object, instrument, cause, and effect in a given apparatus

agential realism

A posthumanist onto-epistemology that understands reality as composed of phenomena, or entangled relations without preexisting relata, where concepts, bodies, and instruments co-constitute what becomes determinate through intra-action and agential cuts.

agents Against Agency (AAA)

A provocation that names how concrete agents and material relations exceed, escape, or even undo abstract, pre-assigned “agency,” shifting attention from agency as a property to situated agential doings in entangled worlds.

algorithm

Procedural compositions of rules, data, and infrastructure that performatively shape what becomes sayable, writable, and sensible within socio-technical assemblages.

altergorithm

A critical and inventive orientation to algorithms that foregrounds their alterity—their capacity to produce otherwise—by attending to how data, models, and interfaces configure relations, and by designing alternative algorithmic practices that redistribute agency, accountability, and care.

apparatus

A material-discursive configuration that enacts phenomena by setting the conditions under which differences matter, boundaries are drawn, and properties become intelligible.

assemblage

A dynamic constellation of heterogeneous elements — human, nonhuman, material, discursive, technological — coming together temporarily to produce particular effects, always in motion and continually reconfiguring as relations shift.

atmosphere

The felt, shared quality of a situation—the diffuse, more-than-individual “weather” of a scene—that emerges from entanglements of bodies, spaces, technologies, discourse, and materials, shaping what becomes thinkable, sayable, and doable.

attunement

A practice of sensitizing perception to the rhythms, intensities, and relations that compose a situation, so that inquiry can feel-with and think-with the more-than-human forces shaping what becomes possible.

authorship

An emergent pattern of accountability and credit enacted within specific assemblages of humans, tools, discourses, and materials, where agency, meaning, and intention are materially distributed and momentarily cut together-apart as a text.

Autopoietic System

_{An autopoietic system is one that self-generates and self-maintains. In pedagogical contexts influenced by AI, it describes ecosystems where educational practices, such as writing and learning, are constantly reproduced and transformed through interactions between instructors, students, and technological agents. This notion fosters inquiry into the resilience and adaptability of cyborg assemblages in sustaining vibrant academic practices.}

becoming

Ongoing, relational transformation that composes new capacities and relations in a field of forces, where entities do not pre-exist their relations but take shape through them.

becoming-with

Co-composition of relations, capacities, and worlds through ongoing, situated companionship among humans, nonhumans, and technologies, where beings and practices take shape together rather than in isolation.

body

A lively, permeable, and relational event of capacities and connections—human and more-than-human—through which thinking-feeling, sensing, and knowing take shape in situated practices and apparatuses.

boundary

A boundary is a temporarily stabilized differentiation produced within entangled relations; it is enacted by specific material–discursive practices that mark what counts as inside/outside, subject/object, or human/machine in a given situation.

care

Situated, affective, material practices of maintenance and response‑ability that sustain relations and capacities within pedagogical and research apparatuses.

creativity

The event of bringing forth novel and fitting differences within a situated assemblage, where “novel” marks an emergent variation that did not previously exist in that configuration and “fitting” names its consequential uptake, or how it reconfigures capacities, relations, and possibilities for action.

creative Materiality

How matter—tools, interfaces, bodies, data, and environments—participates in invention rather than merely supporting it. Creative effects arise from frictions and affordances within an apparatus, where transductions between media and bodies co-compose what becomes thinkable and writable.

culture

Sedimented practices, narratives, and infrastructures that pattern perception, value, and possibility across assemblages.

cyborg

A hybrid figure of human–machine co-constitution that names how bodies, technologies, and meanings are woven together in situated practices, making visible the political and epistemic stakes of those couplings.

cyborgification

The ongoing process through which humans, technologies, and institutions become interwoven in ways that blur boundaries between organism and machine, producing hybrid subjects, practices, and accountabilities in situated worlds.

data

Material-discursive traces produced by apparatuses of collection, preprocessing, and modeling. Data are relational, situated, and performative: they enact cuts that delineate what becomes an object of inquiry, what counts as evidence, and which learning outcomes are legible in writing pedagogy.

datafication

Ongoing sociotechnical processes that render activities, bodies, and texts into calculable units for extraction, optimization, and governance across platforms and institutions.

