New Materialist Perspectives for Pedagogies in Times of Movement, Crisis and Change

Abstract

Theoretical perspectives that are useful for a pedagogyone that aims to be beneficial in these times of socio-economic crisis, environmental destruction and climate changeneed to account for materiality.Our timereferred to as the Anthropocene (the geological age of man) or, perhaps more accurately, the Capitalocene (the age of global capitalism)is a time of unprecedented material movements, crises and changes for all Earthlings.Given the scope of the crisis for life itself (the currently unfolding 'sixth extinction' of biological life) from which humans are not materially exempt, we are called upon to account for our materiality (as well as its effects and affects) in ways that take critically take stock of the 'microorganisms' and 'diverse species' with which we are co-constituted, the 'material artifacts and natural stuff that populate our environment' as well as the 'socioeconomic structures that produce and reproduce the conditions of our everyday lives' (Coole & Frost 2016:1).New materialist theories present us with ethical, epistemological and ontological ways of rethinking our teaching practices in order to make them more alive to the material world as well as to the enormous problems that are now besetting it.This theoretical paper aims to demonstrate why this is the case by providing a broad outline of new materialism and its pedagogical usefulness.First outlining the nature of the crisis that requires materialist intervention, it then presents some of the topoi, or key principles, by which we might come to a critical understanding of new materialist perspectives and their value for Higher Education and Extended Curriculum Provisions (ECP).

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