In the trading zone: The eco and the techno at the limits of ‘the human’ and compulsory schooling

Abstract

This paper examines what is at stake in the trading zone, where Eco and Techno movements meet, especially in regard to the attributes generally posited as unique to “the human” and upon which compulsory schooling has been historically founded. It offers a thought experiment and investigation into how the simultaneity of Eco and Techno movements highlight what is at stake in schooling’s reliance on attributes such as consciousness and intelligence and considers how historical understandings of compulsory schooling’s projects might be reapproached as a result. Examining research, literatures and movements that frequently make appeal to signifiers like environment or Earth as a site of rescue and restoration, Including the climate strike movement, global youth surveys, EcoCrit literature and their focus on an Anthropocene (the Eco) alongside the faith placed in technological inventions, in particular those associated with artificial intelligence, the transhumanist movement, and a specific version of technofuturism, the paper maps the differential challenges to human centrism (Eco) and human primacy (Techno). Such challenges leave the field with difficult questions about the limits of intentionality, rationality and analysis and the future of violent legacies initially built around the figure of Man.