difference

A generative principle of becoming that names how realities, relations, and capacities emerge through variation, differentiation, and repetition-with-change, rather than from fixed essences or stable identities.

diffraction

An onto-epistemological practice for noticing differences-that-matter by reading phenomena through one another to trace patterns of interference and consequence in how worlds are made and known.

diffractive Genealogies

Nonlinear tracings of concepts across fields that illuminate how ideas co‑compose one another through crossings rather than through singular origins.

diffractive Pedagogies

Designing and studying teaching that stage productive interferences among theories, artifacts, and practices so new relations, judgments, and forms of learning can emerge by reading classroom elements through one another and noticing how differences take shape and with what consequences; treating pedagogy as a material-discursive arrangement that participates in making what counts as learning.

diffractive Journaling

A reflective-writing practice composed as a diffractive apparatus: writing with and through heterogeneous materials to trace differences-that-matter, attune to interference patterns, and make accountable the agential cuts that shape what becomes sensible in inquiry.

diffractive Reading

A methodological practice of reading multiple sources through one another to generate novel insights from the interference patterns they produce when brought into contact.

documentation

Practices and artifacts that materialize, circulate, and stabilize relations and traces of knowing-doing in an inquiry. Documentation is an active participant in how phenomena take shape and become legible and accountable in inquiry and assessment.

ecology

An onto-epistemological orientation that understands worlds as co-constituted habitats of relations, obligations, and material-semiotic exchanges, where living and learning take shape through patterns of interdependence across human and more‑than‑human milieus.

embodiment

The lived, material, and affective capacities through which bodies—human and nonhuman—sense, know, and compose within situated apparatuses, where learning and meaning emerge from patterned relations among flesh, tools, spaces, and concepts.

emergence

Patterns, capacities, and forms of order that arise from relational processes without being predetermined by any single element, where novelty becomes thinkable as a property of the whole-in-motion rather than a sum of parts.

entanglement

The inseparable co-constitution of phenomena, where relations do not link preformed parts but generate the very terms that seem to be related. Differences materialize within specific configurations of humans, nonhumans, technologies, materials, and discourses.

ethico-onto-epistem-ology

A commitment to the inseparability of ethics, ontology, and epistemology in knowledge-making, where practices of knowing are simultaneously practices of being and doing, and therefore always matters of responsibility.

ethics

Immanent, relational, and practice‑based orientations of responsibility and care that are enacted, not applied, within concrete material–discursive arrangements.

fearful materialism

An ethical-methodological orientation that treats fear, anxiety, and apprehension as material forces in knowledge-making, attending to how affects sediment in bodies, tools, spaces, and discourses to shape what becomes sayable, doable, and teachable.

feminist technoecologies

Feminist Technoecologies focus on the intersections of gender, technology, and ecological thought.They invite an interrogation of how digital platforms and AI systems are embedded within broader power structures. For teacher-researchers and curriculum designers, this mapping offers a pathway for designing digitally mediated writing practices that foreground intersectional concerns and challenge normative technocratic paradigms.

Following

Following implies the act of tracing influence, lineage, and emergent forms as agents interact over time. In a GenAI context, it underscores the importance of attentive, processual monitoring of how writing practices evolve in response to automated interventions. It encourages a research stance that is open to learning from the unpredictable trajectories of technological influence and fostering adaptive pedagogies.

Frailty

Frailty speaks to the vulnerabilities inherent in any assemblage, whether human or technological. In exploring cyborg writing practices, this concept reminds researchers that digital tools, like human actors, possess limitations that may expose systemic weaknesses. It invites educators to develop resiliency strategies and critical frameworks that account for the fragility built into processes of technological integration.

Glossary

The Glossary itself is a meta-concept:a curated archive that aggregates multiple viewpoints and practices under the new materialist banner. It stands as an invitation to continuous dialogue and reconfiguration of meaning. For researchers, it serves as both a methodological guide and a source of inspiration for theorizing the intersections of technology, pedagogy, and materiality.

