A Critical Scrutiny of "Truth": An Eco-Critical Interrogation Toward a Multispecies Equity Framework

• In Event: Education and Multispecies Equity: Collective Understandings Toward Transformations

Abstract

Over just the past few years, the world has experienced a global pandemic, tyrannical governments promoting violent conflict, and an increased social and environmental suffering due to climate change. Given such stark conditions it has become nearly impossible to ignore the intimate links between humans and the more-than-human world. Specifically, what has been highlighted by such tragedy is how much a willful ignorance to truths and scientific literacy has led to deadly levels of environmental degradation and exposed how extreme human exceptionalism can cause unsurpassed and unjust suffering (Vidal, 2020). Now, more than ever as educational researchers in pursuit of truth and centering the importance of valuing diverse cultural knowledge and scientific literacy, it is crucial that educational researchers closely examine the often (un)identified cultural assumptions embedded in the limited modernist views of human-centric thought. In this paper, the author seeks to apply a “critical scrutiny of the messy knowledge forms and action moves (or lack thereof)” (Pedersen, 2011, p. 67) and embrace the uncertainties that emerge from rejecting “either/or” approaches that too often result in reproducing a problematic culture/nature dualistic binary and proposes harmony among discord with diverse critical approaches through working together toward better understanding and defining a multispecies framework for education and education research.
Drawing from a critical posthumanist approach (Pederson, 2011), this paper brings 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; Plumwood, 1993, 2002; Warren, 1990, 2000) and ecojustice projects (AUTHORS, 2015, 2016a; 2016b; Bowers, 2001; Kahn, 2010; Martusewicz et al., 2021), to explore what ecocritical scholars are doing to address the relationship between anthropocentrism and other manifestations of unjust suffering rooted in forms of domination. Aligned with the conference call to interrogate consequential education research in pursuit of truth, the paper examines how, activist-scholar educators and educational researchers in teacher education, can—and do—work to unapologetically foster and develop educational spaces where there is an emphasis on seeking ways to learn from 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), the author argues that the breaking down of such binaries (e.g. human/nonhuman) is a kind of critical posthumanist philosophical project of re-envisioning educational worlds in pursuit of a multispecies equity framework for 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 paper advances a critical posthumanist scholarly understanding and conceptualization of a multispecies equity framework for education and furthermore highlights how such a lens builds upon and influences environmental education research.

Authors

• John J. Lupinacci, Washington State University
  Presenting Author

• Alison Happel-Parkins, University of Memphis
  Non-Presenting Author