Postcritical knowledge ecology in the Anthropocene

Abstract

The always vexed relationships between philosophy, theory, methodology, empirical work and their representations and legitimations have been thrown into chaos with the belated acknowledgement of the Anthropocene. Unsurprisingly, traditional Western thought may have been complicit, given its underlying anthropocentric assumptions and humanist commitments in education philosophy, theory and practice. The postcritical knowledge ecology developed here is applied to both a modest and responsible form of methodological inquiry in an ethnographic study of nature experience. Our contextualised experiment adds to the nascent literature of an environmentally oriented education now demanded in the Anthropocene.

Keywords:

• The Anthropocene
• knowledge ecology
• postcritical
• modesty
• responsibility
• postrepresentation

Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous reviewers who provided us with important insights and valuable suggestions.