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education
sciences
Review
The Contested Space of Animals in Education: A
Response to the “Animal Turn” in Education for
Sustainable Development
Helena Pedersen
Department of Pedagogical, Curricular and Professional Studies, University of Gothenburg, 405 30 Göteborg,
Sweden; helena.pedersen@gu.se
Received: 31 May 2019; Accepted: 31 July 2019; Published: 8 August 2019
Abstract:
The so-called “animal turn”, having been on the agenda for around 15 years in the humanities
and social sciences, is gaining force also in the educational sciences, typically with an orientation
toward posthumanist ontologies. One particular space where educational “more-than-human”
relations are debated is the field of education for sustainable development (ESD). This paper responds
to two recent contributions to this debate, both positioned within ESD frameworks. The purpose of this
response is two-fold: First, to give a critical account of the knowledge claims of the two articles, their
overlaps and divergences, as well as their implications for pedagogical practice and their potential
consequences for the position of animals in education and in society at large. The meaning and
usefulness of analytic tools such as “critical pluralism” and “immanent critique” in relation to animals
in education is discussed, as well as whose realities are represented in ESD, revealing contested
spaces of teaching and learning manifested through an “enlightened distance” to anthropocentrism
in-between compliance and change. The second purpose is to sketch a foundation of reflective
practice for critical animal pedagogies, offering a critical theory-based form of resistance against
recent posthumanist configurations of the “animal question” in education and beyond.
Keywords:
education for sustainable development; animals; posthumanism; anthropocentrism;
more-than-human; critical animal pedagogies
1. Introduction
Since its relatively recent inception, the notion of the “animal turn” [
1
,
2
] has arguably opened
up new horizons in the humanities, social, and educational sciences, accompanied by a wave of
scholarly attention to what has been termed “more-than-human” [3] worlds, spaces, encounters, and
relations (see, for instance, [
4
–
6
]). The “more-than-human” in education research usually refers rather
sweepingly to nonhuman organisms, ecological entities, and natural phenomena. This paper analyzes
implications of addressing human-animal relations as a topic of inquiry in the educational sciences;
specifically in the field of education for sustainable development (ESD).
The use of animals in education is deeply embedded in—and has significant implications
for—society’s relationships with animals more generally [
7
]. Animals are displayed, classified, studied,
and represented, as well as confined, manipulated, consumed, and killed, in a multitude of forms in
education [
8
]. They are incorporated in the science curriculum as carriers of scientific knowledge about
laws, conditions, and functions of “nature.” For instance, students are implicitly or explicitly taught
to utilize, dominate, or control other species as dissection specimens for hands-on training of certain
skills in science classrooms, or as other forms of scientific objects in biology and ecology curricula [
9
].
In non-invasive human-animal pedagogical situations, such as animal-assisted interventions, animals
may be used in the classroom for purposes of enhancing children’s social, cognitive, or emotional
Educ. Sci. 2019,9, 211; doi:10.3390/educsci9030211 www.mdpi.com/journal/education
Educ. Sci. 2019,9, 211 2 of 11
development (for instance, improving their reading skills) [
8
]. Animals are furthermore used in some
outdoor education practices, and in study visits to zoos (where their captivity is often normalized
and rarely rendered problematic; see [10].) The animal industries also heavily target schools through
materials such as films, books, farm visits with free food samples, products in the school cafeteria,
advertising, vending machines, sponsorships, and even through offering complete pedagogical plans
tailored to fit with the school curriculum and fulfil learning objectives [
11
–
13
]. Although educational
institutions are not the only societal actors contributing to organizing and forming human-animal
relationships, the education system occupies a particular space as norm-(re)producer and legitimizer
of certain knowledge forms, social orders, and practices, where animals figure in asymmetrical power
arrangements [
10
]. The way education theory and practice explicitly or implicitly acknowledge the
problem of animals in education, thus, has consequences for the life conditions of both animals and
humans in and beyond institutionalized settings of teaching and learning, as well as for fraught
society/nature demarcations at large. As we shall see, this problem complex is made visible in particular
ways in contested spaces of ESD.
