Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-wq2xx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T00:57:44.369Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Hyperobjects, Media, and Assemblages of Collective Living: Playing With Ontology as Environmental Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 October 2019

Jesse Bazzul*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Education, University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
*
Corresponding author. Email: Jesse.Bazzul@uregina.ca

Abstract

This article emphasises the importance of creative thought for environmental education through a discussion of the ontologically rich work of Anna Tsing, Timothy Morton and John Peters. The recent turn toward ontology in the humanities and social sciences has consequently led to diverse theories about ‘how things are’, and some of these concepts might assist justice-oriented environmental educators in raising ecological awareness in a time of crisis. Using assemblages, media and hyperobjects as concepts to (re)imagine the the world(s) of the Anthropocene, this article promotes a practice of ontic-play, a constantly changing engagement with ontological thought. To think through ecological crisis means moving towards philosophy as creation or art. In other words, engaging thought from the future.

Type
Article
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bazzul, J., & Kayumova, S. (2016). Toward a social ontology for science education: Introducing Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblages. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 48, 284299.Google Scholar
Bazzul, J., & Santavicca, N. (2017). Diagramming assemblages of sex/gender and sexuality as environmental education. The Journal of Environmental Education, 48, 5666.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bazzul, J., Wallace, M.F., & Higgins, M. (2018). Dreaming and immanence: rejecting the dogmatic image of thought in science education. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 13, 823835.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, L. (1999). Histories of disturbance. Radical History Review, 74, 524.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ceballos, G., Ehrlich, P.R., & Dirzo, R. (2017). Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114, E6089–E6096.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cole, D.R. (2019). Analysing the matter flows in schools using Deleuze’s method. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeLanda, M. (2006). A new philosophy of society: Assemblage theory and social complexity. New York, NY: A&C Black.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. (2003). So is it important to think? In Rabinow, P. & Rose, N. (Eds.), The essential Foucault, selections from essential works of Foucault, 1954–1984 (pp. 170174). New York, NY: New Press.Google Scholar
Gough, N. (2007). Rhizosemiotic play and the generativity of fiction. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 4, 119126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haraway, D.J. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Harman, G. (2017). Graham Harman: Morton’s hyperobjects and the Anthropocene. Retrieved January 6, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id4FF7JO2wU%26list=PLpigrHWlika-1RjFTc3iMdBWdS6F1eRLH%26index=8%26t=1sGoogle Scholar
Harman, G. (2015). Cogburn, J. An interview with Graham Harmann. Retrieved January 31, 2019, from https://euppublishingblog.com/2015/09/10/an-interview-with-graham-harman/Google Scholar
Hursh, D., Henderson, J., & Greenwood, D. (2015). Environmental education in a neoliberal climate. Environmental Education Research, 21, 299318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Irigaray, L., & Bové, C.M. (1987). Le Sujet de la Science Est-ll Sexué?/Is the subject of science sexed? Hypatia, 2, 6587.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lloro-Bidart, T. (2015). A political ecology of education in/for the Anthropocene. Environment and Society, 9, 128148.Google Scholar
Malone, K. (2019). Children in the Anthropocene: How are they implicated?. In Cutter-MacKenzie-Knowles, A., Malone, K., & Hacking Barrat, E. (Eds.), Research handbook on childhood nature: Assemblages of childhood and nature research (pp. 127). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: SpringerGoogle Scholar
McKenzie, M., & Bieler, A. (2016). Critical education and sociomaterial practice: Narration, place, and the social. New York, NY: Peter Lang.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLuhan, M., & Lapham, H. (1994). Understanding media: The extensions of man. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Means, A.J., Ford, D.R., & Slater, G.B. (Eds.). (2017). Educational commons in theory and practice: Global pedagogy and politics. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mohawk, J. (2010). Thinking in Indian: Collected essays of John Mohawk. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing.Google Scholar
Moore, J. (2016). Anthropocene or capitalocene?: Nature, history, and the crisis of capitalism. Oakland, CA: Pm Press.Google Scholar
Morton, T. (2012). Mal-functioning. The Yearbook of Comparative Literature, 58, 95114.Google Scholar
Morton, T. (2013). Hyperobjects: Philosophy and ecology after the end of the world. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Morton, T. (2016). Dark ecology: For a logic of future coexistence. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morton, T. (2017). Timothy Morton in conversation with Verso books. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AEy2KmHwh0%26t=0s%26index=10%26list=PLpigrHWlika-1RjFTc3iMdBWdS6F1eRLHGoogle Scholar
Nxumalo, F. (2019). Decolonizing place in early childhood education. New York: NY: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peters, J.D. (2015). The marvelous clouds: Toward a philosophy of elemental media. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rancière, J., & Corcoran, S. (2010). Dissensus: on politics and aesthetics. New York, NY: Continuum.Google Scholar
Russell, J. (2013). Whose better? (Re)orientating a queer ecopedagogy. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 18, 1126.Google Scholar
Sandler, R. (2016). ‘The Anthropocene’, ecosystem management, and environmental virtue. Cuadernos de Bioética, 27, 357368.Google Scholar
Shotwell, A. (2016). Against purity: Living ethically in compromised times. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Stonechild, B. (2016). The knowledge seeker: Embracing Indigenous spirituality. Regina, Canada: University of Regina Press.Google Scholar
Todd, Z. (2016). An indigenous feminist’s take on the ontological turn: ‘Ontology’ is just another word for colonialism. Journal of Historical Sociology, 29, 422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsing, A.L. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Yusoff, K. (2018). A billion black Anthropocenes or none. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zheng, L. (2018). The performativity of the global future: Denaturalizing the imperative of STEM for solving common problems. New York, NY: American Educational Research Association.Google Scholar