Chapter 3

Recognizing Mutuality: The More-Than-Human World and Me
Raisa Foster

Chapter Abstract

In this chapter, I will look at the pedagogy of recognition, as a form of EcoJustice Education. I will also suggest that an (eco)phenomenological attitude is an important starting point for an ethical pedagogy. Eco-phenomenology extends beyond the conceptual structures toward the sensual world, which is more-than-human. The pedagogy of recognition brings together the critical framework of EcoJustice Education and eco-feminism as well as the acknowledgment of different ways of knowing, which are in this study researched through body awareness and movement practices and then described also with the help of (eco)phenomenological concepts. I will use an artistic project with young men as a practical example of pedagogical recognition. I will demonstrate how to rewrite the masculine identity through art practice in a way that can challenge the concept of human identity, the hierarchical relationship between human and nature, and the other dualisms typical to Western culture. The pedagogy of recognition borrows from Paul Ricoeur’s (2005) lexical and philosophical analysis of recognition, and it suggests a pedagogical change on three levels. First, the pedagogy of recognition claims that new ethical understanding can occur when we shift our action from (conceptual) knowing to (perceptual) recognizing. Second, it suggests that education should move from supporting (egoistic) self-esteem to (critical and inter-relational) self-recognition. Third, the theory aims to show how education can move from the model of possessive relations to others toward the mutual recognition of all life-forms.

Guiding Questions

1. What are the main principles of pedagogical recognition?
2. What are the differences between knowledge and recognition as identification? How can understanding this difference help you to define your pedagogical aims?
3. Why is it important to support students’ self-recognition?
4. Can you give examples of educational situations where you experienced mutual recognition?
5. What could be the benefits of adding dance into school curriculum?

Key Concepts

Eco-feminism

A critical perspective that connects feminism with ecology. It reflects how patriarchy has caused a hierarchical separation of men and women as well as culture and nature.

Eco-phenomenology

A trend of continental philosophy which can be described as the pursuit of the relationalities of worldly engagement, both human and more-than-humans.

Masculinity

A set of characteristics, behaviors, and roles linked to boys and men. However, women too can have and present masculine qualities, because masculinity is a social construction, which is not the same as the definition of male as biological sex. Standards of masculinity vary across different cultures and historical times.

The Pedagogy of Recognition

A critical and emancipatory theory which suggests a change in educational practices on three levels. First, we must shift our focus from (conceptual) knowing to (perceptual) recognizing. Second, we must move from supporting (egoistic) self-esteem to (critical and inter-relational) self-recognition. Third, we must escape from the model of possessive relation to others toward the mutual recognition of all life-forms.

Bio

Dr. Raisa Foster (b. 1976) is an independent researcher/artist/educator. She completed her PhD in 2012 at the University of Tampere, Finland. She also holds a graduate diploma in dance animateuring from the University of Melbourne (School of Dance, VCA) and MA in visual culture from Aalto University (School of Art and Design). Foster has created her own artistic/pedagogical method Tanssi-innostaminen® (dance animateuring), a pedagogical method The Pedagogy of Recognition as well as an art-based research method Eragraphy. Foster is interested in combining different artistic and more traditional qualitative research methods in her multidisciplinary art practice. In the years 2015–2017, she worked as a research director in Art-Eco Project which was funded by Kone Foundation.

Website

www.raisafoster.com

Videos

Katiska trailer

www.youtu.be/KY5QhRg280M

Katiska, video documentation of the whole work from 2014

www.youtu.be/l1twsKFbetM

Chapter 4

The Experience of the Uncanny as a Challenge for Teaching Ecological Awareness
Antti Saari

Chapter Abstract

Although there hardly seems to be doubt about the existence of the ongoing climate change, it is painfully clear that it does not have a significant effect on our lifestyle. Thus, at the superficial or propositional level, we know very well that climate crisis exists, but still we act as if we do not. Perhaps the knowledge of our own implication in the very lifestyle that sustains and intensifies climate crisis is too much to bear (see, e.g., Norgaard 2006).