Recognizing the wide range of scholarly and scholar-activist work on animals in education (e.g., [
11
,
13
–
27
]), the present paper provides a critical response to two particular co-authored contributions
to the nascent area of animals in ESD research: Bruckner and Kowasch’s article “Moralizing meat
consumption: Bringing food and feeling into education for sustainable development” [
28
], and Lindgren
and Öhman’s article “A posthuman approach to human-animal relationships: advocating critical
pluralism” [
29
]. I consider these two articles as particularly interesting contributions to the debate
of animals in education for several reasons. Although published in two different journals and with
different methodological orientations (one empirically-based and focusing on ESD in geography and
economy-related subject areas; the other concept-driven and addressing cross-curricular educational
contexts), they both seek to combine ethics, politics, and posthumanist ontology in their argumentation
for the development of a “more-than-human” ESD practice, thereby ontologizing animals in specific
ways (I will get back to this toward the end of this article). Furthermore, both articles point to how
human-animal relations is never an innocent topic of educational inquiry, but constitutes a profoundly
contested terrain (cf. [
30
]). Without claiming that they are somehow “representative” of scholarship
on animals in ESD research, I argue that the articles appear to capture some recent tendencies of the
“animal turn” in ESD (as indicated above). My purpose here is first to pursue a critical analysis of
the knowledge claims of the two articles, their overlaps and divergences, as well as their implications
for pedagogical practice and their potential consequences for the position of animals in and beyond
educational settings. My methodological approach is a critical theory-driven comparative analysis
of the two articles. While my analysis is not a proper critical discourse analysis in, for instance, a
Foucauldian sense, it does accommodate elements of, and asks questions inspired by, critical discourse
analysis. Drawing on Patricia MacCormack’s [
19
] work on animal ethics and education, I will then
suggest ideas for critical animal pedagogies as an educational counter-movement against certain ways
that posthumanist configurations of the “animal question” [
31
] have been picked up and applied in
education research. The arguments pursued in this paper are anchored in a critical animal studies and
critical education theory position; both which are in tension with posthumanist ontologies (see, for
instance, [
32
]). This tension will come to the fore in my analysis and be approached as a productive
site of reflective practice.
2. Animals in ESD Research: “Moralizing Meat Consumption” and “A Posthuman Approach to
Human-Animal Relationships”
The notion of education for sustainable development (ESD) is undergoing a conceptual shift to
environmental and sustainability education (ESE). I have chosen to use ESD consistently throughout
this paper, meaning to include also ESE. ESD as a field of education practice and research is sometimes
viewed as a policy-driven successor to environmental education (EE). Although its origins can be
traced back to traditions in nature studies and nature conservation education since the late 1800s [
33
],
Educ. Sci. 2019,9, 211 3 of 11
ESD has a relatively brief history largely paralleling the implementation of international policy
documents and programs on sustainable development (the Brundtland Report in 1987 by the World
Commission on Environment and Development; The United Nations Decade for Education for
Sustainable Development 2005–2014; followed by the Global Action Programme on ESD and the
Sustainable Development Goals). There are divergent voices within the field, but a core tenet of ESD
has unfolded around a critique of its perceived normativity stipulating what sustainable development
“is” and how education addressing problems of unsustainability “should” be carried out (see, for
instance, [
34
]). Bruckner and Kowasch [
28
] (p. 5) even raise a concern that ESD will be “mis-educative”
because “pre-determined actions for a specific future reduce possibilities for students to act on their
own initiative and develop their own ideas and projects.” In a similar vein, Lindgren and Öhman draw
on a tradition of a “pluralistic” approach to ESD, driven by a skepticism of an education “that serves a
specified end” [
29
] (p. 1), and that rather promotes an “education of participation” open to conflicting
views. From a conventional anthropocentric perspective on education as a democratic and humanistic
project, attentive to the multiple voices of students, children, parents, educators, and other (human)
actors in society at large, this position appears to make a lot of sense.
