Global citizenship education and peace education: Toward a postcritical praxis

Abstract

This paper argues for a postcritical praxis in global citizenship education (GCE) and peace education (PE). The paper begins by critiquing the interlocking fields of GCE and PE as problematically framed around the three key pillars of liberal peace. Then, drawing on postabyssal thinking the paper illustrates that the Western-centricity of liberal peacebuilding is not only colonialist/imperialist but that it is an erasure of the other. The paper argues that in light of this realization epistemological pluralism as a transformative response is wanting. Instead new responses must focus on other ontological possibilities grounded in a postcritical response to postabyssal thought. Before concluding, the paper offers some pedagogic possibilities integrating the ontological for a new postcritical GCE and PE.

Keywords:

• Global citizenship education
• peace education
• postabyssal thinking
• postcritical praxis

Introduction

Global citizenship educations (GCEs)¹ and peace educations (PEs) have historically been interlocked fields. GCEs and PEs were in parallel development along with international organizations promoting international understanding, tolerance and human rights throughout the 20th century (Boulding, 1988; Toh & Cawagas, 2017). Indeed, the UN (1948) and UNESCO (1995) merge the fields frequently in international normative documents, such as in this statement from the 1995 Declaration and Integrated Framework of Action on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Democracy: ‘… it is necessary to introduce into curricula, at all levels, true education for citizenship which includes an international dimension … and respect for the culture of others…’ (UNESCO, 1995, pp. 10–11). More recently, the Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2015) target 4.7 has called for the ‘promotion of a culture of peace and nonviolence, global citizenship, and appreciation of cultural diversity’ through education (n.p.). Wintersteiner (2019) too has argued that ‘global citizenship (education) loses much of its meaning and its transformational energy if it is not closely linked to the concept of a culture of peace, which implies the need for a profound change of our basic assumptions, ways of life, habits and cultural practices’ (p. 16). Hence, GCEs and PEs are conceptually intertwined around the goals of international understanding and social transformation toward the creation of a global culture of peace. For these reasons it is instructive to examine the various fields together, particularly in relation to their efforts to foster a global culture of mutual understanding, peacebuilding, human rights, and planetary stewardship (Toh, 2004), as articulated in global agendas such as Education for All and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Yet despite their similarities they also have notable differences in terms of their curricular and pedagogical emphases. GCEs emphasize cosmopolitan values, international cooperation, universal human rights, socioemotional learning, empathy building, and education for sustainable development, among other areas. GCEs have a global outlook as expressed in the name global citizenship education (Banta, 2017; Kester et al., 2021). PEs, on the other hand, have similar interests but focus more on a philosophy and practice of nonviolence, democratic civic engagement, inner/outer peace, conflict resolution, grassroots peacebuilding, and education in emergencies (Bickmore, 2011; Hantzopoulos et al., 2021). Indeed, many of the underlying premises of the fields are the same, firmly grounded within European and Western liberal peace ideals (Cremin, 2016). To be sure, there are also GCEs and PEs that draw more on Indigenous and Southern perspectives (Torres, 2017). The guiding research questions for this paper, then, include:

• In what ways and toward what affects does the concept of liberal peace continue to influence/limit the work of GCEs and PEs?

• How might GCEs and PEs integrate new concepts and practices from the theoretical “posts” (e.g., post-modernism, post-structuralism, post-/de-colonialism, and post-humanism) to overcome some of the limits of Western-centric liberal peacebuilding?

• What pedagogical practices offer transformative potential?

In the pages that follow, I will begin by overviewing the concept of liberal peace in relation to GCEs and PEs. I will then turn to detail a postabyssal theoretical framework that offers potential insights into some of the problems that liberal peace assumptions present for non-Western (as well as other Western) societies (Grosfoguel, 2008). Turning toward alternatives, I then consider how the epistemological pluralism offered in response to these liberal peace limitations has failed to offer a viable solution to the problem, primarily due to the limits of its epistemic rootedness in Western thought and Western ways of life (Andreotti et al., 2011). Here, I draw on postcritical thinking in particular. Before concluding, I present some pedagogical responses for practicing postcritical GCEs and PEs in the 21st century (Andreotti, 2018; Trifonas, 2003). In the end, the primary contribution of the paper is toward reimagining GCEs and PEs through a postcritical lens.² I now turn to some critiques of liberal peace as found in GCEs and PEs.