Image

The concept of Image interrogates how representations serve as sites of both meaning and misrecognition. Within the realm of AI-assisted writing, images - whether literal or metaphorical - help frame the interfaces between human expression and machine-generated content. Mapping this concept opens avenues for critiquing visual cultures in pedagogy and exploring how image-making practices can be retooled in cyborg academic contexts.

Information

Information is reconsidered as an active, material force rather than a neutral commodity. In the digital classroom, the flow of information between instructors, students, and GenAI systems is part of a dynamic, co-constituted process. This mapping encourages an analysis of how information circulates, transforms, and gains meaning when processed through both human cognitive frameworks and algorithmic logics.

Intersectionality

Intersectionality provides a framework for understanding how systems of power overlap and produce complex, interwoven dynamics. In cyborg writing and AI-mediated pedagogy, intersectionality helps reveal how identities and biases are reproduced (or contested) when digital tools interlace with traditional academic hierarchies. It supports a research agenda that investigates the multiplicity of identities emerging from human–machine interactions.

intensity

A concept for tracking how differences gather force and become felt as shifts in movement, attention, and capacity within an assemblage, prior to being named as fixed emotions or meanings.

Intra-action

Intra-action dispenses with pre-established separations between entities, suggesting instead that realities co-constitute each other through their interactions and ongoing relational encounters. Unlike interaction, which presumes the existence of separate, pre-formed entities, intra-action posits that entities only emerge through their entanglements with one another.This idea is central to postqualitative research by emphasizing that agency and meaning are always emergent, relational, and context-dependent. In a GenAI context, the concept captures how instructors and AI systems continuously and mutually shape each other’s functions, outcomes, and identities; it highlights how instructors, students, technologies, and institutional structures are not independent actors but are continually brought into being through their relationships. This concept challenges individualistic accounts of agency and knowledge, emphasizing the co-constitutive nature of educational phenomena.

Literacy & Agential Literacy

This concept expands the notion of literacy to include competence with the myriad forces - human, technological, and material - that shape textual production. It suggests that educators must cultivate an awareness of how agency is distributed within the classroom. In cyborg writing, agential literacy involves understanding and negotiating the contributions of AI systems, thereby equipping students to engage critically with digital artifacts.

Literature

Literature is reimagined not simply as a repository of canonical texts, but as an evolving practice that incorporates material, digital, and performative dimensions. In technologically mediated writing, the boundaries of literature blur, inviting educators to rethink what constitutes textual creation and critical reading. This mapping offers a framework for exploring emergent literary forms that arise from the interplay of algorithmic processes and human expression.

Materiality

Materiality, within new materialist and postqualitative frameworks, refers to the significance of matter - bodies, technologies, spaces, and objects - in the production of knowledge, subjectivity, and experience. Materiality is not passive or inert but is understood as active, agentic, and always in relation with discursive and affective forces. In AI-entangled pedagogy, materiality encompasses not only the physical presence of digital devices and infrastructures but also the ways in which these materialities shape, and are shaped by, pedagogical practices, institutional policies, and affective atmospheres.

material-discursivity

The inseparability of matter and meaning in the production of phenomena, where practices, concepts, bodies, tools, and signs co-constitute what comes to exist, to be sensed, and to count as knowledge.

Metal

While ostensibly referencing the physical properties of metals, this concept in new materialism serves as a metaphor for the transformative and malleable qualities of materiality. In the context of GenAI writing, metal can be seen as emblematic of the resilient, conductive properties of digital interfaces that facilitate the transformation of raw data into creative outputs. This invites research into the parallels between industrial materials and digital media in shaping pedagogical forms.

Multiplicity

Multiplicity is a concept that foregrounds the existence of many, rather than one, and resists reduction to singularity or uniformity. In postqualitative and new materialist research, multiplicity is embraced as a source of creativity, complexity, and potentiality. Within the context of GenAI in writing instruction, multiplicity is evident in the diverse ways that technologies, bodies, discourses, and practices come together to produce educational experiences. Recognizing multiplicity allows for an appreciation of the heterogeneity and unpredictability that characterize AI-entangled pedagogical assemblages.

