Into the Sea: A Fictive Speculation on How to Cope at the End of the World (Poster 6)

• In Event: Toward a Stranger and More Posthuman Social Studies

Abstract

This paper plays with genre and voice to tell multiple stories within a story. It is a chapter that wonders, first, what makes a text ‘posthuman,’ theorizing that posthuman texts enable readers to take flight and escape the generic, the known, the dreary. Second, this chapter speculates what posthuman texts might portend for social studies education, for the attitudes, affects, and relations that are opened up or closed down in social studies curriculum and classrooms. This chapter’s tangled threads orbit a short story, a footnoted text offering the reader the chance to engage in a style of reading interested in teasing a story apart, meandering down unexpected pathways. Reading without a stated aim, reading that tries to escape the totalizing light of utility, skill, etc., etc.

Author

• Peter M. Nelson, University of British Columbia
  Presenting Author