With the “animal turn”, however, ESD has taken on board yet another stakeholder: The animal
subject. While (wild) animals have always been relevant to EE/ESD in their capacity of species
representatives and their roles for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, Spannring [
26
] has provided
a helpful overview on various trajectories through which animals as subjects, rather than as species
representatives, have made their way into the ESD field. One of these trajectories is the posthumanist
approach, which has proliferated across the humanities and social sciences. With posthumanism,
anthropocentrism in education has shifted from being a taken-for-granted normality to, if not an
outright bad word, at least a contested position demanding argumentation, reflection, and debate.
As a shorthand for manifesting an enlightened distance to anthropocentrism, analytic focus on
more-than-human relationships is advocated by an increasing body of scholarship in education and
elsewhere, including the two articles addressed here [28,29].
It is in the above roughly outlined conceptual terrain that we find the two articles “Moralizing
meat consumption: Bringing food and feeling into education for sustainable development” [
28
] and “A
posthuman approach to human-animal relationships: advocating critical pluralism” [
29
]. I anticipate
that forcing these two different texts together in a critical review may be perceived as enacting a form
of discursive violence on both. As indicated above, however, I argue that there are reasons for doing
so; reasons that I hope will become clear as my analysis unfolds. I will now take a closer look at the
respective knowledge claims of the articles, their lines of argumentation, and their conclusions.
Bruckner and Kowasch’s article [
28
], bringing together food geographies, affect studies, and ESD,
is an empirical investigation of how the topic of meat and meat consumption is addressed in geography
education in Germany and Austria involving students aged 10–18. Data were produced through
geography/economics curricula analyses (comprising eight curricula), a large-scale quantitative survey
(comprising 481 student respondents), and qualitative interviews (individual and group interviews)
with students, teachers, and also with seven meat-producing farmers from “educational farms”; i.e.,
farms hosting study visits by school classes. Students participating in group interviews were also asked
to draw their perception of “sustainability” (39 drawings were produced). An organizing concept
and target of critique throughout the study is “moralizing,” approached by the researchers as a “trap”
teachers risk falling into [
28
] (p. 13); that is, an intrinsically problematic aspect of ESD in general (for
reasons briefly referred to above), and of meat consumption in education in particular:
Moralizing intensive animal production as ’bad’ is a common societal practice yet, for
many, addressing intensive farming and animal suffering is far from ticking offa simple
sustainability checklist. Furthermore, eating is not a ’rational’ process, but an emotional,
cultural and metabolic act. Thus, ’critical thinking’ alone does not cause students to consider
how food from various production systems ’tastes’, ’feels’ or becomes ’sustainable’. [
28
]
(pp. 5–6)
Educ. Sci. 2019,9, 211 4 of 11
Findings of this study indicate that although meat production and consumption is not explicitly
mentioned in the geography curricula analyzed, survey data suggest that meat appears as a discussion
topic in classrooms. Survey and interview data show, according to the authors, how “moralizing” occurs
in relation to meat production and consumption within an ESD context. One geography/economics
teacher remarked in an interview that “students already come to school with a ’right-wrong schema’,”
prompting the teacher to “show students that there is something in between.” Moralizing, the researchers
argue, promises easy solutions in a reality that is more complex. This sentiment seems to be backed
up by the analyses of student drawings, showing a “simplified ’good’ versus ’bad’ understanding of
animal agriculture” with factory farming and organic farming in opposition: “Whereas the farmer
from the organic farm appears [in one student’s drawing] smiling in overalls, the other carries bags
filled with money.” [
28
] (p. 11) On the positive side of this moralizing on the part of students, the
authors remark that the drawings “prove that some students do connect meat with animals’ lives and
consider animal welfare as a key to more sustainable meat.” [28] (pp. 11–13).
These results resonate, to some extent, with my own upper secondary classroom ethnographies [
10
],
indicating that some teachers of animal welfare-related topics make great efforts to avoid communicating
in the classroom what they perceive as biased, black-and-white representations of reality, and also
avoid promoting their own views on human-animal relations (at least when these views are anchored
in an animal rights commitment). In Bruckner and Kowasch, the interviews with local meat producers
at “educational farms” centered, according to the researchers, “on disconnections between /
. . .
