Anthropocene

• In Event: 28.037 - *CANCELLED* Timespacemattering: An Invitation to Create a Manifesto for Justice in Higher Education

Abstract

Anthropocene refers to the ‘epoch in which human disturbance outranks other geological forces’ (Tsing, 2015,p. 19). The concept, lifted from Geology, points to the destruction of places in geological time, where the destruction is irreversible. Denialism about global warming, climate change, environmental degradation, terrorism, large scale poverty and land ownership issues, has brought about the Anthropocene. Higher education is folded into the fabric of the Anthropocene with its emphasis on productivity and progress driven by neoliberal extractive managerialist agendas. Instability and precarity, like many other forces in human history, have a propensity to shake up that which humans have taken-for-granted over non-human matterings. The issues have been simmering for a very long time in the midst of denialism. Climate change, and the destruction of the planet require that we engage with socially and environmentally just pedagogies that frame timespacemattering not just as resources but as essential to our collective existence.

Author

• Mdumo Mboweni