In this chapter, I conceptualize this problem of unbearable knowledge of ecological crisis through Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. Traumatic experience of an ecological crisis is analyzed as an encounter with the uncanny, or the ‘Real.’ The uncanny is understood as that which escapes symbolization and causes feelings of horror and/or joyful enchantment. As such, the uncanny is not reducible to experiencing nature as harmonious, intelligible nor predictable. Thus, it is also beyond the grasp of mere propositional knowledge. Therefore, this chapter discusses the possibilities and challenges of approaching the uncanny in EcoJustice Education through literature and the arts. As Martusewicz (2015) has pointed out, literary fiction can expose profound psychosocial aspects of ecological concerns that usually escape academic attention. Moreover, psychoanalytic concepts and theories are regularly used and elaborated with regard to literature and the arts (Royle 2003). To this end, I will use Max Frisch’s novel Man in the Holocene as a springboard to tease out the uncanny and traumatic nature in the experience of climate change. Then, I will examine the pedagogical challenges involved in acknowledging and addressing the uncanny in EcoJustice Education. I will argue that the experience of the uncanny poses significant pedagogical challenges that demand artistic and psychoanalytic conceptualization if we are to address broader ecological crises through education. The uncanny is also indelibly etched in the challenges of developing responsibility and compassion expressed as the touchstones of EcoJustice Education.

Guiding Questions

1. How does the chapter define the concept of the uncanny?
2. Consider examples of ‘uncanny experiences’ of environment.
3. How can arts and literary fiction aid in articulating and coping with experiences of ecological catastrophes and degradation?

Key Concepts

Uncanny

An experience of anxiety imbued with a sense of unreality.

Abject

Object that is isolated or fenced out of our consciousness as impure, dangerous, or evil.

Sublime

In aesthetic experience that which causes mixed feelings of awe and terror.

Bio

Antti Saari, PhD, works as a university researcher at the University of Tampere Faculty of Education. His key areas of research are in philosophy and history of education and curriculum studies.

Homepage

http://www.uta.fi/edu/yhteystiedot/henkilokunta/saari.html

Chapter 5

Letters from Love’s Great Room: Fiction as Cultural Ecological Analysis and Pedagogy of Responsibility
Erin Stanley

Chapter Abstract

This chapter highlights central tenets of EcoJustice Education, including cultural ecological analysis, revitalizing the commons, and pedagogy of responsibility, in the context of a creative literary analysis of two critical novels, Wendell Berry’s Hannah Coulter and Hariette Arnow’s The Dollmaker. Situated within an arts-based, fiction methodology, this work imagines a letter correspondence between the two protagonists in which they become our teachers and healers. Through the reflections and conversations that ensue, these characters embark upon a pedagogical journey which seeks meaning in a changing society, challenges the dominant assumptions of modernity, and seeks to rediscover the beauty of belonging.

Guiding Questions

1. What are the strengths/limitations of this methodology?
2. How can fiction engage in cultural analysis and critique?
3. What is the function of Hannah’s and Gertie’s relationship in this chapter?
4. What about modernist culture are Hannah and Gertie most critical of?
5. What kind of social and ecological worldview do Hannah and Gertie embody and envision?

Key Concepts

Cultural Ecological Analysis

An interdisciplinary approach to uncovering the deep roots of interrelated social and ecological violence.

Pedagogy of Responsibility

An educational and ethical practice in which both what needs to be changed and preserved within a community or culture are considered.

Arts-Based Research

A method of qualitative inquiry in which the researcher and the research subject engage in the process of creating art which reveals knowledge, helps answer questions, and elicits imagination.

Hannah Coulter

A 2004 novel by Wendell Berry; Part of the Port William, KY, membership collection in which Hannah Coulter as an elder reflects on the vital relationality of her place and discusses the major changes that modernity and industrialization have brought to rural America during and following World War II.

The Dollmaker

A 1954 novel by Harriette Arnow which traces the migration of a Kentucky sharecropping family north to the factories and projects of Detroit during World War II.

Further Reading

Arnow, H. (1954). The dollmaker. New York: Scribner.
Berry, W. (2004). Hannah Coulter: A novel. Berkeley: Counterpoint.
Martusewicz, R. A., Edmundson, J., & Lupinacci, J. (2015) EcoJustice education: Toward diverse, democratic, and sustainable communities. Second edition. New York: Routledge.

