Reapproaching the Trading Zone: The Eco, the Techno, and the Child/Curriculum Division

• In Event: Anarchives, Archives, and Justice: Critical Curriculum, Ethics, and Schooling

Abstract

This paper considers the challenges posed by contexts of eco and techno events to educational theory, amid its historic reliance on a child/curriculum binary and humanist analytics of power. Part one examines the pedagogical-ethical challenges spawned by eco-crisis research into the anthropocene. Part two maps technofuturist literature, with the transhumanist movement as an example. Linking the eco and the techno is the trading zone in which particular aspects of “the human” are put up for exchange or substitution. The final section considers the synergy of Eco-Techno-Ed, laying out the difficulties for thinking in terms of educational solutions, and challenging the very idea of “life in classrooms,” “the child,” and “curriculum planning” as inadequate pathways for response.

Author

• Bernadette Baker, University of Wisconsin - Madison