/the
meat-consuming public and farm realities.” [
28
] (p. 8) Also this aspect resonates with my empirical
studies of veterinary education practice ([
7
]; cf. [
35
]), where the notion of “disconnections” becomes
a way of neutralizing critique toward the animal production system and downplaying possible
antagonistic positions between “the public” and meat producers, indicating that such conflicts can be
overcome through public education. We may, for instance, ponder this statement made by a cattle
farmer interviewed: “If a consumer is motivated to think about animal welfare, then it’s usually
negative
. . .
but to consider a better life for the animal, like we aim for on our farm, few consumers
understand that.” [
28
] (p. 11) This remark on consumers’ perceived lack of understanding of farming
reality is, however, not framed in the analysis in terms of “moralizing,” which otherwise seems to have
guided the interviews and surveys with students and teachers in Bruckner and Kowasch’s study [
28
].
This discrepancy raises a number of methodological questions related to how certain key concepts
are used and for what purposes, but perhaps a more significant issue evoked by these examples is
whose “reality” is represented in (ESD) education, especially in the case of ESD research advocating
“more-than-human” approaches.
At this point, let me shift attention toward the other ESD article of concern here: “A posthuman
approach to human-animal relationships: advocating critical pluralism” [
29
]. This article, in itself
a response to another article analyzing the blatant anthropocentrism in pluralistic ESD research
traditions [
17
], resembles Bruckner and Kowasch’s [
28
] contribution above by speaking positively
about more-than-human relationalities in education, while at the same time eschewing the idea of
moralizing about human-animal relations. This position is made clear already in the introduction of
the article: “Our critical pluralist approach does not start in moral or animal rights arguments, but
focuses on how the bodies and agency of nonhuman animals can enable humans to act in political
and ethical life.” [
29
] (p. 2) Throughout the article, the authors keep reasserting their distance from
“idealizing”, and thus moralizing, human-animal relationships [
29
] (pp. 3–4, 9–10), and the problem of
animal rights, here flattened out as a (flawed) instantiation of moralization, is re-emphasized further
on in the text:
To conclude, what is suggested is a more critical pluralist perspective, where educational
practice pays attention to our already existing (and often abusive) entanglement with the
more than human world. But when we approach these ’more than human’ relationships in
education, it does not have to be seen as a linear process that aims to fulfil the ethical demands
Educ. Sci. 2019,9, 211 5 of 11
of all nonhuman beings. Instead, these relationships can be approached as contingent and
’characterized by difficulties, contradictions and detours’ (Spannring 2017, 8). [29] (p. 11)
The purpose of the article is, thus, to advocate a “critical pluralist approach” that recognizes
animal difference (rather than their presumed sameness with humans, here viewed as a problematic
“moral-extensionist” vantage point) through an emphasis on animal agency. This line of argumentation
is pursued through a theoretically driven discussion, engaging works of ecofeminist (Val Plumwood)
and posthumanist feminist (Rosi Braidotti) scholars, as well as empirical examples from other research
(including my own). This “critical pluralist approach” seeks to address human-animal power relations
and develop an “immanent critique” useful for this purpose. Immanent critique is here put to work not
fully adhering to its Hegelian-Marxist origins (to confront existing societal orders with the claims of
their own conceptual principles and thus reveal their inherent contradictions), but rather as a didactic
practice, to encourage students ”to ask who they will become in relation to ’the animal’” [
29
] (p. 7) and
to “’unmask’ the underlying ethical, political and ecological dimensions in education.” [
29
] (p. 12) The
authors furthermore propose a “stay in conflict” in controversial educational situations addressing
the situation of animals in human society on the grounds that “the idea of a predetermined change
that automatically would transform conflictual/confrontational views and opinions into consensual
agreements is problematic” [
29
] (p. 10, emphasis in original). Perhaps more remarkably, considering
the “more-than-human” claims of this article, “stay in conflict” as an educational approach is motivated
by “the impossibility of a consensual agreement over what an abusive treatment of animals really is
(Eating meat or drinking milk? Having animals at zoos or use in sports? Animal experimentation?
etc.) and how/if education has a responsibility to change this.” [
29
] (p. 10). Although this “stay
in conflict” approach seems to differ from Bruckner and Kowasch’s [
28
] emphasis on reconciliation
between presumably conflictual positions, the question emerges here as well whose reality is actually
taken into consideration, and how the subjects in focus in Lindgren and Öhman’s article—presumably
the animals—are, at the same time, rendered curiously marginalized (cf. [36]).
Before discussing other key convergences between the two articles, I want to take a brief look
at their respective conclusions and recommendations for ESD practice. Bruckner and Kowasch find
that although ESD in practice often leads to simplified (moralizing) conceptions of “right” versus
“wrong,” and that ESD “ignores the interpersonal, relational and more-than-human elements of
food systems” [
28
] (p. 1), students view animal welfare as an important aspect of sustainability.
This, according to the researchers, opens opportunities for “making students aware of the visceral
(dis)connections they make between taste and political economy” [
28
] (p. 1). How, then, should this
awareness be promoted through education? Bruckner and Kowasch here turn to the literature on
emancipatory approaches to ESD, with the aim of assisting students to develop “their own ethics
of the gut” [
28
] (p. 1): a reflective, “nonmoralizing” food practice [
28
] (p. 14). As inspiration for
concrete educational activities (“more-than-human interventions”), they turn to, among others, my
work [
37
]. Considering the context unfolding throughout their article, most of the suggested activities
are, however, quite far from anything I would propose: Supermarket visits where students are asked
to analyze marketing strategies and plan their own “perfect supermarket” according to their own
preferences; blind tasting of food (including “animal welfare”-certified products); study visits to farms,
slaughterhouses, butchers, and retailers (representing different stages within the meat-producing
system; see [
7
,
38
,
39
] for critical accounts of similar field trips within the veterinary education program);
and working in school gardens that keep animals on their premises. The overarching pedagogical idea,
as articulated by the authors, is to put “critical thinking, feeling and doing into practice” [
28
] (p. 14)
and move students to “consider animals’ lives in noninstrumental ways” [
28
] (p. 15). The presumed
connection(s) between educators’ teaching and students’ learning (if such a connection exists) is
not elaborated on in the article; nor is there any discussion on the implications of these “meat
pedagogies” [
28
] (p. 16) for the actual situation of the animals involved: In this more-than-human
approach to ESD, the animals themselves are, again, rendered curiously marginalized [36].
Educ. Sci. 2019,9, 211 6 of 11
In Lindgren and Öhman [
29
], conclusions are more theoretically-driven than in Bruckner and
Kowasch [
28
], proposing a theoretical framework (critical pluralism) for approaching the “question
of the animal” in education. The posthumanist-oriented recommendations for educational practice
are based on a recognition of nonhuman (animal) agency (here, the authors refer to the agency of
both living and killed animals); i.e., what animals can “do” in educational settings and how they
affect teachers and students. In addition, the authors propose developing an “immanent critique”
through engaging students in discussions on, for instance, why we treat some animals as worth saving
and protecting; others as exploitable in food production systems; the ethical, political, and ecological
consequences of the billion dollar pet business; and animals used in zoos and circuses, poaching
and hunting, and animal experimentation. Examining “the link between meat consumption and
economic growth by asking how different organisations using animals as a commodity consider ethical
quandaries or the ecological impact connected with their ’products’” is another suggested example of
a classroom activity [
29
] (p. 11). Such attempts of scrutinizing the animal-industrial complex [
40
,
41
]
are all necessary components of a critical analysis of human-animal relations in education [
8
]. In this
context, the authors also make an important point, arguing that “environmental educators might ask
why some of the most important agents of climate change are overlooked, i.e., cows, chickens and
pigs” [29] (p. 12).