Bio

Erin Stanley is a doctoral student in the Social Work and Anthropology transdisciplinary program at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. She holds a Master of Arts degree in Social Foundations of Education from Eastern Michigan University and a Bachelor of Science in Human Services from Loyola University Chicago. Erin’s work stems from a desire to blend personal, professional, and academic experiences to more deeply understand the interrelated causes of social and ecological violence. Erin has a variety of research interests and is currently working on projects surrounding the tax foreclosure crisis in Detroit and interprofessional education (IPE) in healthcare.

Chapter 7

Poetry and EcoJustice in a Kenyan Refugee Settlement
Veronica Gaylie

Chapter Abstract

In climate change education, science and policy are just the beginning. Approaches and definitions for EcoJustice in the global south are obviously very different than in Western/ized geographies. This chapter uses a narrative approach to describe eco-poetry as a literacy of EcoJustice within the context of the global south. The chapter includes excerpts of student writing and describes a holistic and human journey into global, poetic, EcoJustice.

Guiding Questions

1. What is eco-poetry? Go outside, and write a 5-line example of an eco-poem. What is the connection between eco-literacy and eco-poetry?
2. What is the connection between eco-literacy, eco-poetry, and EcoJustice?
3. How can knowledge, integration, and practice of the aforementioned eco-centered concepts help improve understanding of global climate change?

Key Concepts

Eco-Poetry

Poetry that involves awareness and appreciation of nature, eco-systems, and, possibly, knowledge of human impact upon the natural environment, including climate change.

Eco-Literacy

The integration and application of emotional, social, and ecological intelligence.

Global South

The global south is made up of Africa, Latin America, and developing Asia including the Middle East. The north is home to all the members of the G8 and to four of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

EcoJustice

The understanding that local and global ecosystems are essential to all life; challenging the deep cultural assumptions underlying modern thinking that undermine those systems; and the recognition of the need to restore the cultural and environmental commons.

Bio

Veronica Gaylie, PhD, is an environmental educator from Vancouver with fifteen years’ experience teaching and developing new programs in ecology-centered education. She has written two books on the subject: The Learning Garden: Ecology, Teaching and Transformation, and Roots and Research in The Urban School Garden. She is the founder of Sacre Verte, a nonprofit project focused on global climate change education.

Website

www.veronicagaylie.com

Chapter 8

The Uncle Vanya Project: Performance, Landscape, Time
Bagryana Popov

Chapter Abstract

This chapter discusses The Uncle Vanya Project,a site-specific, time-specific theater project, performed in regional Australia, that investigates human relationship to land. The project seeks to awaken new, sensitized ways of experiencing landscape through artistic practice. It uses performance to raise questions about human responsibility to the environment and places embodied listening at the center in the search for an ethical relation.

Anton Chekhov’s play Uncle Vanya (A Portrait of Country Life in Four Acts),written in 1896, contains environmentalist themes of deforestation and climate change. Chekhov was a doctor and writer, passionate about forests and aware of their ecological importance. In his plays, the natural environment, social structures, and human relationships intertwine in a fragile ecology.

The Uncle Vanya Project is a contemporary Australian response to this play, adapting the text to the Australian context. The performance takes place in a regional home over two days. Audiences are invited into the site, on walks in the landscape, and to talks about ecological issues specific to the region. The project opens up connections between performance and environment, inviting conversation across disciplines.

The event dissolves traditional boundaries between performance and reality. The project is performed in autumn, at different times of day and night, as indicated in the original play. I suggest that this experience of place-time in performance awakens a heightened sense of the surroundings and an embodied, emotionally engaged listening. This opens a possibility for awareness and ethical engagement with the natural environment.

In the discussion, I refer to Emmanuel Levinas’ concepts of responsibility and conversation as the ethical relation and Gernot Bohme’s writing on atmosphere and embodiment. The idea of site as an active player in the creation of meaning is developed, referring to Mike Pearson’s book on site-specific performance.

