Reconsidering death education in/for the anthropocene from a posthumanist approach.

Abstract

This article explores the pedagogical contours of death education through a critical posthuman lens and Queer Death Studies. It questions the potential of death education as a key resource for addressing current and announced ecological crises, part of current efforts to engage creatively and critically with educational alternatives that address the urgent needs of a warming planet in an era of rapid, uneven transformation. Through its theoretical orientation, emphasizing interconnectedness and the refusal of western dualisms, this article examines three features of a posthuman death education: transdisciplinarity, ethico-political dimensions and material relationalities. In offering some pedagogical avenues, its underlying aim is to fill a gap in the literature, namely a rapprochement between death education and the socioecological issues arising from the Anthropocene/Necrocene nexus. As a first step in this direction, it attempts to open the way for reflection on broader understandings of death for an education oriented toward multispecies justice.