Abstract
In this paper, I introduce the ideas of Sylvia Wynter, in particular, her concepts of Man and After Man. I argue that the M in STEM is implicated in this discursive assemblage, which traces a lineage back to the political economy of mathematics that emerged during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and which is related to plantation economics and logics of underdevelopment. I provide a description of this logic and attempt to unsettle the privileged position of human beings in thinking of an ethics for Mathematics Education. I propose that the M in STEM be oriented towards a goal of multispecies’ flourishing and an ethics of kinship, which involves structural coupling and partnering with other species. I illustrate some first steps with student curations of their experience of learning to teach mathematics and with my own photographs and experiments in honouring the challenge of this work.
Résumé
Dans cet article, je présente les idées de Sylvia Wynter, en particulier sa conception de « l'Humain » et de « l'après Humain ». Je soutiens que l’élément « M » de STEM est impliqué dans cet assemblage discursif, qui trace une lignée remontant à l'économie politique des mathématiques ayant émergé au cours des XVe et XVIe siècles, liée à l'économie des plantations et à la logique du sous-développement. Je donne une description de cette logique et tente d’ébranler la position privilégiée des êtres humains dans la réflexion sur une éthique de l'enseignement des mathématiques. Je propose que la discipline « M » des « STEM » soit orientée vers un objectif d’épanouissement multi-espèces et vers une éthique de liens de parenté, ce qui implique un couplage structurel et un partenariat avec d’autres espèces. Afin de relever le défi que pose ce travail, j'illustre quelques-unes des premières étapes à suivre, d’une part par le biais des expériences d'apprentissage de l'enseignement des mathématiques des étudiants, et d’autre part au moyen de photographies et de mes expériences personnelles.
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Notes
A wreck is the ornithological term for a large number of washed up seabirds where no immediate cause is obvious.
Some First Nation Elders describe their people’s ongoing relationship with the land as one of intimate and emergent co-identification: ‘We are the land’ (Elder Elmer Ghostkeeper, Elder Stan Peltier), i.e. a being-as/of/in/for/with/because of/from-the-land. This contrasts with settler-colonialist ways of relating to being-on-the-land, the land as ‘gift,’ and, in plantation-colonial logics, the land as ‘resource’ for the capitalist production of goods for a distant consumer market through coerced labour.
For Illich (1973), conviviality is contrasted with industrial productivity and refers to a relationship between tools (in this paper, these are the tools/toys/technologies used for STEM and STEM Education), persons, and collectivity which enables, ‘autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment…[resulting in] individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value. I believe that, in any society, as conviviality is reduced below a certain level, no amount of industrial productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates among society’s members’ (p. 17)
Doolittle’s (2018) answer to this question is ‘We should give thanks.’ This gives birth to his follow-up question of to whom should we give thanks? In the context of the Bridges of Könisberg problem his response is to ‘the source of the river.’ A trip to the river’s source to offer thanks changes both the mathematical result of the original problem and our view of how mathematics might be done with other-than-human beings. In remythologising the story of graph theory’s origin, an opportunity to render the multispecies world as present, agential, and necessary partner to life in mathematics is created that knots back in our responsibilities and relationships of respect and care for our shared life-worlds.
These are ‘M is for Man & After Man’, M is for Multispecies’ Flourishing, After M is N.
There are many contemporaneous examples of these epistemic assemblages (to use another metaphor) in the ‘arguments’ used to justify the environmental, immigration, and educational policies and practices of the Donald Trump Presidency and, for example, in the violation of the Wet’suwet’en nation’s land rights by the Canadian government and STEM companies.
Here, the work of Archer (2017) and colleagues on the morphogenetic/morphostatic (M/M) analytical framework, which includes important concepts such as morphonecrosis, relational steering, and contributive justice, is perhaps useful in providing an explanation of why there is change or not in a complex system at any level.
The reckoning school was the place where the children of merchants learned accounting and basic arithmetic; the grammar school was where members of the future clergy and the governing class would be schooled in the disciplines and statecraft.
Sherrington (2017) also uses the image and metaphor of the plantation as an educational model contrasting it with a rainforest and settling on a potential model of a managed rainforest. His treatment of the plantation model though is superficial and lacks critical historical depth and rigor in this aspect (other aspects are better developed).
Tsing et al. use concepts of ‘modular simplifications’ and ‘feral proliferations’ as tools for noticing landscape structure, both of which are present in plantations.
A geography of domination refers to practices associated European Man’s (in Wynter’s sense) particular continental philosophies enacted through colonial land practices which places the desires of members of one geographic regions’ over the rights of other geographic regions. A domination of geographies refers to the ‘taming’ of wilderness, the leveling and homogenising of geographical space for ‘development’ or ‘resource extraction.’
There are other logics at play in the variety of historical and contemporary manifestations of colonialism. However, the plantation model/logic is one that lies at the heart of many STEM industries.
I do not mean to imply here that capitalism = racism = genocide since each of these phenomena existed independently of each other throughout history. Rather, I am saying, consistent with Wynter and other World Systems theorists, that what emerged in “The Ages of Exploration, ‘discovery’ and Exploitation” was a particularly virulent strain of European State capitalism annealed with religiously infected ethno-nationalist cosmologies, which coupled with an attitude of ecological arrogance (superiority), served to justify enslavement, replacement, displacement, and transmutation of all life (genera) towards the pursuit of individual and national power through increased profit and productivity. In the perspective to be developed below, genocide is not only about the murder of humans by other humans but the murder of life in all its complexity by reducing it though a singularity of sameness to a potential economic unit (or a threat to other economic units).
A disordered generation time refers to a breaking of the evolved life cycles of humans and their partners, usually a speeding up as in bringing plants to bloom and fruit as fast as possible in order to increase market or profit. In work with teachers, time comes up in terms of a recognition that the pace of schooling and education (in many places) is not consonant with a flourishing life for any of the learners, curricula that are interpreted through stage/age-based theories of learning and enacted as such regardless of individual generation time.
In this, I find a connection to multispecies flourishing through Gorski’s (2017) tracing of the etymology of eudaimonia (Aristotle’s usage is foundational to many flourishing frameworks in psychology, humanities, and political-economic theory), ‘Eu’ means ‘good’ and ‘daemon’ means ‘spirit,’ so to be ‘eu-daemon’ literally means to be ‘of good spirit’ (p. 30).
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Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the work of Stéphanie LaFrance, Hang Thi Thuy Tran (graduate research assistants), Carolyn Truong (undergraduate research assistant), Florence Glanfield, Mijung Kim, Marc Higgins, Kerry Rose, Sharla Peltier, Trudy Cardinal, Janice Huber, Lydia Menna (Faculty colleagues), Elder Stan Peltier, and Shalini Khan for their support, wisdom, and kinship.
Funding
This work is made possible by a New Faculty Startup grant, University of Alberta SAS Award, CMASTE Faculty Projects, Open Education Resources Award, Alberta Ministry of Education Grants.
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Khan, S. After the M in STEM: Towards Multispecies’ Flourishing. Can. J. Sci. Math. Techn. Educ. 20, 230–245 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42330-020-00089-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42330-020-00089-4