‘An atmosphere, an air, a life:’ Deleuze, elemental media, and more-than-human environmental subjectification and education

Abstract

Subjectification in environmental movement education comprises an influx of more-than-human ‘others,’ including the classical elements: air, water, earth, fire.  In this conceptual article, I consider what environmental movement education research, which includes inquiring into processes of political subjectification, might entail, when thinking with the elements. As part of this focus, I identify and propose thinking alongside an ‘elemental Deleuze,’ by attuning to how the elements thread through Deleuze’s many works. Thinking with the elements alongside the field of elemental media studies, I turn to a series of examples from research conducted on subjectification and education in anti-oil pipeline movements in British Columbia, Canada, to suggest that the elements are productive media of atmospheres and affects that generate political ‘life.’ My objectives in this article are to articulate implications and ways of engaging with more-than-human forms of subjectification in environmental movements, and the implications for environmental education research.

Keywords:

• Deleuze
• elemental media
• environmental movement education
• new materialism
• posthumanism

Notes

1 It is outside the scope of this article to consider where one element stops and another resumes or to engage in discussion of precise definition of ‘the elements.’ I am grateful to one of the reviewers for drawing my attention to this point, and for suggesting an excellent overview of changing conceptions of ‘the elements’ in ecological philosophy written by David Macauley (2005) ‘The flowering of environmental roots and the four elements in Presocratic philosophy From Empedocles to Deleuze and Guattari’ in Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion.