Pedagogy at the brink of the post-anthropocene

Abstract

The significance of educational research is today predicated on its ability to engage with the ecological, economic, and political challenges of the anthropocene, for where we might take seriously education's commitment to the future necessitates a sustained encounter with the implications and questions raised in the wake of 'our' mutated planetary ecology. To repeat in the image of those educational practices, models and patterns of thinking that have contributed to the contemporary ecological crisis of the planet falls gravely short of apprehending what it might entail to live (and die) in the contemporary moment. Yet further, where education is intimate to teleology, it is today clear that the image of the future posited educationally has fallen out of synch with the 'outside thought' of ecocatastrophe, or rather, our being 'thought' from the inhuman perspective of a planet destined to go on without us. Educationally, this threat poses a quite remarkable opportunity, for where human thought might be doomed to extinction, the question of how and where we might think assumes urgency. In this vein, this essay explores the wisdom that 'we' are and will be thought from perspectives alien to human desire becomes a catalyst for how educational research might be rethought otherwise in a more-than-human world.

Working the edges of Posthuman disability studies: theorising with disabled young people with life‐limiting impairments

“…In short, given the right conditions, this worldview posits that human beings are capable of maintaining their species-dominance through the offerings of rational thought, self-governance and progress towards objective knowledge. Humanism has not gained dominance without human, non-human and environmental collateral: creating the anthropocene: 'a new era marked by unprecedented rates of human activity on the planet and planetary ecosystems' (Wallin 2017(Wallin : 1099.…”

Strange loops, oedipal logic, and an apophatic ecology: Reimagining critique in environmental education

“…Recent critical philosophies of EE have picked up on Morton's (2007) insights in deconstructing 'Nature' as an organizing concept, especially how EE often employs a romantic imagery of cultivating a relation to Nature (Lysgaard et al, 2019;Lysgaard & Bengtsson, 2020;Wallin, 2017). Nature imagery is etched in what we would like to call a "narrative of the fall": telling a story of cultural alienation, separation or a falling away from a harmonious relationship with the morethan-human.…”

“…Still, even the theories that seek to go 'beyond' such narrative tropes in EE are not always immune to looping structures. For instance, Wallin uses Morton to point out that in critiques of anthropocentrism, the repeated efforts to make EE research post-human, the 'human' is not only constantly repeated as a problem to be overcome in the imminent future, but the very means of problematizing anthropocentrism (language, reasoning, writing) are still centrally human (Wallin, 2017(Wallin, , p. 1107. In the narratives of leaving the problems of anthropocentrism in the past and moving towards a post-human future, the investigating, critiquing subject is obfuscated and so the loop remains submerged and unacknowledged.…”

“…This is to cultivate an imagination that is much needed in responding to the enormous scales and complexities inherent in the ecological disasters of the Anthropocene (Bazzul, 2019). In recent EE theories employing dark ecology, such vantage points are found especially in dystopian novels and films or horror fiction (Lysgaard et al, 2019;Wallin, 2017). By using examples of H.P Lovecraft, Wallin (2017) stresses the import of an outlook of a future Earth continuing to exist without humans.…”

Life and death in the Anthropocene: Educating for survival amid climate and ecosystem changes and potential civilisation collapse

“…By 2013 'It appeared in nearly 200 peerreviewed articles … Elsevier has launched a new academic journal titled Anthropocene.' In Educational Philosophy and Theory (EPAT) recently there have been several articles, for example: Jason J. Wallin (Wallin, 2017) Pedagogy at the brink of the post-anthropocene: Iris Duhn (Duhn, 2018) In 2015, the IPCC 5th Assessment report provided the scientific input into the Paris Agreement 12 , which aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels.…”