Guiding Questions

1. How does Anton Chekhov’s play Uncle Vanya speak to contemporary environmental concerns?
2. What is the importance of place in The Uncle Vanya Project?
3. What is the role of time in The Uncle Vanya Project?
4. How can imagination help to develop our sense of responsibility toward the natural environment?

Key Concepts

Site-Specific Performance

Site-specific performance refers to performance that is presented in a location that is not a theater or a traditional performance venue. It can take place in built or natural environments, indoors or outdoors, urban or regional, or move across these.

Interdisciplinary

A project, activity, concept, or set of ideas that exist in relation to more than one traditionally defined or designated discipline or field of thought: for example, The Uncle Vanya Project is inspired by, learns from, and speaks to theater, performance art, history, environmental studies, and philosophy, with other (unnamed) fields of thought implicit in the work, although they are not named front and center.

Embodied Listening

The idea that we exist in our body at a particular place and time, sensing, feeling, doing, and being aware. This state of awareness in and through one’s body is developed in phenomenology and in performance practice. The idea of embodied listening extends the idea of listening to be a state of awareness that includes sound and hearing but goes further to include other types of sensing and responding to the environment. Our being-in-our-body is central. (The idea is in response to Emmanuel Levinas and his idea of conversation as the ethical relation, to Gernot Böhme and is developed by Wallace Heim.)

Ethical Awareness

An awareness that our thoughts, actions, and the work we do have repercussions and exist within an interconnected ecology. Ethical awareness is a state of being cognizant of how our actions may have positive or harmful effects. Implicit is the aim to minimize the possible harm our actions can do and aim toward having positive effects on the people, creatures, and natural environment around us. It is a way of seeing our place in the ecology and taking responsibility for it, and for the consequences of our actions. (Levinas, E. Böhme, G., Martusewicz, R., Edmundson, J., & Lupinacci, J.)

Bio

Dr. Bagryana Popov is an award-winning theater artist and researcher who works in an interdisciplinary way. She has collaborated with acclaimed professional artists, students, and communities, working as director, actor, dramaturg, and performance maker. Her research interests include embodiment, site-specific performance, politics, and the ethics of representation. Much of her work has examined themes of place and displacement with a focus on embodied experience. Her current performance and environment project Uncle Vanya is a site-specific, durational version of Chekhov’s early environmentalistplay, transposing it to the Australian landscape. Dr. Popov lectures in theater at La Trobe University, Melbourne.

Images

Figure 1

Bagryana Popov (Director) Uncle Vanya in Avoca (2015), Watford House, The Avoca Project. Photographer Stuart Liddell.

In the photograph left to right: Bagryana Popov, Liz Jones, James Wardlaw, and Todd MacDonald, rehearsing Uncle Vanya in Avoca in front of Watford House.

Figure 2

Uncle Vanya in Steiglitz, James Wardlaw and Natascha Flowers, Steiglitz (2016). Photographer Bagryana Popov.

Figure 3

Uncle Vanya in Eganstown (2016), James Wardlaw (Vanya) walking after Act 3. Photographer Tess Hutson.

Chapter 9

For the Love of the Forest: Walking, Mapping, Making Textile Art
Kathleen Vaughan

Chapter Abstract

This illustrated chapter explores the subtle pedagogies of visual art—its potential for promoting environmental awareness and activism—using the author’s Nel mezzo del cammin: a series of wall-sized textile maps of walks in five Canadian urban forests. The chapter features in-depth discussion of one map, Glendon Forest, exploring how via use of luxury fabrics and digital and hand embroidery, it makes political and aesthetic agendas visible and motivating. The chapter does so by considering the cultural histories of walking, mapping and textiles, histories that contribute to commonly shared ‘ways of seeing’ the world, and the artwork’s intelligibility.

Nel mezzo del cammin is Italian for “in the middle of the road” and references the opening canto of Dante’s Inferno. The narrator is lost in a dark wood until he encounters Virgil, who guides him through hell, purgatory, and heaven, and provokes consideration of what makes for a good life. Choosing this title, the artist suggests that stories and artwork offer many forms of engagement and numerous opportunities for reflection and action. In particular, this series is an inquiry of political ecology and personal experience, taking up questions of green space conservation, access, and environmental activism, as detailed in this chapter.