However, Lindgren and Öhman conclude with a reservation: “[W]e do not claim that educators
can undo all power relations or create educational settings in which we can morally include or speak
for all nonhuman species” [
29
] (p. 12, emphasis in original). Such an ambition is considered altruistic
by the authors, and also a way of disregarding “the political and juridical limitations that restrict a
majority of educational institutions” [
29
] (p. 12). While this reservation may appear reasonable, it also
“rescues” the position of the human in education on the grounds that it is inescapable and a necessary
condition for political and environmental engagement. As a result, the authors propose Braidotti’s
notion of a “nomadic subject”: “[A]n idea of subjectivity that attempts to transcend an essentialist
separation between humans and nature and extends the traditional subject-object position” [
29
] (p. 5,
emphasis in original). A nomadic subjectivity is, furthermore, “sensitive to the interplay of ecological
destruction and the commodification and capitalisation of animal bodies” [
29
] (p. 12). Who is supposed
to take on board this alternative subjectivity remains, however, somewhat unclear. It is suggested that
educators consider it, but if also students and ESD researchers, and possibly other stakeholders in
the ESD field are included here is an open question. Nevertheless, proposing a new subjectivity in
education seems to be beyond the realms of “moralizing”.
3. Sustaining the Ontologization of Animals-For-Us
The two ESD articles addressed above, despite their divergent methodological approaches to the
“animal question” in education and their different theoretical ambitions, do seem to converge on a
number of points. Both claim a space for human-animal relations in ESD and recognize the ethical and
political nature of this space; however, both also argue for the importance of this space to be free from
any kind of “moralizing” of human-animal relations by educators. Moralizing appears, in both articles,
as a discursive tool through which moves toward radical changes in human-animal relationships are
blocked. Both rely to some extent on posthumanist scholarship (more in the case of Lindgren and
Öhman [
29
], less in Bruckner and Kowasch [
28
]). Both also ontologize animals as accessible for human
use, particularly as food products:
Perhaps students lack a more nuanced understanding of the links between care, economy,
the environment and animal welfare but, nonetheless, they do communicate an interrelation
between animal life, meat and sustainability. [28] (p. 13)
Bruckner and Kowasch furthermore propose “bringing students’ attention to the visceral, relational
ethics of a food system that makes animals into meat” [
28
] (p. 14), disregarding the fact that the animals
are always already ontologized as meat (cf. [
42
]), and that their own study contributes to reinforcing
Educ. Sci. 2019,9, 211 7 of 11
this ontologization. Not entirely surprising, perhaps, considering that the research, according to the
authors’ own note, is partly supported by an Austrian regional government-funded project entitled
“(Un)Knowing Food” [28] (p. 16). On the website, the project is described as follows:
The Project “(Un)Knowing Food” examines the assemblage, circulation, and performance of
transparency within the pork and beef industry of Styria, Austria. /
. . .
/The results of the
research project will form the basis for collaboration with regional meat producers in Styria, with the
aim of transgressing existing boundaries between spaces of consumption and production.
(https://geographie.uni-graz.at/en/research/research-groups/human-geography/human-
geography-ii/laufende-projekte/un-knowing-food/, emphasis added)
From the project description above, we can conclude that the “(Un)Knowing Food” project equals
food with meat (derived from pigs and cows), altogether excluding plant-based foods. Consequently,
the premises of the project, as formulated on the website, do not seem to problematize human
consumption of animal bodies, but rather take this normative order for granted. Moreover, the
aim of “collaboration with regional meat producers in Styria” expresses an identical rationale as
the interviews with meat producers at “educational farms” in the empirical data referred to above,
addressing “disconnections between /
. . .
/the meat-consuming public and farm realities” [
28
] (p. 8).
Framed within an ESD context and more-than-human rhetoric of human-animal relationalities and
ethics, it is difficult to understand the rationale behind the article as anything else than promotion
and support of local meat-producing businesses. This brings an urgent edge to the question of what is
being sustained in education for sustainable development (e.g., [
43
]). It also raises questions about the
role of education in general, and ESD in particular, in the animal-industrial complex [7].
