A Pandemic-Informed Critical Posthumanist Approach for Human and More-Than-Human Justice and Liberation

• In Event: 21st Century Collaborations in (Re)Imagining Activist Teaching: Addressing Social Justice and Sustainability in Teacher Education

Abstract

This past year has shown the intimate links between humans and the more-than-human world. Specifically, it has highlighted how environmental degradation and human infringement upon more-than-human habitats can cause unsurpassed suffering through global pandemics (Vidal, 2020). Now, more than ever, it is crucial that we closely examine the often (un)identified cultural assumptions embedded in the limited modernist views of human-centric thought. Inspired by work to ecologize philosophy of education (Affifi, Blenkinsop, Humphreys, & Jodersma, 2017), the researchers in this paper apply a critical posthumanist lens to examine how ecocritical approaches in the social foundations of education can play an integral role in decentering the human position as superior and separate from all other beings in both schools and society.

Drawing from a critical posthumanist approach (Pederson, 2011), the researchers bring posthumanist philosophy (Haraway, 2008; Wolfe, 2003, 2010) and critical animal studies (Best, 2009; Nocella et al. 2014; Pedersen, 2010; 2011; Twine, 2010; 2012) together with ecological theories in ecofeminisms (Code, 2006; Laird, 2017; Plumwood, 1993, 2002; Warren, 1990, 2000) and ecojustice projects (AUTHORS, 2015, 2016a; 2016b; Bowers, 2001; Kahn, 2010; Martusewicz et al., 2015) in ways that recognize, respect, and represent human and more-than-human agents from both inside and outside the academy to examine how anthropocentrism (human-centrism) undermines efforts in the social foundations to work toward alleviating and eliminating social inequity and environmental degradation. Specifically, this paper explores what ecocritical scholars in the social foundations of education are doing to research and teach within and through Western industrial culture to address the relationship between anthropocentrism and other manifestations of unjust suffering rooted in forms of domination. Aligned with the conference theme’s focus on revolutionary (earth) democracy, engagement and activism, the paper examines how, as activist-scholar educators and educational researchers in educational foundations, we can—and do—work to unapologetically foster and develop educational spaces where there is an emphasis on seeking ways to (re)member our life-sustaining ontologies, while also working to forget or leave behind epistemologies that distance us from recognizing our dependencies on one another, the oceans, the land, and all of the more-than-human world (Abram, 1996). Taking seriously the concept of an ecological intelligence (e.g., Bateson, 1972; 2002; Bowers, 2010, 2011, 2016; Code, 2006), we argue that the breaking down of such binaries (e.g. human/nonhuman) is a kind of critical posthumanist philosophical project of re-envisioning educational worlds that exposes (im)possibilities (Barad, 2007) to open up rather than enclosed spaces of education. This is especially important as we consider a future in which environmental degradation continues to fuel phenomena such as pandemics that wreak havoc on everyone, but especially those who are most marginalized by race, class, geography, etc. This article advances a critical posthumanist scholarly understanding and conceptualization of the social foundations of education and furthermore highlights how such a lens influences ecocritical educational research.

Authors

• Alison Happel-Parkins, University of Memphis

• John J. Lupinacci, Washington State University