Horrors in the Chthulucene: "Pedagogical Misanthropy" as a Critical Framework for Disrupting Anthropocentric Media

• In Event: Novel Philosophical Approaches in Environmental Education

Abstract

The stories told through the media genre of eco-horror can both perpetuate and disrupt social and ecological injustices. By opening new encounters between critical media literacies and eco-horror, educators and students can disrupt anthropocentric narratives such as humans versus nature, nature in need of saving, and nature in need of taming, which contribute to systems of oppression in the Anthropocene. We acknowledge the Anthropocene as a very real boundary-event in which human disruptions are shaping global ecosystems, but we draw from Haraway’s (2016) Chthulucene to engage with spaces of entangled livability that refuse to be charted by Western humanistic “progress.” We offer the concept of “pedagogical misanthropy” to help learners explore paradoxes, complexity, and compassion in multi-species relationships.

Authors

• Emma Minke McMain, Washington State University - Pullman

• JT Torres, Quinnipiac University