Nonhuman

Nonhuman refers to entities, forces, and agencies that are not human but are nevertheless active participants in the production of knowledge, experience, and subjectivity. In new materialist and posthumanist scholarship, nonhumans, such as technologies, algorithms, plants, animals, and objects, are recognized as having the capacity to affect and be affected. In the context of GenAI and writing instruction, nonhuman actors play a crucial role in shaping pedagogical practices, institutional norms, and the lived experiences of instructors and students. This perspective challenges anthropocentric assumptions and invites a more expansive understanding of agency and relationality.

Nonorganic Life

Nonorganic Life highlights the capacity of systems traditionally regarded as inanimate to exhibit lifelike, self-organizing properties. In cyborg and AI-mediated pedagogies, the idea challenges conventional boundaries, encouraging educators to consider how digital tools possess a form of “life” that contributes to the dynamic evolution of academic practices. This concept thereby disrupts human-centered narratives and expands the field of inquiry to incorporate algorithmic vitality.

Pain

Pain, as conceptualized within new materialism, is not merely a negative sensation but a mode of signaling rupture and transformation. In an academic context, instructors may experience pain: be it frustration with unreliable algorithms or discomfort in the face of rapid change, that opens opportunities for critical reflection. Research can explore how such affective states catalyze shifts in pedagogical practices and invite a more compassionate, ethically attuned approach.

Pedagogy

Pedagogy, from a postqualitative and new materialist perspective, is not simply the transmission of knowledge from teacher to student but a complex, emergent process shaped by the entanglement of human and nonhuman actors, materialities, discourses, and affective forces. In the context of GenAI, pedagogy becomes a site of negotiation where traditional roles and practices are reconfigured by the presence of algorithmic tools, digital infrastructures, and shifting institutional expectations. This approach to pedagogy foregrounds the importance of relationality, experimentation, and responsiveness to the unpredictable dynamics that characterize contemporary educational assemblages.

Performativity

Performativity posits that language, texts, and practices do not merely represent reality but actively constitute it. Within cyborg writing, performativity underscores the idea that both human and algorithmic inputs dynamically enact and reshape the textual landscape. This perspective is invaluable in understanding how digital feedback and collaborative writing practices contribute to the ongoing production of knowledge, thereby aligning with a postqualitative framework.

Phenomena – Agential Realism

Phenomena in the sense of Agential Realism capture events as mutually constituted by observers and the observed, dissolving the subject–object divide. In AI-augmented writing classrooms, this mapping invites researchers to examine how outcomes are the product of complex intra-actions between instructors, students, and digital systems. It promotes a research orientation that treats every interaction as generative and ethically significant.

Posthumanism

Posthumanism is a theoretical orientation that challenges human-centered (anthropocentric) assumptions about knowledge, agency, and subjectivity. It emphasizes the interconnectedness of humans, nonhumans, technologies, and environments, and seeks to decenter the human as the primary locus of meaning and value. In research on GenAI and writing instruction, posthumanism invites critical reflection on how educational practices are shaped by more-than-human assemblages, and how subjectivities are co-constituted through ongoing intra-actions with digital and material others. This perspective opens up possibilities for reimagining education beyond the limits of human exceptionalism.

Power

Power, in postqualitative and new materialist research, is not viewed as a commodity possessed by individuals or groups but as a dynamic, relational force that circulates through assemblages of humans, nonhumans, discourses, and materialities. Power is enacted and negotiated through everyday practices, institutional structures, and technological infrastructures, shaping what becomes possible or impossible within educational contexts. In the context of GenAI, power relations are continually reconfigured as algorithms, policies, and pedagogical norms interact to produce new forms of agency, resistance, and vulnerability among instructors and students.

Practice

Practice foregrounds the everyday, embodied enactments through which knowledge is produced and contested. In the sphere of GenAI-enabled pedagogy, practice encompasses the routines, rituals, and improvisations that emerge as human and machine collaborate. This concept challenges researchers to document and theorize the lived, dynamic nature of pedagogical activities, reinforcing a postqualitative sensitivity to process over fixed outcomes.

(Queer) Desire

(Queer) Desire shifts the focus away from normative desires toward an exploration of disruptive, transgressive affective forces. In cyborg writing, it problematizes linear modes of authorship and opens the way for exploring non-traditional, inclusive, and creative forms of engagement between educators, students, and AI systems. This mapping suggests that desire, when conceptualized in its queer form, can act as a catalyst for reimagining power relations within digital pedagogies.

