Our SARS-CoV-2 teacher: Teachings of the pandemic about our relations with the more-than-human world

Abstract

In this manuscript we present a critical analysis of the current pandemic moment, shifting the SARS-CoV-2 virus to the role of teacher, thus reflecting on possible learnings from the reality in which we are inserted. This perspective is located within the new materialism, in which we consider the agency of the more-than-human world. To do so, we revisit data from our previous research that demonstrate how occupying and frequenting urban green areas are fundamental to human formation and relationships. We discuss the implications of the restrictions experienced during the pandemic, in the political, ethical, and aesthetic context of Brazil and point out the importance of environmental education in the reconstruction of the post-pandemic world and the need to incorporate ethical and aesthetic values into educational experiences.

Keywords:

• Walking ethnography
• urban green areas
• aesthetics
• multispecies ethnography

Notes

1 My Octopus Teacher, 2020 is a Netflix Original film, directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed. It is a narrative of Craig Foster who formed a deep bond with a wild common octopus in a South African bay, who, according to the narrator, taught him how to live in a kelp forest and, consequently, in the world.

2 The tilde (∼) marks emphasise an ontological stance that expresses the dynamic and relational character of the concepts, as it is impossible to define them in a direct way (Payne et al., 2018). The tilde is used to represent our hypothesis that those three dimensions are mutually constitutive. Indeed, that hypothesis, or theoretical assumption, now needs to be tested empirically in a wide range of research, curriculum/ program, and pedagogical settings, with different populations in different socio ∼ ecological contexts, or geo ∼ cultural ∼ historical ∼ ecological “locations of knowledge” (Canaparo, 2009).

3 For more information: https://earthcharter.org/

4 Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway talk about compost as a tangled world of countless entities, which is alive/animated, and which responds to our actions in an active and unpredictable way. In similar sense, Anna Tsing uses the term ‘feral’.

5 Despite the publication’s being in English, Down to earth, we opted for the Brazilian version published in 2020 as it contained two additional texts: Imaginar gestos que barrem o retorno de produção pré-crise (Imagine gestures that bar the return of pre-crisis production), written by Bruno Latour in 2020 and Aqui quem fala é da Terra (Who’s speaking here is from the Earth) by Alyne Costa.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel.