On the limits of the human in the curriculum field

Abstract

Humanism and the concept of the human that informs pedagogical discourse have been increasingly questioned by what has been called “post-human times.” In this paper, we situate Paulo Freire's (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and Nathan Snaza and John Weaver's (2014) Posthumanism and Educational Research within these debates. Both books raise ethical and political questions about the limits of the human. By going beyond a simple opposition between these works, our aim is to map connections and suspensions by which they are paradoxically connected. Our commitment is also related to how a debate on ethics is raised, featuring an interrogation of the human as a theoretical and political category. Between the two books, we bring up the issue of limits, margins, borders and boundaries, but also the instability, fluidity and vulnerability of the human and his/her relationship and dependence of living organisms, including non-human lives. The limits open up to explorations of literal, metaphoric and material relations, and also transmigrations and hybridizations between the human and the non-human. In this sense, we argue that it is necessary to question the centrality of the humanist conception of “man” in education, which Freire defended, but it is also relevant to question the centrality of modern Western cosmology in providing meanings about the human and non-human in curriculum studies.

Keywords:

• Paulo Freire
• humanism
• post-humanism
• non-human
• post-anthropocentrism

Acknowledgments

We thank Elizabeth Macedo for the comments and suggestions on various versions of this essay. We also thank the reviewers and editors of Curriculum Inquiry, whose notes were valuable to the final text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thiago Ranniery Moreira de Oliveira

Thiago Ranniery Moreira de Oliveira is graduated in Biological Sciences with a licentiate's degree from Universidade Federal de Sergipe and a Master’s degree in Education from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. Currently, Thiago is a PhD student in Education at Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro and also a researcher with the Group Curriculum and Difference (Grupo Currículo e Diferença – ProPed/UERJ).

Danielle Bastos Lopes

Danielle Bastos Lopes is graduated in Pedagogy from Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro and a Master’s degree in Social History from the same university. Currently, Danielle is a PhD student in Education at Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro and a research member of the Group Curriculum and Difference (Grupo Currículo e Diferença – ProPed/UERJ).