“You Gotta here these Stories”: An Ecocritical Analysis of mother!

Abstract

Abstract By sharing the experiences of two teacher educators, this article interrogates a tendency in ecojustice education to position humans-as-saviors in climate crisis narratives. The authors postulate the use of film—specifically, Darren Aronofsky’s (2017) mother!—to facilitate the complex process of a critical ontology that decenters humans in stories of ecological relationality. The authors ask: How might we use film to disrupt the ways future teachers are commonly positioned as protagonists in the human-as-savior narrative? How might teachers be positioned to promote Holland, Lachiocotte, Skinner, and Cain’s (2001) pillars of ecological democracy: intelligent communication, recognized identity, and critical agency between multiple species? The authors share how they work with/in teacher education to address these tensions in a Social Foundations or Multicultural Education course. They conclude with pedagogical examples of how the authors envision film as part of a teacher education curriculum.