The liberal entanglements of GCEs and PEs

GCEs have long sought to expand citizens’ conceptions of humanity and belonging beyond the nation-state (Thomas & Banki, 2021; Yemini, 2021). They do so by immediately placing global before citizen to promote connectivity and international solidarity with members of other societies, what some have referred to as an expanding circle of empathy (Singer, 1981). There is a strong neo-Kantian legacy here in the notion of being an active citizen committed to universal human rights and a global ethic of care (Lissovoy, 2010; Snauwaert, 2009). The Council of Europe (2002) Maastrict global education declaration, for example, embraces this cosmopolitan ethic when it states, ‘Global education is education that opens people’s eyes and minds to the realities of the globalised world and awakens them to bring about a world of greater justice, equity and human rights for all’ (p. 13).

For Wintersteiner and others (e.g., Harris & Morrison, 2013; Reardon & Cabezudo, 2002), PEs have some resonant philosophic origins with GCEs in the shared writings of Kant, Erasmus and Comenius, who each argued for a common humanity across Europe and the need for greater international understanding and peaceful coexistence. More theoretically, there are some common tenets of liberal peace embedded within these traditions, including: (i) a focus on proclaimed universal norms (e.g., human rights, equality, liberal democracy, and social progress); (ii) the expected peace dividend of increased social and economic integration (e.g., global markets and international exchange); and (iii) the creation of democratic institutions to support peace, justice and nonviolence (e.g., the United Nations) (Pais & Costa, 2020; UNESCO, 1995). These areas have been conceptualized and critiqued elsewhere as the three key pillars of liberal peacebuilding (Kester, 2019; Richmond, 2011).

Abdi (2018) problematizes these same concepts within GCEs, while Cremin (2016), Zembylas and Bekerman (2013) problematize these tenets in PEs. Abdi (2018), for example, pointedly argues that the ‘hegemonic concepts’ of nation/states, nationality, race, citizenship, and voice/representation have ‘been imposed upon me, not for my epistemic well-being, but essentially for my onto-epistemological deconstruction and reconstruction into a half-educated conscript’ (Abdi, 2018, p. 12). Cremin (2016) – though acknowledging alternative approaches to peace from Southern and Indigenous perspectives – too critiques the more homogenizing approaches to PE that present a ‘dominant Western view of peace’ that ‘builds on universalising and idealist notions of one peace, one justice, one truth’ (p. 4). She explains that this ‘excludes non-Western traditions and ways of knowing’ (ibid). Thus, whether one perceives liberal peace positively (or not) may depend on how/where one is positioned within particular social, economic and political systems ‘as well as the racial category into which one was classified’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013).

Wintersteiner (2019) too argues for the necessity of decolonial GCEs and PEs. He contends, like Abdi, Cremin, Zembylas and Bekerman, that several taken-for-granted concepts in GCEs and PEs — such as citizenship, democracy, globalization(s), and development — serve to reinforce global inequities rather than alleviate them. That is, such notions may serve to mask power relations in their assumed moral good if the histories, geographies, and politics of these terms are not interrogated. Thus, Wintersteiner calls on educators of GCEs and PEs to draw on postcolonial and decolonial thinking to promote more just practices within the fields. Tejeda, Espinoza, and Gutierrez (2003) go further; they refer to these inequities and exclusions as ‘mutually constitutive forms of violence’ that reduce Indigenous and nonwhite peoples to ‘ontological foreigners in the very space and time they occupy’ (p. 10). Still others have expanded the analysis beyond the human to intimate how Anthropocentric perspectives in GCEs and PEs enact violence on the environment and larger cosmos by erasing it from the discussion (Todd, 2020). Kester and Cremin (2017) refer to the act of educators perpetuating these social and environmental injustices as “post-structural violence”. I take up this work here in my critique of GCEs and PEs, and in my proposal of some promising pedagogic and theoretical responses. This brings me, then, to postabyssal thinking.