Guiding Questions

1. What kind of impact can art have on viewer’s feelings, beliefs, and actions?
2. Who—which humans or other creatures—is entitled to access and use urban green spaces? What values are embedded in the answer you give to this question?
3. With urban forests under increasing pressure from human development, what difference can an individual artwork make to people’s respect for green space?
4. What is the difference in effect between an artist’s map of a place and an artist’s pictorial representation of the same location? Why would an artist choose one or the other mode of depiction?

Key Concepts

Forest Bathing

A translation of the Japanese term shinrin-yoku, a cultural practice that promotes walks in the woods as a way to enhance deep thinking and personal well-being. Scientists have evidence of the neurological, cognitive, and psychological benefits of forest bathing.

Posthumanism

A current body of theoretical writings and beliefs that emphasizes the inseparability of the human and more-than-human world and aims to decenter the ‘humanist’ position that gives primacy to people as well as the capitalist models of consumption that enable disrespectful use of our earth and resources. Many posthumanists contend that the more-than-human has agency in this world and in our relations; that the ‘subject’ position does not accrue to humans alone. Important posthumanist thinkers and writers include Rosi Braidotti, Fayaz Chagani, Francesca Ferrando, Donna Haraway, and Bruno Latour.

Ways of Seeing

A phrase that derives from the title of artist/author John Berger’s seminal 1972 book, which explores how our perceptions and understandings of the world, including art, are socially and culturally constructed. He suggests that our ways of seeing are both individual and collective, and inescapably relational. We can see the world only through the lens of our own histories and biases.

Bio

Kathleen Vaughan (MFA, PhD) is an artist-researcher with a transdisciplinary orientation to place and belonging, from social and environmental justice perspectives. Kathleen’s research integrates visual art and storytelling in multiple approaches: studio-based, collaborative/participatory and community-based, often sited in museums and galleries. She has strong ties to her Montreal neighborhood of Pointe-St-Charles—a gentrifying, postindustrial site—as well as to Iceland and Venice, Italy, where she has ongoing projects. She is the Concordia University Research Chair in Socially Engaged Art and Public Pedagogies, co-director of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS), and Associate Professor of Art Education.

Website

www.akaredhanded.com

Images

Photo: Michel Dubreuil

Photo: Michel Dubreuil

Photo: Michel Dubreuil

Chapter 10

Finding My Wound, Bandaging My Knife: Stimulating Inner Transformation through Art
Jussi Mäkelä

Chapter Abstract

This chapter looks at Joseph Beuys’s “Theory of Sculpture” through EcoJustice lenses. While Beuys (1921–86) and his theories about art and society still remain controversial in the fields of modern art history and contemporary art, it can be argued that this is largely due to misunderstanding Beuys’s notions about art to be about art: actually, Beuys’s philosophy was mainly about being a human being living in balance with her/his surroundings. Beuys insisted that every human being is an artist who shapes the society and the world. Thus, we might argue that becoming an artist is becoming more human: a human being that understands her/his proper place and endeavors to live along that understanding. Leaning on Gregory Bateson and Wendell Berry, this chapter aims to demonstrate that Beuys’s theory of sculpture—and his oeuvre in general—was essentially about rediscovering our lost connections to ourselves as a part of the more-than-human world. Recognizing our fundamental connectedness and interdependent relations with the world around us will generate love that guides our “sculpting” and aids us to realize we are not alone.

Guiding Questions

1. What does it mean that “every human being is an artist”?
2. What is “the wound of all of us” and how could it be healed?
3. How would you describe “new organs of perception”?
4. How does “systemic wisdom” connect with “our proper place”?
5. How does the author’s idea of the happening of art reflect Beuys’s idea of sculpting with invisible materials?

Key Concepts

Affirming Dialectics

Unlike Hegel’s original dialectics as a method for reaching Pure Reason, Beuys’s “theory of sculpture” is using a dialectic approach to reconcile opposite ends, such as Pure Will and Pure Reason. For Beuys, the ultimate aim was not to reach any absolute abstraction; instead, he insisted for the necessity of uniting oppositional forces through balancing action.

