Curriculum Against Empire: Teaching the Military-Industrial Complex in the Anthropocene

• In Event: Roundtable A
  In Roundtable Session: Roundtable A Table 8

Abstract

This conceptual study examines the unique role peace educators can play in curricularizing anti-imperialist, posthumanist education and action at the dawn of the Anthropocene. Considering a new rendering of the human as a geological force (Chakrabarty, 2009), American students must also examine their role as constituents of an imperial military power whose security infrastructure is a significant driver of climate change. This article applies the philosophical perspective of posthumanism to the modern U.S. military-industrial complex, both problematizing the current order of knowledge that reflects an overrepresentation of the European man (Taliafaerro Baszile, 2019) and the dualistic notion of human exceptionalism over the environment (Abbott, 2016). Posthumanist theorizing can offer students possible ways of knowing, being, and doing that interrupt systems of violence, promote peace, and build sustainable communities.

Author

• Jerica Arents, DePaul University