Reading The Lorax, orienting in potentiality

Abstract

The Lorax by Theodor Seuss Geisel (1971) is a popular children’s book with a strong environmental message. Previous scholarship on The Lorax has focused on questions about the message and the process of its transmission from the Once‐ler to the child. In contrast, in this study I inquire into the activity of transmission itself. Guided by the work of Agamben and Foucault, I analyze The Lorax and the activity of transmission as matters of human potentiality. I first present an analysis of the logic and function of potentiality itself. Then, with The Lorax as an example, I expose and critique the activity of transmission as one orientation in potentiality. I also indicate ways in which environmental education theory and practice maintains itself in this orientation. Beyond this, I show how The Lorax indirectly presents another orientation which offers a different way of conceiving the child, reading and critique.

Keywords:

• transmission
• pedagogy
• crisis
• community
• child
• potentiality
• Agamben
• Foucault
• The Lorax
• environmental education

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Tom Popkewitz, Laura Hewitt, Svetlana Karpe, Bob Ray and the reviewers for their feedback and suggestions.