Chaos

Chaos refers to what we have yet to understand or perceive, rather than the more nihilistic sense of a world “without order.” It is undetermined maybe only for us humans who crave order in a world that is ultimately too complex for us to fully comprehend. For Beuys, chaos represents also the origin of creation, the source of pure energy that is then directed through artist’s will toward form.

The Happening of Art

The happening of art is that which takes place in the processes of both making and experiencing art. An artist forms an artwork consisting of language (spoken or tacit), material substance and form, and forming a conception of the artwork is the happening of art in the understanding of the viewer where the same elements appear. These processes might differ largely from each other in every sense, but their common feature is that they generate a transformation in the subject.

Bio

Jussi Mäkelä is a teacher, an artist, and currently a doctoral student at the University of Tampere. He worked as a researcher in Art-Eco Project in 2015–2017 studying Joseph Beuys’s social sculpture and theory of sculpture. The recurring themes in Jussi’s artworks are space, limits, freedom, and balance, and his philosophical ponderings tend to turn into existential questions. Simply put, he is haunted by the questions of good humanity. Jussi prefers forest to university and heuristics to formal conceptual analyses. He genuinely believes that every human being has the quality of being an artist.

Contact

alekam.issuj@gmail.com

Links to additional material

• [image] Joseph Beuys: “If You Cut Yourself, Don’t Bandage Your Finger, Bandage the Knife” (1962)

  www.gagosian.com/__data/4624ee3d2aa6c0b9e35963f5bb8eae9a.jpg

• [YouTube video] Joseph Beuys talks about his art and his thinking (in German with English subtitles):

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo47lqk_QH0

  [part 1/2]
  

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HVOCay10m8

  [part 2/2]

Images

Figure 1

Jussi Mäkelä: “growing lesser” detail (2017). Wood. Copyright 2017 by Jussi Mäkelä.

Figure 2

Jussi Mäkelä: “growing lesser” (2017). Wood. Copyright 2017 by Jussi Mäkelä.

Figure 3

Jussi Mäkelä: “New Paradigm” (2017). Knife, gauze, fat, felt. Copyright 2017 by Jussi Mäkelä.

Chapter 11

Building Ecological Ontologies: EcoJustice Education Becoming with(in) Art-Science Activisms
Alicia Flynn and Aviva Reed

Chapter Abstract

Art-science activisms as articulated by Donna Haraway (2016) have emerged from informal learning, community, and activist contexts. Here, we discuss a way of engaging in ecological education that signposts a more-than-scientific way of knowing Earth systems through art. Art-science activisms form with/in an elongated multispecies ecological ontology that is based in science fact but stretches our imaginations through speculative fictions. Aboriginal art as ecological-cosmological knowledge systems has been practiced continuously for over 65,000 years by First Australians as a way of understanding human co-becoming with multispecies and as a methodology of ‘caring for Country.’ Non-colonizing art-science activisms in school and community education settings are beginning to bring these ancient-living approaches to bear in ever-enlivened ways that are fit for these precarious times. Examples such as the science storybook ‘Zobi and the Zoox’ that we trace here, generate a sense of immersion in a more-than-human agential reality (Barad, 2007) that increases our capacity to imagine the relationships and events that are otherwise so big they are imperceptible or so small they are invisible. Building the ecological ontologies of artist-science-educator-researcher-activist is made possible through these practices, these activisms that flesh out a praxis and an ethic of educating beyond our anthropocentric four walls. We suggest here that art-science practices make possible conversations beyond the polemics of despair or hope (each as passive as the other), in an imaginative-active ongoingness.

Guiding Questions

1. In what ways can art-science EcoJustice Education help transverse the boundaries that have defined humans since the industrial revolution?
2. What are some ways of enacting more-than-scientific ways of knowing through art-science activisms?
3. What role does ecological storytelling have within EcoJustice Education?
4. How can relational and embodied art-science activisms evoke an EcoJustice ethic?
5. How do you understand ‘building ecological ontologies’ as addressed in this chapter?

