weird pedagogy
// ongoing pedagogical experiments //
Weird pedagogy is an experimental (albeit always insufficient) pedagogical anti-model, a fabulated programme for the unprogrammable that seeks to problematize, and ultimately counter-actualize, potentials of and for pedagogy at the (so-called) end of the world.
This strange non-pedagogical project emerged from my PhD research and is further developed in the forthcoming book titled Pedagogy at the End of the World: Weird Pedagogies for Unthought Educational Futures (Palgrave MacMIllan, 2023), both of which investigate the “end of the world” scenarios that now characterize education and its reasons in Anthropocene times. By interrogating the apocalypse habits and anthropo-scenic views through which educational futurity is most often imagined today, these projects are oriented toward the creation of pedagogical concepts that work to problematize and resituate questions of educational futurity in relation to the planetary realities raised by today’s pressing extinction events. This creative task unfolds through a series of speculative studies of educational futurity, each of which is positioned as an experimental site for probing the limits of pedagogical unthinkability so as to speculate, through concept creation, on alternative orientations to educational futurity. Specifically, the trajectories of educational futurity explored are linked to the problems of sustainable futures, energy futures and working futures. Importantly, each of these speculative studies endeavours to move beyond just analysis and critique of the epistemic constraints and conceptual affordances that have come to condition pedagogical possibility. By putting (apparent) educational givens in contact with a range of seemingly alien objects, transversal theories and strange examples (i.e. the computational imaging of a black hole, the derivative recalibrations of speculative finance and the strange programming of reality TV) the speculative experiments that make up this work reframe and reorient both the educational problems and solutions raised by today’s “end times” scenario. It is from this experimentation that a weird pedagogy emerges, that is, an experimental (albeit always insufficient) pedagogical anti-model, a speculative programme for the unprogrammable that seeks to problematize, and ultimately counter-actualize, potentials of and for Pedagogy at the End of the World.
BOOK PROJECT - COMING SOON! >>>
CSLP SPEAKER SERIES TALK - JESSIE BEIER on WEIRD PEDAGOGIES FOR THE “END TIMES” >>
