Dark Pedagogy

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   PDF

2. Introduction: Living in Dark Times

   • Jonas Andreasen Lysgaard, Stefan Bengtsson, Martin Hauberg-Lund Laugesen

   Pages 1-19

3. The Horror of Education

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 21-21

      PDF

   2. Denial

      • Jonas Andreasen Lysgaard

      Pages 23-36

   3. Insanity

      • Martin Hauberg-Lund Laugesen

      Pages 37-62

   4. Death

      • Stefan Bengtsson

      Pages 63-83

4. Towards Dark Pedagogy

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 85-85

      PDF

   2. Dark Pedagogy Between Denial and Insanity

      • Jonas Andreasen Lysgaard

      Pages 87-102

   3. Dark Pedagogy in the Anthropocene

      • Martin Hauberg-Lund Laugesen

      Pages 103-141

   4. A Pedagogy of Vulnerability

      • Stefan Bengtsson

      Pages 143-158

5. Back Matter

   Pages 159-164

   PDF

Dark pedagogy explores how different perspectives can be incorporated into a darker understanding of environmental and sustainability education. Drawing on the work of the classic horror author H.P. Lovecraft and new materialist insights of speculative realism, the authors link Lovecraft’s ‘tales of the horrible’ to the current spectres of environmental degradation, climate change, and pollution. In doing so, they draw parallels between how humans have always related to the ‘horrible’ things that are scaled beyond our understanding and how education can respond to an era of climate catastrophe in the age of the Anthropocene. A new and darker understanding of environmental and sustainability education is thus developed: using the tripartite reaction pattern of denial, insanity and death to frame the narrative, the book subsequently examines the specific challenges of potentials of developing education and pedagogy for an age of mass extinction. This unflinching book will appeal to students and scholars of dark pedagogies as well as those interested in environment and sustainability education.

• The Anthropocene
• Education on death
• The Horror of Education
• H P Lovecraft
• Speculative Realism
• Nature
• Climate Change
• Global Warming

“Dark Pedagogy offers fresh perspectives on pedagogical possibilities for these dark times in which our encounters with the more-than-human (such as the climate crisis and a novel, highly contagious virus) are often manifested by denial, insanity, and death.” (Noel Gough, Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, Vol. 23, 2020)

“Dark Pedagogy is an important book for rethinking educational practices and their pedagogical principles as an engagement in the world. That engagement brings education into a conversation with continental “speculative” philosophy and studies of the political complexities about the conditions that haunt the present: climate, environmental crises, the evils of multiple holocausts, and the institutionalizations of hate and fear that have invaded contemporary daily life. The book expresses the hope of education as a form of advocacy and commitment through experimentation in living. The optimism requires a critical openness for the possibilities of constructing paths outside of the contemporaneous tropes of curriculum and pedagogy.” (Thomas S. Popkewitz, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)

“How should education address the deteriorating condition of our planet? That is the question taken up by this book, which is unusually pleasant to read despite its cover-to-cover seriousnesson such topics as denial, madness, and death.” (Graham Harman, Southern California Institute of Architecture, USA)

 

• School of Education, Aarhus University , Copenhagen, Denmark

  Jonas Andreasen Lysgaard

• Uppsala University , Uppsala, Sweden

  Stefan Bengtsson

• School of Education, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

  Martin Hauberg-Lund Laugesen

Jonas Andreasen Lysgaard is Associate Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark. 
Stefan Bengtsson is Assistant Professor at Uppsala University, Sweden. 
 
Martin Hauberg-Lund Laugesen researches in Education Science at the University of Southern Denmark, Denmark. 

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