Eco-Pedagogy Is the Pedagogy Against Capital: Need for a Radical Rupturing of the Dehumanized Facade Beyond Concessionary Liberal Politics

• In Event: Postdigital Eco-Pedagogies Continued

Abstract

Ecopedagogy is a ‘transformative’ educational project that draws from the Freirian tradition as well as from the tradition of a critical evaluation of the capitalist onslaught on the planet. In this sense, ecopedagogy needs to ground itself, centrally, within the labour-capital relationship that works at two levels – (1) through the estrangement of labour from the self thereby closing possibilities of any dialogue with things that concern the destruction of the world around; and (2) through teaching/organizing teacher-workers and students against the forces that are destroying humans as well as nature. It is important, therefore, not to look at human world and nature as disjunct. They exist in a dialectical relationship and shape one another as well. It is the increasing realization of this interdependence that allowed for greater ecological concerns.
However, these realisations and concerns are embroiled in two complex issues: (1) they generally do not locate the problem in systemic terms and prompt an engagement within classroom as well as outside about how we inhabit a system and what we confront is not insulated from what the system produces and reproduces (and this attitude can be seen in the way ‘environmental education’ is conceived and provided); (2) they do not sufficiently emphasise the authoritarianism of capital (hegemonic powers that be) which percolates down to the lowest level leading to absence of dialogue that could allow a critical evaluation of what is happening around and raise questions accordingly.
In order to address the above problem, it is crucial that ecopedagogy locates humans as well as nature as commodities located within capitalism, that are thrown out into the market place for exchange. It is this location of the humans and nature within the inescapable circuit of capital that will allow a fuller concept of pedagogy to develop. It is in this spirit of trying to develop a complete notion of pedagogy that the works of people such as Freire needs to be seen. Will it be useless to ask questions such as: is capital not an overarching material-ideological determining element of our lives? Are we located outside of its predatory accumulative agenda? If not, then one will have to locate critical pedagogy and ecopedagogy within a similar framework. This paper will try to establish that any conception of ecopedagogy must develop a pedagogy capable of transforming production and reproduction of capitalist social relations into a more humanized relationship among individuals as well as between individuals and nature.

Author

• Ravi Kumar, South Asian University