Quantum Entanglement

Quantum Entanglement is employed metaphorically to describe the profound, non-linear connections among entities. In a GenAI context, the concept emphasizes that the traceable outcomes in cyborg writing are the result of entangled interactions that defy simple causality. Researchers are thus prompted to attend to the emergent, indeterminate qualities inherent in technology-mediated educational practices.

Race

Race, within the new materialist framework, is understood not as an essentialized category but as a fluid set of relations shaped by material and historical contingencies. In digitally mediated writing environments, this mapping calls attention to how race, bias, and representation are interwoven into algorithmic practices and educational norms. It supports research that seeks to dismantle canonical hierarchies by foregrounding intersectional, inclusive methodologies.

Realism

Realism in new materialist thought challenges simplistic representations by accounting for the intricacies of material-discursive assemblages. In the context of cyborg writing, realism is reconfigured to accommodate the complex interplay between textual production, technological mediation, and lived experience. This invites a reinvention of what is considered “real” in scholarship-one that is malleable, emergent, and relational.

Relationality

Relationality is a foundational concept in postqualitative and new materialist thought, emphasizing that entities, identities, and phenomena do not exist in isolation but are always constituted through their relationships with others. This perspective shifts attention from individual actors to the networks, assemblages, and intra-actions that give rise to educational experiences and outcomes. In AI-entangled pedagogy, relationality foregrounds the importance of attending to the complex webs of connection among instructors, students, technologies, policies, and material environments, and how these relationships shape the possibilities for teaching, learning, and becoming.

Rhizome / Rhizomaticity

Rhizome, a concept developed by Deleuze and Guattari, describes a non-hierarchical, non-linear mode of organization characterized by multiplicity, connectivity, and unpredictability. Rhizomaticity resists fixed structures and binary oppositions, instead embracing the proliferation of connections and pathways that can emerge in any direction. In the context of postqualitative research in education, rhizomatic thinking encourages an openness to experimentation, serendipity, and the unexpected, allowing for the emergence of new forms of knowledge, subjectivity, and practice that are not predetermined by existing categories or hierarchies.

Situated Knowledges

Situated Knowledges highlight that all forms of knowing are context-dependent and produced from specific material–social positions. In a GenAI/LLM classroom, acknowledging situated knowledges means recognizing that digital pedagogies are influenced by the varied experiences of instructors and students alike. This mapping advocates for research methods that honor diverse perspectives and multiple vantage points in knowledge production.

Snapshot

A Snapshot captures a transient configuration of interactions at a specific moment in time. For cyborg writing practices, a snapshot may document the instantaneous interplay between algorithmic outputs and human revision. Such moments, when contextualized within a broader process, offer rich data for postqualitative inquiry into the fluidity of pedagogical encounters.

Soil Fiction

Soil Fiction invokes the image of the ground - rich, dynamic, and teeming with potential - for rethinking narratives and literacies. In digitally mediated writing, this concept disrupts traditional hierarchies by suggesting that texts, like soils, absorb, decompose, and regenerate creative inputs. It offers a metaphor for organic, bottom-up pedagogies that nurture emergent, community-based learning practices.

Soilfarers

Soilfarers extend the metaphor of soil into a realm of active cultivation, capturing the role of educators and students as agents who nurture and harvest knowledge from digital landscapes. Engaging with GenAI, these “soilfarers” navigate a terrain where texts and ideas are continuously cultivated. This analogy supports a pedagogy that is both adaptive and regenerative.

Stickiness

(needs revision!)

Sara Ahmed’s (2004) concept for how emotions “stick” to objects through repeated associations, creating affective investments that shape social relationships and identity formation. Sticky objects accumulate emotional residue that exceeds their immediate material properties.

Sticky objects guide methodological attention to how affects adhere to concepts, practices, and phenomena through circulation and repetition. Research explores how emotional investments shape what becomes possible to know or experience (Ahmed 2004).