Key Concepts

Ecological Ontology

A relational way of being and becoming in the world that is always becoming-with more-than-human communities and elemental forces (sympoiesis).

Multispecies

The idea that all species through their histories and trajectories are bound up with those of other species (symbiotic entanglements). This then means that humans are never individual or separate from the world around them; thus, every encounter is a more-than-human multispecies entanglement.

Art-Science Activisms

Practices for working beyond hope or despair; using new materialist practices with materials through non-colonizing science-based art or arts-based science as ways of crafting possibilities for flourishing (see Haraway, 2016).

Sympoiesis

Making-with; nothing makes itself; nothing is self-organizing; everything is dynamic, responsive, and situated (see also symbiosis, symbiogenesis—Haraway, Margulis).

Bios

Aviva Reed is an interdisciplinary visual ecologist. Her practice explores scientific theories, usually concepts associated with evolution and ecological imagination. Her work explores time and scale in relation to self, using storytelling and visual aids to communicate complex scientific ideas. She has completed numerous bodies of work using the mediums of drawing, painting, mixed media, community development, performance, and installation. Aviva received her Bachelor of Science in 2006 from the University of Tasmania and her Master of Environment from the University of Melbourne in 2015. Her research thesis ‘A Symbiosis of Pedagogies’ explored ecological ontologies through the science and art nexus.

Alicia Flynn is a PhD candidate at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education (University of Melbourne). Her interdisciplinary research with a secondary school in inner urban Naarm/Melbourne explores how walking weekly to the local creek and the materiality of learning in entangled, multispecies, more-than-human, settler colonial-contested places through art-science practices is slowly weaving an ecopedagogy and a commitment to EcoJustice over time. Alicia lives, works, and learns on Wurundjeri land in the Kulin Nation, and she teaches across primary, secondary, community, and tertiary contexts. She has as much fun turning compost piles with 7-year-olds and harvesting parsley seeds as she does engaging in juicy conversations of place pedagogies, multispecies entanglements, and the daily practices that might just fashion flourishing common worlds.

Additional Links

www.avivareed.com/

www.bioticpotential.com/

www.oekologiestudio.com

www.publish.csiro.au/book/7834

Chapter 13

Creativity as Intrinsic Ecological Consciousness
Srisrividhiya Kalyanasundaram (Srivi Kalyan)

Chapter Abstract

This chapter presents a critical discussion, rooted in Indian cultural notions of creativity, of the need and approach to rethink artistic consciousness and practice in a frame of EcoJustice.

Creative practice as defined in this discussion is rooted in our connectedness to life as relationships, languages of contemplation, and expression are driven by cultural memories and intuitions as well as place, and action is the very transformation of consciousness.

Defining creativity and artistic practice within alternative cultural notions of reality, self and consciousness, this discussion provides a framework for a contemplative pedagogy that can nurture diverse notions of creativity in intrinsic ecological consciousness.

Guiding Questions

1. How do you define ‘Self’ and ‘Consciousness’? In what ways are your definitions of self or consciousness in relation to or contradictory to the author’s discussions of these terms?
2. What are some of the steps that the author suggests that could help one in constructing an intrinsic ecological consciousness?
3. How does the artist use practice as a mode of research? What does a practice-based inquiry open up differently from more traditional models of research?
4. What are some of notions that are embedded in a traditional Indian artist’s understanding of creativity? How are these in line with or different from your understanding of creativity?
5. How would you set ethical boundaries for an ecological creativity? What would the parameters and principles be? What would guide you in this process? Are there notions from your culture and tradition that you can borrow? Consider working on a broad survey of ecological notions within your culture as the author has done for traditional Indian speculative traditions.
6. What allows for an openness to change and transform consciousness? How are awareness and contemplation integral to creative education?

Key Concepts

Consciousness

An awareness of self in relation to the outer world while questioning the true nature of the self by investigating cultural boundaries, human-centered identity, and notions of reality.

Self

A notion of identity that rises from cultural, physical, psychical, social, and political notions of reality and is capable of investigation and transformation through contemplative inquiries.