If the ontologization of animals as food comes across as quite conspicuous in Bruckner and
Kowasch [
28
], it is less obvious in Lindgren and Öhman [
29
], as their article does bring forth a
critique of animal commodification, instrumentalization, and abuse, as well as the consequences of our
contradictory relations with animals in society. However, one of their examples of suggested questions
that educators could use to encourage student discussions warrants concern:
Can the human use of animals as living/dead commodities be avoided, or does our ethical
considerations/obligations concerning animal subjects and/or bodies change in different
cases, such as medical research or cosmetics, industrialised meat, locally produced or
non-meat alternatives? [29] (p. 11)
By asking if animal use can be avoided, rather than asking how animal bodies become accessible
for our use in the first place, the ontological status of animals for us remains intact—which is exactly
what needs to be rendered problematic in an immanent critique of human-animal relations in society
and education. Thus, I argue that Lindgren and Öhman’s promotion of a critical pluralism with regard
to animals in ESD is not only wholly inadequate, but also evacuates the notion of “critical” of its
political force. To make my point clear, I cite my book chapter on critical animal studies, co-authored
with Vasile Stănescu ([30], cf. [44]):
For us, critical refers not only to engagement with critical theory, but equally a commitment to be
critical of anything that purports to study animals and at the same time fails to engage, support,
protect and stand with the animal herself. [30] (p. 264, emphasis in original)
Critical pluralism fails to “stand with the animal herself,” as this is not its purpose (and I believe
the article authors would agree with me on this point). Even if steeped in posthumanist concepts and
an enlightened distance to anthropocentrism, critical pluralism, at least in this instantiation, is not a
gesture towards a sincere act of solidarity with animals; it is, rather, a commitment to, preoccupation
with, and celebration of human subjectivity. It is about staying in conflict, not standing with the animal.
It is, in other words, not more-than-human but rather more human; that is, more of what education
already is.
Educ. Sci. 2019,9, 211 8 of 11
4. Standing with and Staying Away from the Animal in ESD
The position of the animal in education may be the product of ages of socialization into a society
where animals seem to be forever subordinated and destined for involuntary exposure to human
intervention. Drawing on Cary Wolfe’s Derridean analysis of the question of the animal [
31
], education
is an institution of speciesism not only enabling, but requiring the sacrifice (or subordination or killing)
of the animal in order for the human to achieve his full potential. In a different terminology, education
is a set of machines producing profoundly unsafe realities for animals through multiple connections
with the animal-industrial complex [
7
]. Although this order of things is extraordinarily resilient, it is
not naturally given, nor is it predetermined. As educators, students, and education researchers, we
can withdraw. “Standing with the animal” would then mean, literally and figuratively, “staying away
from the animal”: A withdrawal from any claims made on them; claims on their bodies, behaviors,
lives, and emotions, as well as epistemic claims and urges to extract knowledge from and about
them [
19
,
45
]). On this point, MacCormack’s argument (drawing on Michel Serres) aligns with Lindgren
and Öhman’s [
29
] critique of the tendency to valorize animals’ lives based on their similarity to
humans—but the recognition of animal difference, proposed by the same authors as an alternative
ethical approach; indeed any kind of categorization of animals—is equally problematic, as it always
takes the human as reference point. MacCormack writes:
Theorizing “the” animal through examples of species which will always be through human
paradigms, shows the degree of animal use that may seem less or more sinister depending on
the pedagogic goal, but that is underpinned with an inevitable system of signification which
asks the who, the what, the how, and the why. Information about nonhuman lives leads to
evaluation, issues of equivalence, and imposed anthropocentric narratives, not liberty. [
19
]
(p. 15)
If we take this argument seriously, replacing one form of human subjectivity (human supremacy)
with another (posthumanist, nomadic subjectivity) is not sufficient (if subjectivities can at all be
exchanged in this manner): Rather, we must cease thinking about, acting on, and relating to animals as
if their ontological status is for us (cf. [27]).