Postabyssal openings

Western modernity and epistemologies of the North, including some forms of GCEs and PEs, have been critiqued widely as encompassing a dualistic and simplistic conception of inequality in the world, a conception where what is prescribed is more philanthropy, aid, empathy, and mutual understanding (Andreotti, 2018; Mignolo, 2007). Santos (2007) explains this through his explication of abyssal thought and his call for postabyssal thinking, where he critiques the common conceptual division of the world as split conveniently between the North/South or West/East, where the North/West represents a modernized post/industrial world, and the South/East represents old nostalgic (less efficient and less effective) traditional ways.³ On the one side exists a regulated and emancipated world, and on the other side of the abyss exists an unregulated, subjugated world. This abyssal distinction has regulatory, material, aesthetic, and epistemic consequences.

Postabyssal thinking, then, explains in part the differentiated treatment of peoples, ideas, rights, justice, and opportunities (or lack thereof) for those originating from different sides of the abyss. Santos (2014) states, ‘post-abyssal thinking starts from the recognition that social exclusion in its broadest sense takes very different forms according to whether it is determined by an abyssal or non-abyssal line’ (p. 65). For example, Santos (2007) focuses attention on the global knowledge production system. He argues, ‘As a product of abyssal thinking, scientific knowledge is not socially distributed in an equitable manner, nor could it be, as it was originally designed to convert this side of the line into the subject of knowledge and the other side into an object of knowledge’ (n.p). Here, Santos is highlighting an unequal knowledge production system in which institutions and scholars of the Global North (but not the Global South) are endowed with the right to define legitimate knowledges. In this respect, Santos explains that broader forms of social injustice are based in cognitive injustices that dismiss Southern ways of knowing.

In a similar fashion, Raewyn Connell (2007) explains how higher education serves to omit the knowledges and ways of life originating from the Global South, thus implicating normative education and scholars in the process. In her book Southern Theory, Connell details how Northern knowledge systems erase the theory and bodies of the South, for example, through claims of universal science, exclusion of Southern theory/theorists from reading lists, and theorizing through Northern theory (Connell, 2007). She critiques this explicitly in reference to academic practices that privilege the Global North. Referring to academics, she states:

We travel to Berkeley for advanced training, take our sabbatical in Cambridge, invite a Yale professor to give our keynote address, visit a Berlin laboratory, teach from US textbooks, read theory from Paris and try to publish our papers in Nature or the American Economic Review. (Connell, 2007, p. 211)

Hence, abyssal thinking runs deep in both theory and practice. Yet such practices are not straightforward. Southern scholars too often reproduce these exclusions (Alatas, 2003). For example, Lazar (2020) claims, ‘knowledge practices of southern scholars themselves (ourselves) are frequently complicit in perpetuating and upholding the epistemic centres of the North’ (p. 9). Thus, Santos’s postabyssal thinking offers a novel framework for deepening criticality on the intersections between North/South academic relations and taken-for-granted concepts in GCEs and PEs. Santos does this in part through promoting ‘ecologies of knowledges’, meaning an interruption of hegemonic universal knowledge claims. Postabyssal thinking, hence, offers the possibility to rethink and reframe GCEs and PEs beyond abyssal and dominative demarcations, for instance, by foregrounding examples of GCEs and PEs working in/through Southern practices toward social justice in (and beyond) the Global South (Cawagas & Toh, 1989; Waghid & Davids, 2018). I now turn to detail the role of epistemological pluralism in GCEs and PEs.

Epistemological pluralism and some critical limitations

Expanding upon the work of postcolonial and decolonial scholars, such as Santos, Andreotti (2018) brings into question whether knowledge and consciousness-raising is enough for critical social action. She asks, ‘whether knowledge is enough to change how people imagine themselves, their relationships with each other and with the world at large’ (p. 224). In response she argues that in part to overcome the dichotomies enacted through modernist thinking it is necessary to take a middle path that is neither/or but both/and, for example, both normative and empirical, theoretical and practical. Herein, the ontological domain comes into focus, and challenges the epistemological break that Santos (2014) speaks of when he states, ‘The struggle for global social justice must therefore be a struggle for global cognitive justice as well’ (p. 124). That is, the engagement of the body, experience, and interpersonal relations must be as important as the focus on the mind and knowledge diversity.

