Human Education in the Posthuman Anthropocene: Reshaping Our Interdependencies With Nature, Technology, and Social Constructs

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Re-Examining Place-Based Interdependencies Toward Equitable Education

Abstract

The “posthuman” Anthropocene is marked by dramatic transformations in three major and interlocking human interdependencies: Humans and Nature, Humans and Technology, and Humans and their own Social Constructs. These transformations reflect radical politicizations of truth and belief and compel us to (re)examine “the human being” in the context of our self-locations and material and nonmaterial creations. What does it mean to be and become “fully human” in such transforming and intersecting interdependencies, and what is the implication of this onto-epistemological reconstruction for curriculum and educational theory, research, and practice? This study interrogates these questions through the non-Western perspective of 人間教育 (ningen kyōiku), literally “human education,” to confront the socio-ecological, socio-racial, and socio-technological urgencies of our complexifying lifeworlds.

Author

• Jason Goulah, DePaul University