💡More context

GenAI becomes a sticky object in writing pedagogy, accumulating anxieties about authenticity, excitement about efficiency, and fears about student autonomy. These affective investments shape how AI integration possibilities are perceived and enacted.

“Authenticity” becomes a sticky object in AI writing debates, accumulating nostalgic investments in “pure” human expression that may prevent exploration of productive AI collaboration. Similarly, “efficiency” sticks to AI tools in ways that may instrumentalize learning relationships.

Student writing can become sticky with surveillance affects when AI detection tools are deployed, creating atmospheres of suspicion that exceed actual cheating behaviors. “Original writing” accumulates romantic affects that may not correspond to actual composing practices.

Research approach: What affects stick to different AI writing tools (ChatGPT, Grammarly, Turnitin) and how do these affective investments shape pedagogical possibilities? How might unsticking these affects open new approaches to AI integration?

Practical application: Faculty development might explore what affects have stuck to AI technologies and how these investments constrain or enable particular pedagogical responses. What would it mean to unstick some of these affects while cultivating others?

Key citation: Ahmed, S. (2004). The cultural politics of emotion. Edinburgh University Press.

Subjectivity

Subjectivity, in postqualitative and new materialist frameworks, is not a fixed, internal essence of a person but rather the temporary and provisional coherence of a particular way of being in the world. It is a specific, dynamic pattern of capacities: to feel, think, act, and relate, that emerges and is stabilized, however fleetingly, from the ongoing intra-actions within an assemblage. This pattern is constituted by a convergence of human and nonhuman forces, including embodied habits, affective intensities, technological affordances, and circulating discourses. In the context of GenAI and writing instruction, the subjectivity of an ‘instructor’ is not a pre-existing identity but a specific mode of being that is continually produced. This ‘instructor-subjectivity’ might be composed of anxieties about academic integrity, curiosities about pedagogical innovation, the material constraints of a learning management system, and the specific outputs of an AI model. These elements are not things that a subject has; they are the very stuff of the subjectivity itself, shaping what it is possible for that instructor to do and feel in a given moment. This perspective thus shifts the focus from a stable, autonomous ‘who’ to a dynamic, emergent, and more-than-human ‘how’ - or how a particular subject comes to be and act.

Technology/Technicity/Techné

The conceptual triad of Technology/Technicity/Techné offers a framework for understanding the role of tools and systems beyond their function as inert objects. In this view, Technology refers to the material apparatuses themselves, i.e. the software, algorithms, and digital platforms. Techné encompasses the craft, skill, and practical knowledge involved in their use, such as the art of prompt engineering or the pedagogical design of AI-integrated assignments. Crucially, Technicity describes the inherent, agentic capacity of technology to actively shape and participate in the world. It is not merely a tool used by humans, but a force that intra-acts with users, reconfiguring practices, subjectivities, and possibilities. Within the context of GenAI and writing instruction, this perspective moves beyond seeing AI as a simple instrument. Instead, it foregrounds the technicity of the algorithm -its capacity to generate text, introduce biases, and structure thought- as an active participant in the writing assemblage. This approach dissolves the user/tool binary, reframing the pedagogical encounter as an entanglement of human techné and nonhuman technicity, where creativity and knowledge emerge from the co-constitutive relationship between the writer and the machine.

Transversality

Transversality describes movements and modes of inquiry that cut across established boundaries, disciplines, or hierarchies. As a concept relevant to cyborg writing, it champions an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the interplay between human intuition and machine processes. This mapping advocates for pedagogical strategies that are cross-cutting, enabling new forms of dialogue between seemingly disparate academic or technological domains.

Vegetal Ecologies

Vegetal Ecologies extend the notion of ecology to include the living, sustaining properties of plant life- symbolizing growth, regeneration, and interconnectedness. In the context of AI and digital writing, this concept offers a metaphor for how ideas take root, evolve, and interweave with the broader environmental and social context of the classroom. It supports pedagogical models that emphasize sustainability, growth, and non-linearity in knowledge production.

Vibration

Vibration captures the dynamic oscillations and energy flows that occur within assemblages. In a cyborg writing environment, it speaks to the subtle fluctuations in feedback cycles, the resonant interplay between human input and algorithmic suggestion, and the affective rhythms that underlie the digital writing process. This concept encourages instrumentation of pedagogical spaces that are sensitive to the unspoken, energetic undercurrents of knowledge production.

