Modern political and market structures have normalized colonial violence into economic and social realities, while imperial powers still dictate modes of labor and resources extraction that benefit them in the present, but send the physical world hurtling into a future of crisis. Justifying this activity are Western mindsets based in rational exclusivity, which fail to recognize the constructed elements of their reality, instead subjugating and historicizing those with different ontological perspectives. In particular, Western logics have persecuted indigenous populations and their cultural connection to ancestral homelands in order to appease colonial paranoia and reassert exclusive claim to stolen land. This is not materially, ethically, or spiritually sustainable. This thesis examines the ways in which colonial and indigenous ontologies interact in the past, present, and future through identifying the reality-shaping narrative phantasies which shape encounters surrounding land. Phantasies of land and the ecosystems humans are a part of are especially central to how individuals and societies relate to the self, as well as human and non-human others. Through an analysis of the 1843 Thomas Gregory-Pamunkey petitions over claims to the Pamunkey reservation land, this thesis studies how colonial and indigenous phantasies of land interact. It demonstrates that the colonial inability to recognize personal and cultural phantasies often leads to conflict, but an ability to recognize the power of narrative and communicate through alternative ontologies than one's own can lead to successful communication and meaningful relationships, ones which can help those with settler backgrounds to live more ethically and support indigenous resurgence. This thesis offers a theoretical, historical, and practical guide to begin the process of unsettling the self by way of recognizing the constructed narrative phantasies settlers have been accustomed to interpreting the world through, and reflects on ways for settlers to move forward by engaging with land-based ontologies. / Master of Arts / Modern political and market structures have normalized colonial violence into economic and social realities, while imperial powers still dictate modes of labor and resources extraction that benefit them in the present but send the physical world hurtling into a future of crisis. Justifying this activity are Western mindsets based in rational exclusivity, which fail to recognize the constructed elements of their reality, instead subjugating and historicizing those with different perspectives. In particular, Western logics have persecuted indigenous populations and their cultural connection to ancestral homelands in order to appease colonial paranoia and reassert exclusive claim to stolen land. This is not materially, ethically, or spiritually sustainable. This thesis examines the ways in which colonial and indigenous ontologies interact in the past, present, and future through identifying the reality-shaping narratives which shape encounters surrounding land. Stories of land and the ecosystems humans are a part of are especially central to how individuals and societies relate to the self, as well as human and non-human others. Through an analysis of the 1843 Thomas Gregory-Pamunkey petitions over claims to the Pamunkey reservation land, this thesis studies how colonial and indigenous narratives of land interact. It demonstrates that the colonial inability to recognize personal and cultural narratives often leads to conflict, but an ability to recognize the power of stories and communicate through alternative worldviews than one's own can lead to successful communication and meaningful relationships, ones which can help those with settler backgrounds to live more ethically and support indigenous resurgence. This thesis offers a theoretical, historical, and practical guide to begin the process of unsettling the self by way of recognizing the constructed narratives settlers have been accustomed to interpreting the world through, and reflects on ways for settlers to move forward by engaging with land-based worlviews.

Collaborating in the Electric Age: [onto]Riffological Experiments in Posthumanizing Education and Theorizing a Machinic Arts-Based Research is a study about locating opportunities and entry points for introducing consideration of the nonhuman and posthuman to pedagogical perspectives that are traditionally concerned with human beings and epistemological subjects. The research, herein, engages doings in collaborative effort, during conditions of unprecedented interconnectedness facilitated by the electric age. Steeped in a environment thus created by technologies’ immense ubiquity and influence, this collaboration endeavours to recognize their full research participation, alongside that of humans. This research presents collaboratively conducted, published inquiries that have been coauthored by myself and fellow doctoral candidate Richard Wainwright. Each facilitates, then attempts to articulate ways to decentre the human in educational contexts, beginning with our own human perspectives. As exercises in broadening our considerations of the life forms, matter, and nonhuman entities that surround humanity, this research prompts us to recognize much more than what humanity typically acknowledges as existing, given the anthropocentric frameworks it has constructed. We reorientate the nature of these relationships—posthumanizing them—and in doing so, disrupt our own thinking to work something different than our circumstances have hitherto informed us to consider. We have co-developed a study and conducted research in collaboration with human and nonhuman research participants.Five nationally and internationally published co-authored journal articles, a book chapter, and five intermezzos (short “observational” pieces) comprise this study that explores collaboration and recombinatoriality during “the electric age” (McLuhan, 1969, 10:05). Recognizing humanity’s increasingly inextricable relationships with technologies, this collaboratively conducted study draws into creative assemblage Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s philosophical concepts; new materialism as cultural theory; the prescient observations and predictions of Marshall McLuhan and a media studies curriculum he co-developed over forty years ago; arts-based research; museum exhibitions; features of music production such as sampling, mashup, remix, and turntabling; among many other notes and tones. A conceptually developed riff mobilizes our inquiries as “plug in and play,” while its academic study is theorized as [onto]Riffology. Ontological shifts beget a machinic arts-based research (MABR) that develops a posthuman critical pedagogy inspired by Negri and Guattari (2010). Collaborating in the Electric Age: [onto]Riffological Experiments in Posthumanizing Education and Theorizing a Machinic Arts-Based Research celebrates collaborativity, discovery, and learning during the electric age. / Graduate / 2023-01-07