Democracy and planetary politics: Achille Mbembe and futures of digital citizenship education for life

ABSTRACT

Building on critical, performative, and emancipatory visions for digital citizenship education, this paper analyzes social media within systems of global capitalism in a time of climate crisis, which not only introduce opaquely complex agencies but shape relations on a planetary scale. To reconceptualize digital citizenship education in a computational age, with consideration for just relations and the future health of the planet, this paper draws on the work of African philosopher Achille Mbembe, who articulates how plasticity among human and non-human agencies is being used within capitalist systems to take power over the living – a power that is shaped by colonial hierarchies. In place of individualism, Mbembe’s philosophy emphasizes the need for collective action to repair harms and work across differences towards protection and sharing of what we have in-common. Connecting his thinking to digital citizenship, there is potential for education to support decolonial disenclosure of social media’s capitalist capture and engage in deep historical learning towards the replacement of exclusionary, necropolitical forces with care and communing in support of life. This paper offers possibilities and provocations for digital citizenship education, inviting readers to respond in their own contexts in ways that consider our planetary relations.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital citizenship education
• digital citizenship
• Achille Mbembe
• digital activism
• decoloniality
• democracy
• futures

Acknowledgement

Acknowledgments Many thanks to Dr. Lynette Shultz for introducing me to the work of Achille Mbembe and for the many conversations about democracy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [752-2018-1363].

Notes on contributors

Carrie Karsgaard

Carrie Karsgaard is an Assistant Professor in the Education Department at Cape Breton University, teaching in the area of Sustainability, Creativity, and Innovation. A thread throughout her research and practice involves the links between social, environmental, and epistemic justice. With an interest in the contributions and knowledges of those often excluded from formal education spaces, one aspect of her research draws on social media to tap into public dialogue and activism, with the purposes of informing formal education. Her recent book, Instagram as Public Pedagogy: Online Activism and the Trans Mountain Pipeline, uses digital methods to explore the educative force of social media in anti-pipeline activism.