Celebrating posthumanist entanglement between humans and animals will, thus, not benefit
animals, as their “entanglement” with us usually means more dependence, more oppression, and more
exposure to human-induced violence. (For an elaborate critique of posthumanism in relation to critical
animal studies, see [
32
].) There are at least two simple ways that will, through reflective practice, make
it possible to refuse the social, ontological, and educational position of animal-for-us: One way is, as
MacCormack suggests, to refrain from exerting human privilege through the little word NOT—“not
enslaving, not cannibalizing, not torturing” [
45
]. This can further be transformed to an exercise that
can be easily practiced by most of us in daily life: Not buying them, not breeding them, not consuming
them, not wearing them. Not forcing them, not causing them suffering, not imposing ourselves, and
our humanity, upon them, but rather take a step aside to create a possibility for them to prosper on
their own conditions [
19
,
45
]. Another way is to shift pedagogical attention away from the animals and
toward human behavior, institutions, and thought regimes that have made our appropriation of animals
possible. This would mean retaining a position for the human in education, while at the same time
reverting this position. MacCormack frames this attention shift as “the unmaking of man, subjectivity,
humanism, anthropocentrism, and cogito” [
19
] (p. 15). Snaza frames it as a critical analysis of texts that
force us to grapple with “how the very idea of ’the human’ has led us to misrecognize ourselves and
our relations to the world” [
25
] (p. 50). Sanbonmatsu [
44
] frames it with the question, what kind of being
are we who construct society in this way, on the basis of total denigration and violence toward animal
life? In such a pedagogical shift, from the animal toward human behavior, there would be a space for
many of Lindgren and Öhman’s [
29
] examples of classroom activities referred to above. To these I
would add a critical scrutiny of how education itself, as a particular institution of speciesism [
31
], has a
history of violence toward animals and an embeddedness in the animal-industrial complex [7].
Educ. Sci. 2019,9, 211 9 of 11
5. Conclusions
Through a critical comparative analysis of two different, but partly overlapping, positions
regarding animals in education, this article has shown how efforts to manifest an “enlightened distance”
to anthropocentrism in ESD may work in the opposite direction, establishing human interests firmly at
the center of education theory and practice, while rendering animal subjects curiously marginalized.
In both texts analyzed here, this happens primarily through taken-for-granted negative connotations
of the word “moralizing.” The present article may be understood as making a case for restoring, or
reclaiming, a “moralizing” in human-animal education that other authors seek to distance themselves
from. Although such a reclaiming seems both justified and worthwhile, my main point here is rather
to show how moralism is put to work as a discursive tool that effectively blocks radical transformation
of human-animal relations in education, ultimately reproducing “animals-for-us” pedagogies.
In contrast to “animals-for-us” pedagogies, moves toward a reflective practice of critical animal
pedagogies have been introduced: A practice of learning how to stay away from the animal [
19
].
In a reflective practice of animals in education, staying away from the animal is at the same time
to stand with the animal in ESD (and vice versa), and it is this oscillating between standing with,
in solidarity, and staying away from, in gracious withdrawal [
19
]—not “meat pedagogies” [
28
] or
“critical pluralism” [
29
]—that would form a conceptual and practical basis of critical animal pedagogies
(see [
8
,
21
]). The dynamic relation between “standing with—staying away from” enables paying
attention to, and acting on, both the oppressive structures and arrangements organizing collective
animal lives and deaths in human society, as well as the desires and needs of the individual animal
under shifting circumstances in any given moment (to the extent that her desires and needs can ever
be imagined by humans, which, according to MacCormack, they cannot). The aim of critical animal
pedagogies is, thus, not to encourage more interaction or connection with animals in education to find
out how they may affect us as teachers and learners; rather, the aim of critical animal pedagogies is to
disentangle animals from the demands we make on them, and thereby also to free ourselves from our
harm-inflicting behaviors.
This would suggest, through reflective practice, a cessation of relating to animals through our
narcissistic preoccupation with animals-for-us. Exploring such trajectories in ESD and beyond, across
subject-specific curricula and in age-appropriate manners, implies making immanent critique a
foundation and condition for political and environmental engagement in human-animal relations.
It could even imply the practice of a different kind of critical pluralism, in the sense of opening
education to multiple unthought possibilities of unlearning and re-learning our being in the world as
standing with, staying away, and stepping aside.
Funding: This research received no external funding.
Acknowledgments:
I thank my anonymous reviewers for their generous feedback. I am also grateful to my
colleagues in the ESD Research Group at the Department of Pedagogical, Curricular and Professional Studies,
University of Gothenburg, for their helpful comments offered on a draft of this article. Needless to say, any
remaining errors are my own.
Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conflict of interest.
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