Ecological Creativity

A response to life and expression when the self is in tune and alignment with the natural world, both cosmic and terrestrial; the parameters of creativity are bound by a universal cosmological law, ecology of place, self, and consciousness.

Contemplative Pedagogy

Willingness to continuously observe self as a constructed notion of reality and re-craft oneself in perceptions, relationships, and actions in order to transform subtle states of consciousness.

Intrinsic Ecological Consciousness

An ability to transform the core principles and values that guide us, thereby transforming self and consciousness, so that every action, creative or mundane, is led by a deep understanding of the interconnectedness of life.

Artistic/Creative Practice

Cultivation of mind, body, emotion, and action in intrinsic ecological consciousness through inquiries into form, materiality, aesthetic experience, expression, self, and consciousness.

Bio

Srivi Kalyan is an artist, designer, educator, writer, and research scholar. She works at the fluid and exciting intersection of arts, media, education, design, environment, and self-reflection. Srivi has authored and illustrated several books for children and adults, and is an award-winning writer and illustrator. She currently works at Srishti Institute of Art Design and Technology, and co-leads a master’s program in Earth Education and Communication and bachelor’s and master’s programs in Information Arts and Information Design Practices. She is the Founder-Director of Fooniferse Arts Pvt. Ltd. Her personal work can be viewed at www.sriviliveshere.com, www.fooniferse.com.

Chapter 14

Love in the Commons: Eros, Eco-Ethical Education, and a Poetics of Place
Rebecca A. Martusewicz

Chapter Abstract

In this chapter, I refer to eros as the force that plays on our bodies and connects us to the larger community of life, an embodied form of love that charges the will toward well-being. Analyzing the ways that eros can be engaged and expressed in the “commons” as a life sustaining force, I look to current, on-the-ground work being done in Detroit, MI, where artists, community builders, educators, and neighborhood folk are revitalizing their city. Linking this work and the love I experienced with them to childhood experiences in my own homeplace in northern New York State, I argue for the development of eco-ethical consciousness within an erotic “poetics of place.” Finally, in an explication of education as those generative relations that are specifically oriented toward well-being, I look to the relation among eros, language, and the creation of the commons as a critical educational endeavor. If we are to stem the tide of ecological destruction now upon us, we will need educators in public schools who recognize and are able to create classroom practices that encourage an “eco-erosic love” and thus inspire students who can protect the fragile relationship of their human communities to the ecosystems upon which we depend.

Guiding Questions

1. How does the author employ “eros” and what does it offer us as we think about what she means by the “commons”?
2. What is a poetics of place and what does it have to do with eco-ethical consciousness?
3. What does “love in the commons” have to do with education for a more sustainable world?
4. How does the author link education, ethics, and ecology?
5. In what ways does the storytelling in this chapter affect the author’s theorizing about art, EcoJustice, and education?

Key Concepts

Eros

A connective force that is generated in the myriad relationships among us, and plays on us sensually in ways that awaken affection or love, and thus the possibility of action toward protection.

The Commons

The cultural commons include all those practices, rituals, traditions, and relationships that we have access to without the necessity of money, and that are oriented toward the well-being of a community. The environmental commons are all the relationships that we have with the natural world—water, air, land, plants, animals, forests, and so on that are absolutely necessary to sustaining life.

Eco-Ethical Consciousness

A state of awareness of our irreducible responsibility to be in constant will and action toward the well-being of others within the living network of relationships that we depend upon, and thus our own well-being.

Bio

Rebecca Martusewicz lives with her husband Gary and four dogs in Ypsilanti, MI. She is a Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Eastern Michigan University, teaching courses in the Social Foundations and Community Education Masters and Educational Studies PhD programs, focusing especially on EcoJustice Education. Other areas of interest include eco-feminism, post-humanism, democratic theory, ethics, and community-based learning. She is the author of several books, including

• Seeking Passage: Post Structuralism, Pedagogy, Ethics (Teachers College Press, 2001)
• EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse, Democratic and Sustainable Education, with Jeff Edmundson and John Lupinacci (Routledge 2011/2015)
• A Pedagogy of Responsibility: Wendell Berry for EcoJustice Education (Routledge, 2018).

Other published writings are available on Academia.edu.