A diffractive approach to multimodal transcription: Materialising entanglements between humans and non-humans

Posthumanism is a transdisciplinary paradigm which challenges our anthropocentric gaze when carrying out research. In this article, I argue that multimodality aligns with the posthuman paradigm, and that multimodal analysis can be a useful tool when completing empirical posthuman research. I present empirical data from a study on pre-schoolers’ creativity with tablet computers which combined multimodal methods and a posthuman theoretical lens. Data were analysed using multimodal (intra) action analysis. Multimodal (inter) action analysis focuses on social action and interaction between humans, whereas multimodal (intra) action analysis focuses on the entanglement between human and non-human. Drawing upon Haraway and Barad’s “diffraction”, a methodological alternative to reflexivity, multiple different multimodal transcripts of the same audio-visual data were created and then read through one another to see what “differences made a difference”. Repeatedly engaging with the data in different formats allowed me to slow down and pay attention to (intra) activity between humans and non-humans. The unique contribution of this paper is in my transfer of methods and concepts between multimodality and posthumanism, particularly the use of a diffractive approach to reading multimodal transcripts.