This project emerged in 2023 from a transdisciplinary dialogue among scholars critically reflecting on the dynamics of education in light of the pressing challenges of our time. The conversation centered on how to cultivate more engaging, participatory, and transformative learning experiences.
What do we need today to initiate collective processes of transformation—ones that aim to rehabilitate difference and marginality, and to rediscover who we are as human beings in ontological and material connection with the nonhuman?
One possible response arose in the need to rethink the very dynamics of existence: to renegotiate subjectivity and challenge the exclusive assumptions that have, for centuries, supported rigid cultural binaries and justified sexist, racist, ableist, and speciesist practices. These issues have been powerfully addressed by posthumanist philosophy, particularly in the works of Rosi Braidotti and Francesca Ferrando, which form part of the theoretical foundation of this project.
Within academic contexts, much has been written and published on these themes, offering glimpses of potential transformation. However, a key question remains:
How can we more effectively bridge theory and praxis?
This question became the focus of inquiry during the Posthuman Summer Camp research context, where a compelling idea took shape: to experiment with these concepts through the creation of a transformative journey of the self, using the labyrinth not only as an evocative symbol, but as a lived, embodied practice and “as an organic, speaking subject… as having something to tell us” (Jones & Hoskins, 2016, p. 77). In 2024 our first labyrinth as a prototype was created, and in the same year our first project came to life.
Why the Labyrinth?
The labyrinth is a narrative motif found across cultures and artistic expressions worldwide. Historically, it has held a range of meanings—mythic, spiritual, and aesthetic. It has been envisioned both as a space of contemplation and as a journey through disorientation.
In light of recent posthumanist philosophies, however, the labyrinth becomes something more: a space of transformation, where the act of getting lost becomes a metaphor for letting go of rigid constructs of subjectivity. It invites us into a space of mixing, of twisting (as Donna Haraway and Astrida Neimanis might suggest), where a new figuration of the self can begin to take shape—one that is plural, entangled, and open to becoming.
Our (short) story continues...