Abstract
The unfolding of the ecological disaster has led authors to reconsider the position of the human subject and his/her relationship with the earth. One entry point is the concept of ecological citizenship, which emphasizes responsibility, community, and care. However, the discourse of ecological citizenship often reduces the human subject to a critical consumer-citizen and citizenship education to the production of such a subject. The position outlined in this paper provides a more fundamental critique of consumption as a way of being in and relating to the world. In particular, it foregrounds objectification, commodification, and its impacts on human and nonhuman subjectivity and the possibility of care within a multi-species community. The paper brings animal-sensitive work in environmental education research and political theory into dialogue with a more general critique of culture and pedagogy in consumer society. From this perspective, ecological citizenship education seeks to liberate human and nonhuman beings from predetermined behavioral results and functions, and opens the time and space for the subjectification of human and nonhuman citizens within the complex dynamics of a multi-species community. With this proposition, the paper contributes to an ecocentric understanding of ecological citizenship education that builds on the continuity of life and subjective experience.
Highlights
The Ecological Crisis and the Question of the Human SubjectThe ecological and animal ethical crisis has been associated with a crisis of the Western human subject and his/her relationship to the other-than-human world
The great Western achievement and legacy, has become questionable in that the human is seen as the measure of all things and can be defined by anthropina and binary, hierarchical oppositions
While socio-political advance has been marked by steps to integrate more of these categorical Others, such as women and people of color, as subjects and citizens, humanism remains limited by what it considers as human
Summary
The ecological and animal ethical crisis has been associated with a crisis of the Western human subject and his/her relationship to the other-than-human world. Ecological citizenship stresses responsibility for a common good and an ethic of care towards human and nonhuman others as well as nature more generally (e.g., [4,5,6]). This article seeks to contribute to the philosophy of ecocentric education by providing a rigorous animal rights/posthumanist perspective that specifies citizenship and education in a more-than-human world and transcends the dominant consumptive and productivist approach. It brings a sociological and educational view into dialogue with an animal ethical and zooanthropological view of subjectivity to develop a novel foundation, i.e., one that builds on the continuity of life and subjective experience, for interspecies communities and learning. The theoretical elaboration of subjective experience as a core element of environmental education leads to a deeper understanding of the conditions and dynamics of subjectification and invites further development in the fields of educational practice and research
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