In an earlier paper, Andreotti (2011) draws on the Argentinian thinker Dussel, the Puerto Rican scholars Grosfoguel and Maldonado-Torres, the Peruvian thinker Quijano, and the Portuguese scholar Santos, to reaffirm the importance of a geopolitical analysis of power. This analysis is crucial, as I am arguing throughout, to re-ontologize knowledge within lived experience, geographical/conceptual space, and personal practice. Hence, ontological engagements are necessary to transcend the limits of a purely epistemological approach. This is especially important for those educators seeking to avoid the complicity of postcolonial thinking that may reify privilege in particular Northern epistemologies (Connell, 2007).

In a similar vein, Sriprakash et al. (2020) contend that an erasure of racialized ontologies, i.e., a silence on issues of race and racism in education and research, persists. This persistence fosters an epistemology of ignorance, exclusion, and non-existence. Grosfoguel (2008) argues: ‘No radical project can be successful today without dismantling these colonial/racial hierarchies’ (n.p.). Hence, a recognition of the ontological reveals many of the limitations of approaches grounded merely in cognitive or epistemological terms if there too are limits on which bodies and ways of life signify acceptable knowledges/being (Gur-Ze’ev, 2001). This opens important inquiry into inequality, power relations, race/ethnicity, gender, and closures within education.

Extended to some Northern models of GCEs and PEs specifically, it may be that there are multiple faces to these fields: on the one hand, they may be seen as instrumental to promoting cultures of peace, nonviolence, international tolerance, and justice through education; yet, on the other hand, each may be implicated in the reproduction of race/ethnic, class, and gender-based inequities when omitting Southern and Eastern experiences/theorists from the analysis, or by presenting progress and ‘the good life’ as the product of (a particular racialized) Northern/Western modernity (Mignolo, 2007; Todd, 2016). For Sriprakash et al. (2020) this means race/racism, gender, and ontology must be more deeply interrogated in educational practices and research. Thus, critical perspectives, while important, must also be examined in terms of their own embeddedness within exclusive epistemological domains if such domains prevent alternative ontologies and ways of life from being acknowledged/lived (Ho & Barton, 2020; Moreton-Robinson, 2011). A postabyssal education then draws on other means of being, knowing, doing, and belonging (Braidotti, 2019; Santos, 2014). This brings me now to a postcritical approach to GCEs and PEs.

Postcritical insights

As described at the beginning of this paper, GCEs and PEs are often conceptualized as offering participants the knowledge, values, skills, and behaviors to support international understanding and liberal peacebuilding to contribute to the development of global cultures of peace and planetary stewardship (Reardon, 1988). This work promotes global understanding through efforts toward tolerance and respect of different worldviews and ways of life, as well as the promotion of liberal democracy and international exchange. A critical look at this work, however, reveals that often GCEs and PEs are overly epistemological, as described in the previous section, where education is identified as the social antidote to intolerance, ignorance, and international misunderstandings.

In other words, an epistemological approach presumes that a lack of proper knowledge is the core problem to be addressed in issues of peace, conflict, and global citizenship. For example, Higgins and Novelli (2020) show that PE programs that emphasize attitudinal and behavioral changes frequently fail to address structural causes of conflict. They detail this through a critique of a UNICEF curriculum developed by international consultants for teachers in Sierra Leone. This approach, they argue, perpetuates unequal global power relations through limiting (or preventing) local input. Toh (2004) agrees; in response he offers a grassroots approach that engages citizens in producing their own visions and actions for peace.

Next, Paulo Freire’s (1970) consciousness-raising education is often cited as fundamental to GCEs and PEs programs around the world (Bajaj & Brantmeier, 2011; Hantzopoulos et al., 2021). His work has inspired generations of peace and global citizenship educators (Kester & Aryoubi, 2019; Torres, 2017). Yet, if examined critically, his consciousness-raising approach has been critiqued as being overly rational, Western-centric, and male-dominated (Ellsworth, 1989; Glass, 2001; hooks, 1994; Zembylas, 2018).⁴ This is a limitation of Freirean pedagogy revealed through postcritical thinking but it is rarely addressed (Mika et al., 2020). Yet, while Freire’s critical pedagogy may have its epistemological limits, there is nonetheless a lesser employed aspect of his work that offers potential for a postcritical praxis: his ontological orientation. The ontological aspect of Freirean critical pedagogy is grounded in being and reflecting on one’s position in the world. Herein enters the possibility for a postcritical praxis that extends GCEs and PEs praxis beyond the prescription of epistemological plurality to allow not only different ways of thinking but also different ways of being (Oliveira & Lopes, 2016; Pashby et al., 2020).