Viscosity

Viscosity in new materialist thought refers to the ‘stickiness’ of materials, ideas, and practices- how they resist or conform to flows and dissolve gradually over time. Within AI-mediated pedagogy, viscosity can illuminate the friction experienced when integrating new digital practices with long-standing teaching traditions. It informs a critical reflection on how easily (or not) innovative practices can be absorbed within existing educational structures.

Vitalism

Vitalism posits that a vital force animates matter, imbuing it with energy and purpose. In cyborg writing and GenAI contexts, vitalism is an invitation to perceive technology not as inert code but as imbued with a form of liveliness that contributes to creative practices. This concept supports a reconceptualization of digital tools as possessing distinctive dynamic qualities, which must be ethically and pragmatically engaged in postqualitative pedagogies.

Voice

Voice is reconfigured to acknowledge that sound, speech, and textual expression are emergent from complex interactions rather than being solely human attributes. In a technologically mediated writing classroom, voice can be seen as the composite sound made up by human expression and algorithmic modulation. This mapping suggests that embracing multifaceted voices can lead to more inclusive pedagogical practices in which authority and creativity are continuously renegotiated.

Vulnerability

Vulnerability, in postqualitative and new materialist research, is understood as a relational and generative condition rather than a deficit or weakness. It emerges from the openness and exposure of bodies, subjectivities, and assemblages to the unpredictable effects of intra-action, change, and transformation. In the context of GenAI in higher education, vulnerability may manifest in the anxieties, uncertainties, and risks experienced by instructors and students as they navigate new technological landscapes. Attending to vulnerability invites a more ethical, responsive, and caring approach to pedagogy and research, foregrounding the importance of support, solidarity, and collective resilience.

Worlding

Worlding refers to the ongoing practice of effecting change- of continuously reconstituting what we understand as “the world.” In the interplay of GenAI, cyborg writing, and pedagogy, worlding is both a philosophical stance and a practical ambition: it requires educators and students to actively construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct educational realities. This concept thus underpins research that interrogates how digital and material forces collaborate to remake the academic and cultural landscapes.

Writing

Writing, from a postqualitative and new materialist perspective, is redefined as an agential, material-discursive practice that actively generates thought, rather than simply transcribing pre-existing ideas. In this view, writing is a form of thinking-in-action, where the physical act of inscription- whether through keystrokes on a keyboard, interactions with a screen, or the processing work of servers- is inseparable from the discursive forces at play, such as genre conventions, institutional rules, and algorithmic patterns. The author does not stand apart from this process but is constituted through it; the act of writing produces the writer’s subjectivity and knowledge in real-time. In the context of GenAI, this practice is radically reconfigured. Writing becomes a complex intra-action between the human writer and the nonhuman agency of the large language model. The process is no longer solely about composition but expands to include prompting, curating, editing, and integrating machine-generated text. This transforms writing into a cyborgian activity where the final text is an artifact of a distributed cognitive and creative process. Consequently, authorship is understood not as an individual act of creation but as an emergent effect of the entire writing assemblage, challenging fixed notions of originality, intention, and the boundaries of the text itself.

Conclusion

The mapping provided herein illustrates how each New Materialism concept can be productively mobilized within a postqualitative research framework focused on generative AI/LLM interactions, cyborg writing, and transformative pedagogies. Starting from affect and agency, moving through assemblages and intra-actions, and extending into ethical and ecological concerns, the concepts offer a multifaceted theoretical toolkit. Educators and researchers are encouraged to explore these mappings further:using them as a springboard for innovative curricular practices, reflective teaching methodologies, and the re-envisioning of academic authorship. In embracing these interdisciplinary approaches, postqualitative research can both chart new directions for scholarship and cultivate a more ethically engaged, inclusive, and dynamic educational practice.

The aim of this compilation was to provide an exhaustive foundation from which further theoretical extrapolation and empirical inquiry might emerge - reinforcing that the interplay of technology and pedagogy is best understood as a living, evolving assemblage where every concept is a node in the broader network of meaning.

Explorer

index