Learning with student climate strikers’ humour: towards critical affective climate justice literacies

Abstract

A marked feature of the political tactics of the transnational School Strike 4 Climate movement (also known as Fridays for Futures and Youth Strike for Climate) has been the use of humour on cardboard signs, digital memes and social media posts. Young people’s cardboard signs, memes and social media posts have frequently mobilised humour as public pedagogy and political intervention – to emotionally stir and to politically engage others. In this article, we argue that the school strikers’ creation and mobilisation of humour demonstrate a critical affective climate justice literacy that educators committed to pursuing climate justice have much to learn from. In analysing examples of humour in contemporary student climate justice activism, this article brings previous analyses of the potential of humour in social movement studies and climate change communication into conversation with calls from environmental education scholars to pay greater attention to the potency of emotion for climate justice education, beyond a rationalistic focus on climate science literacy. We outline four pedagogical propositions for working with humour, accompanied by their own perplexities, in moving towards critical affective climate justice literacies.

Keywords:

• Climate justice education
• school strikes 4 climate
• critical literacy
• critical affective literacy
• humour

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge and pay respects to the traditional custodians of the unceded lands on which this analysis was undertaken: the Wadawurrung people of the Kulin nations, and pay respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. Sincere thanks to Barbara Comber for reading an earlier draft of this manuscript and her supportive feedback. Thank you to the reviewers and special issue editors for their generous recommendations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 While we mark the beginning of the strikes with this example, it is important to stress that collective youth networks like Seed Indigenous Youth Climate Network in Australia and Pacific Climate Warriors, young First Nations activists in other settler colonial nations, and young activists from the Global South had been campaigning for climate justice for at least the previous ten years before the 2018 School Strikes 4 Climate (Unigwe, 5 Oct).

2 These three quoted signs were photographed by professional photographers for news reports; references include the photographer (where listed), the news source and web link.

3 We acknowledge the use of humour in vernacular internet cultures associated with the climate justice movement, though it is beyond the scope of this article to conduct a thorough analysis of online humour in the climate justice movement.

4 ‘Scomo’ is a nickname commonly used for the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.