The postcritical, then, does at least three things: first, like critical pedagogy, it interrogates the social, cultural, political, environmental, and economic systems that hinder work toward peace and global justice, and that reinforce social inequities (Stein, 2021). This work holds diverse institutions and states accountable. Second, also akin to critical education, postcritical thinking illuminates the complicity of individual actors and epistemic communities in perpetuating and exacerbating various forms of violence and social exclusion, such as some individual peace and global citizenship educators or the norms of the fields more widely (Zembylas & Bekerman, 2013). Hence, the postcritical builds upon critical pedagogy to interrogate the normative practices of scholars and practitioners within the fields of GCEs and PEs as contextualized within particular systems, states, and societies (Kester & Cremin, 2017).⁵

Third, beginning a more distinct divergence from critical pedagogy, the “post” in postcritical education means an affective response to the earlier traditions, a coming after/beside, an attempt to build upon the strengths and limitations of earlier logo-centric and discursive approaches while pushing the boundaries of criticality/modernity/coloniality (Pashby et al., 2020). Pashby et al. (ibid) refer to the postcritical as ‘an as-of-yet uncaptured GCE narrative: “Other”’ (p. 157). Hence, the “post” in postcritical education does not necessarily reject earlier approaches to critical pedagogy, GCEs and PEs. Rather, together these approaches coexist in a plethora of options that educationalists have toward addressing specific forms of citizenship, democracy, peace and conflict in particular contexts.

All in all, postcritical GCEs and PEs draw on the theoretical “posts” to invite other ways of knowing, such as the intuitive, embodied, ecological, new materialist, and post-humanist knowledges into the analysis of education, citizenship, peace, and social justice (Gur-Ze’ev, 2001). I will now turn to detail some emerging ontological possibilities from this postcritical lens.

Ontological prospects otherwise

The argument thus far has been: If GCEs and PEs are to have global applicability then they must allow for different ways of being, in addition to different ways of thinking and alternative models of peacebuilding beyond liberal peace. Hitherto, the privileged ontology is that which has been trained in Western epistemologies and constructs, and re-ontologized to support these epistemologies (Abdi, 2018; Bourdieu, 1989). For example, often the ontological worldviews and accompanying epistemological approaches that emerge for many in the Global South are molded by and dependent upon Northern constructs (Lazar, 2020). In other words, although thinking differently is a precondition to the creation of a more just world (Santos, 2014), epistemological pluralism is insufficient. If living differently is not allowed, then thinking alternatives is at best an exercise of idealism; it does not lead to transformation of unjust systems.

Namely, to expand on Santos, the struggle for global social justice must be a struggle for global cognitive and ontological justice. Andreotti et al. (2015) write, ‘Analyses in this space connect different dimensions of oppression and reject the idea that the mere addition of other ways of knowing (through a critique of epistemological dominance) will ultimately change the system, as dominance is exercised primarily through the conditioning of particular ways of being that, in turn, prescribe particular ways of knowing’ (p. 27). A promising ontological response, then, might be living beyond the state as a transnational citizen – as I do in Korea – indeed daring to question the normative positioning of the state within political and educational discourse in the first place (Anderson, 1991). A second promising approach may be in an emerging method of auto-onto-ethnography, where scholars reflect on their being different (Brissett, 2020; Golding, 2017), their foreign-ness (Kim, 2020; Unterhalter, 2020), and insider/outsider-ness in differing global contexts (Misiaszek, 2018). What this raises ontologically is the limitation of rigid North/South and West/East demarcations in education and politics.

Hence, the postcritical engages the possibilities of being (different), where Braidotti (2019) explains we are ‘defined by the split temporality of the present as both what we are ceasing to be and what we are in the process of becoming’ (Braidotti, 2019, p. 52). Being, then, is key to a postcritical GCEs and PEs. I next turn to outline some pedagogic possibilities that emerge from this postcritical thinking.

