Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T04:07:51.740Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Entanglements of matter and meaning: The importance of the philosophy of Karen Barad for environmental education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2020

Shae L. Brown Open the ORCID record for Shae L. Brown [Opens in a new window] ,
Lisa Siegel Open the ORCID record for Lisa Siegel [Opens in a new window]  and
Simone M. Blom Open the ORCID record for Simone M. Blom [Opens in a new window]
Shae L. Brown*
Affiliation:
School of Education, Southern Cross University, Lismore, New South Wales, Australia
Lisa Siegel
Affiliation:
School of Education, Southern Cross University, Lismore, New South Wales, Australia
Simone M. Blom
Affiliation:
School of Education, Southern Cross University, Lismore, New South Wales, Australia
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The rich and innovative ideas of quantum physicist and feminist theorist Karen Barad have much to offer environmental educators in terms of practical theories for teaching and learning. This article shares insights gained from a facilitated conversation at the Australian Association for Environmental Education (AAEE) Conference Research Symposium, and offers an introduction to Barad’s theories for environmental educators. At this time of challenging planetary imperatives, environmental education is increasingly called upon to contribute to students’ understanding of connectedness, and Barad’s theory of agential realism provides a way to think about, articulate and engage with connectedness as inherent within the world rather than something we need to create. By considering entanglement as a fundamental state, we understand that separateness is not the original state of being. This shift in perspective supports a subtle yet powerful approach to knowledge, communication and collaboration, understanding difference as integral within the world’s entangled becoming. The convened conversation sought to explore Barad’s thinking by defining and discussing the concepts of agential realism, intra-action, material-discursivity, phenomena and diffraction. Barad’s ideas were used to collectively explore what it means to be intraconnected and entangled in today’s world, and specifically how these concepts and experiences relate to our work and lives as environmental educators and researchers.

Keywords

Karen Baradenvironmental educationenvironmental education researchagential realismdiffractionintra-actionphenomena
Type
Article
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 36 , Special Issue 3: Making connections: Creating relationships with nonhuman nature, place and community , November 2020 , pp. 219 - 233
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). (n.d.-a) Cross-curriculum priorities. https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/cross-curriculum-priorities/Google Scholar
Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). (n.d.-b) Science. https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/science/Google Scholar
Barad, K. (2001). Re(con)figuring space, time, and matter. In DeKoven, M. (Ed.), Feminist locations: Global and local, theory and practice (pp. 75–109). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Barad, K. (2011). Erasers and erasures: Pinch’s unfortunate ‘uncertainty principle’. Social Studies of Science, 41, 443–454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barad, K. (2014). Diffracting diffraction: Cutting together-apart. Parallax, 20, 168–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barad, K., & Kleinman, A. (2012). Intra-actions. Mousse, 34, 76–81.Google Scholar
Barad, K. (2017). No small matter: Mushroom clouds, ecologies of nothingness, and strange topologies of spacetimemattering. Arts of living on a damaged planet: Ghosts and monsters of the Anthropocene, G103–120.Google Scholar
Crutzen, P.J., & Stoermer, E.F. (2000). The ‘Anthropocene’. Global Change Newsletter, 41, 17.Google Scholar
Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, A., Malone, K., & Barratt Hacking, E. (Eds.). (2018). Research handbook on childhoodnature: Assemblages of childhood and nature research. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gough, A., & Whitehouse, H. (2003). The ‘nature’ of environmental education research from a feminist poststructuralist viewpoint. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 8, 31–43.Google Scholar
Haraway, D.J. (1985). A manifesto for cyborgs: Science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s. Socialist Review, 15, 65–107.Google Scholar
Haraway, D.J. (1992). The promises of monsters: A regenerative politics for inappropriate/d others. In Grossberg, L., Nelson, C., & Treichler, P.A. (Eds.), Cultural studies (pp. 295–337). New York, NY: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar
Haraway, D.J. (2003). The companion species manifesto: Dogs, people, and significant otherness (vol. 1). Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press.Google Scholar
Haraway, D.J. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene: Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hart, P. (2018, October) Introductory Address presented to the Research Symposium, Southern Cross University, Gold Coast, Australia.Google Scholar
Martin, B. (2017). Methodology is content: Indigenous approaches to research and knowledge. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 49, 1392–1400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olvitt, L.L. (2017), Education in the Anthropocene: Ethico-moral dimensions and critical realist openings. Journal of Moral Education, 46, p. 396–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wattchow, B., Jeanes, R., Alfrey, L., Brown, T., Cutter-Mackenzie, A., & O’Connor, J. (Eds.). (2013). The socioecological educator: A 21st century renewal of physical, health, environment and outdoor education. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer.Google Scholar