Dark Pedagogy: Education, Horror and the Anthropocene (Palgrave Studies in Education and the Environment), by Jonas Andreasen Lysgaard, Stefan Bengtsson and Martin Hauberg-Lund Laugesen, Palgrave Pivot, 2019. Cover image: PjrStudio/Alamy, info: palgrave.com.
Dark pedagogy explores how different perspectives can be incorporated into a darker understanding of environmental and sustainability education. Drawing on the work of the classic horror author H.P. Lovecraft and new materialist insights of speculative realism, the authors link Lovecraft’s ‘tales of the horrible’ to the current spectres of environmental degradation, climate change, and pollution. In doing so, they draw parallels between how humans have always related to the ‘horrible’ things that are scaled beyond our understanding and how education can respond to an era of climate catastrophe in the age of the Anthropocene. A new and darker understanding of environmental and sustainability education is thus developed: using the tripartite reaction pattern of denial, insanity and death to frame the narrative, the book subsequently examines the specific challenges of potentials of developing education and pedagogy for an age of mass extinction. This unflinching book will appeal to students and scholars of dark pedagogies as well as those interested in environment and sustainability education.
Contents: 1. Introduction: Living in Dark Times – Jonas Andreasen Lysgaard, Stefan Bengtsson and Martin Hauberg-Lund Laugesen Part I: The Horror of Education 2. Denial – Jonas Andreasen Lysgaard 3. Insanity – Martin Hauberg-Lund Laugesen 4. Death – Stefan Bengtsson Part II: Towards Dark Pedagogy 5. Dark Pedagogy Between Denial and Insanity – Jonas Andreasen Lysgaard 6. Dark Pedagogy in the Anthropocene – Martin Hauberg-Lund Laugesen 7. A Pedagogy of Vulnerability – Stefan Bengtsson Index