New pedagogic imaginaries

This section presents three pedagogic responses for a new postcritical GCEs and PEs. These pedagogies draw on previous concepts of a pedagogy of discomfort (Boler & Zembylas, 2003), anti-dominative pedagogy (Strega & Brown, 2005), and second-order reflexivity (Kester & Cremin, 2017), each of which emerges from recent affective and reflexive turns in education research (Dernikos et al., 2020).

The first pedagogy of discomfort engages difference as a catalyst for deep dialogue on (co)existence and opportunities for change (Boler & Zembylas, 2003). It advocates addressing conflict and difference directly instead of avoiding it (Ho & Barton, 2020). For example, a pedagogy of discomfort would explicitly address structural inequities, such as systems of militarism, racism, class inequalities, patriarchy, and heteronormativity. For Boler and Zembylas, such a pedagogy involves not just cognitive discomfort and emotional unease but a link to social critique. Boler and Zembylas (2003) write:

… a pedagogy of discomfort creates both its critical effect (making it more difficult and perhaps discomforting for educators and students to think, feel, and act in accustomed ways) and its positive emotional labor (clearing a space for a collective process of thinking otherwise and considering the conditions for a transformation of what individuals are supposed to be). (p. 126)

Hence, a pedagogy of discomfort opens space for a postcritical praxis in GCEs and PEs by challenging educators and students to critique taken-for-granted assumptions of peace and global citizenship, and to rethink what citizenship and peace might be. Todd (2020) similarly suggests that although this thinking may be difficult, ‘what is difficult to bear can indeed be life enhancing’ (p. 1123). Yet, challenges to a pedagogy of discomfort have been raised. For example, Ruitenberg (2018) cautions educators about the differing vulnerabilities and emotional challenges amongst students and faculty in the classroom. Thus, educators should be cognizant of the diverse sets of students they teach, and their differing needs. Here, Cole (2016) indicates that not all students experience vulnerability and emotional discomfort in the same way; and Santos (2014) shows that vulnerabilities and oppression takes on different forms according to variegated contexts. Hence, GCEs and PEs educators should inquire into the ways in which discomfort affects students differently. This brings me to the second anti-dominative pedagogy.

Anti-dominative pedagogy entails an explicit aim to disrupt oppression and violent structures in education. In this sense, it expands upon a pedagogy of discomfort by bringing in an ethical dimension to the work (Lissovoy, 2010). The ethical dimension of anti-dominative pedagogy is explicitly committed to ‘do no harm’ (Inter-Agency Network on Education in Emergencies, 2013) and to critically reconstitute peace toward justice and nonviolence (Glass, 2001). Strega and Brown (2005), for example, explain: ‘… to make space and take space for marginalized researchers and ideas. We push the edges of academic acceptability not because we want to be accepted within the academy but in order to transform it’ (p. 3). Building on feminist critiques, this ethical stance demands that power be redistributed away from domination and toward challenging what is accepted as legitimate knowledges and practices (Braidotti, 2019; Lather, 1992; Reardon, 1988).

Brissett (2020) illustrates this from a postcolonial/racial/ethnic lens in his autoethnographic accounts of teaching international development education (related to GCEs and PEs) from his own standpoint as an educator from the Global South (Jamaica). He indicates that his positionality as a Jamaican Black male not only influences his choice of subject matter and teaching material (e.g., postcolonialism, race, racism, privilege, and critical theory) but itself becomes a part of the curriculum. Extending this outward, Brissett asks his students to write their own positionality statements ‘designed to get students to personally reflect on their journeys, socioeconomically, geographically, and educationally, as well as their identities. Such assignments range from autoethnographies, country profiles, film reviews…’ (p. 16). Hence, anti-dominative pedagogy is reflexive toward the positionality of educators, researchers, and students within systems of privilege and domination, and within specific practices of epistemic communities.

Third, coupled together with a pedagogy of discomfort that engages conflict and privilege and anti-dominative pedagogy that raises inquiry into the role of ethics and reflexivity in social change, the third pedagogy engages the theoretical “posts”, particularly post-structural and post-modernist thinking: second-order reflexivity (Kester & Cremin, 2017). Second-order reflexivity involves reflexivity on the norms of the field more broadly and common taken-for-granted practices. The objective is for GCEs and PEs educators and students to place themselves and their praxis within the norms of the wider fields, and to disconnect from those accepted practices that reproduce inequities and violence. Together the pedagogies of discomfort, anti-domination, and second-order reflexivity offer possibilities for a postcritical praxis in GCEs and PEs that critically respond to overly rational, Western-centric, and dominative approaches.

For GCEs and PEs that rest upon the foundations of normative and ethical calls for equity, justice, peace, and the fulfillment of universal human rights, it is exigent then to rethink (and redefine) the universalist, Western-oriented, and rationalist assumptions behind these liberal peace agendas, and to build up a truly global citizenship and peace education from diverse perspectives that promote human (and planetary) dignity (Mignolo, 2007). I now turn to the conclusion.

Conclusion

The previous pedagogies bring forth new possibilities for an affective and anti-dominative education in response to the earlier limitations of epistemological pluralism in GCEs and PEs. Postcritical pedagogies here emphasize the affective and aesthetic dimensions of individuals and collectivities learning through being, in harmony with each other (Trifonas, 2003). They extend what it means to be human (and post-human) in the twenty-first century beyond the mind-centric and Western-dominated parameters of criticality/modernity/coloniality (Braidotti, 2019; Misiaszek & Torres, 2019). In turn, the postcritical may allow deeper connections to the body, body-politic and nature for the human, material and non-human to speak possibility together. In the end, these human and nature entanglements present new possibilities for a postcritical GCEs and PEs to assess and respond to contemporary challenges. By decentering ourselves – the individual, mind, nation, and species – and erasing the arbitrary lines of division, postcritical GCEs and PEs might more wholly embody global peace and citizenship and build the social relations that are necessary to support cultures of peace. In sum, this postcritical approach offers new ways of teaching and learning through being (together) for a truly global GCEs and PEs that transcend the limits of dominant liberal, rational, and Western-centric modes of peacebuilding.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2020S1A5A8042338).

Notes on contributors

Kevin Kester

Kevin Kester is Assistant Professor of Comparative International Education and Peace/Development Studies in the Department of Education at Seoul National University, where he directs the Education, Conflict and Peace Lab. His research interests lie in the sociology and politics of education with a focus on comparative international education development; education, conflict, and peacebuilding; and decolonial approaches to research and teaching. His work has been published in journals, such as Globalisation, Societies and Education; Teaching in Higher Education; Studies in Philosophy and Education; Journal of Peace Education; and Educational Philosophy and Theory, and in many edited books. His other publications include: The United Nations and Higher Education: Peacebuilding, Social Justice and Global Cooperation for the 21st Century (IAP, 2020) and Lesson Plans for Building Earth Democracy (with Vandana Shiva, Navdanya Press, 2007).

Notes

1 I write GCEs and PEs to indicate the multiplicity of the fields. There are many forms of GCEs and PEs including those that emphasize critiques of capitalism and neoliberalism (Schultz, 2007; Yemini, 2021), postcolonial criticism and decolonial action (Abdi, 2018; Kester et al., 2019), and planetary sustainability (Gadotti, 2008; Misiaszek & Misiaszek, 2016). I write more about these various forms throughout the paper.

2 Yet I acknowledge from the outset the limits of this onto-epistemological approach, which itself is grounded in Western discourse even while aiming to undo the dominance of Western thinking (Todd, 2016). Thus, there is a certain – perhaps unavoidable – circularity to this work (Stein, 2021) that I will reflexively grapple with throughout the text.

3 I am only briefly summarizing Santos’s concepts here as they relate to the analysis in this paper; this is notably a simplified explanation due to word limits.

4 To be sure, there are many Freirean scholars who acknowledge these critiques and limits of Freirean critical pedagogy, and who seek to move beyond them (Darder, 2015; McLaren, 1999; Misiaszek & Torres, 2019). For example, Schugurensky (1998) points out that Freire’s work took on many different ‘modifications and even contradictions’ across his lifetime, that while his earlier work is grounded in ‘progressive education, Marxism and liberation theology’ his later writings draw on the ‘contributions of post-colonial theory, feminism, critical race theory, and post-modernism’ (pp. 17-18).

5 Here, Morrow and Torres (2019) explain that such reflection informs a process of reinvention, where scholar-practitioners alter their methods in light of changing contextual (e.g., cultural, political and economic) conditions.