Posthuman ecologies in education. Reinventing transpecies alliance

What does it entail from an educational perspective to face the challenge of rethinking what it means to be human on a planet containing a multitude of other forms of life? How do we change the perception of the human in a more-than-human world, characterized by a dramatic climate crisis, rapid and intense technological, social, and cultural transformations and multiple processes of exclusion and discrimination of differences? What can be the contribution of pedagogy to build new connections between humans, the environment and non-human otherness? The anthropocentric framework within which, still, Western pedagogical thought is rooted, appears unsuitable to address these questions, as it continues to perpetuate an anti-ecological vision which interprets the human as separate and opposed to the rest of nature. Instead, it is necessary in educational practices to proceed beyond the boundaries of the Ego and beyond human exceptionalism, placing at the center no longer a fixed and unitary identity, but rather the multiplicity of relationships that the subject weaves, the interconnections through which humans and non-humans hybridize in a process of becoming-with, whose outcome is never predefined. The contemporary scenario, in brief, challenges pedagogy to adopt a posthumanist perspective to critically interrogate the possible educational implications of the ongoing changes. The high degree of bio-technological interaction and the multiple interconnections with an environment we pass through, but which equally passes through us, invite us to creative thinking to reinvent transpecies alliances. It means to abandoning an ideal of unitary subject to develop situated, embodied, plural and ecological thinking, capable of recognizing interconnectedness as a constitutive element of one’s identity. From these considerations, the paper explores the role of pedagogy in expanding the educational imaginary to support the emergence of posthuman subjectivities, promoting the encounter with differences that qualify the human being in his perpetual becoming other.