Pedagogy Apr 2025

Teaching against the Logic of the Anthropocene

Stephanie Bower

Abstract

Abstract What is a pedagogy of the Anthropocene? Put another way, what would it look like to teach in a way that disrupts the logic of fossil fuel extraction? Building on critiques of Enlightenment thought that identify the causalities between dualistic models such as mind/body or nature/culture and systems of enslavement and extraction, the author argues we must orient ourselves against the toxic logic that has led to our current planetary crisis, and that a class on “climate fiction” can estrange students from the ubiquity of an epistemology that alienates us from the natural world and each other. Stories about climate change, whether speculative or realistic, can pry students loose from more familiar narratives that have immiserated us as a species and a planet. The author encourages a reorientation of how we teach that reframes the classroom as a space for students to imagine each other as allies rather than as competition, displacing the fetishization of “rigor” that aligns us to false idols of meritocracy and scarcity instead of the abundance that is possible when we find happiness in collective as opposed to individual success.

Journal
Pedagogy
Published
2025-04-01
DOI
10.1215/15314200-11625258
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Open Access
Closed
Topics
writing pedagogy teacher development
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References (12)

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  2. Butler (2021)
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  4. Chakrabarty (2009)
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    Critical Inquiry  ↗
  5. Ghosh (2021)
    The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis
     ↗
Show all 12 →
  1. Haraway (2016)
    Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene
  2. Huseby (2023)
    Cultivating a Political Learning Ecology: An Experimental Cross-Institutional Course on C…
    Pedagogy
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  5. Plotz John . 2020. “The Realism of Our Times: An Interview with Kim Stan…
  6. Powers (2018)
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  7. Robinson (2020)
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