Abstract
This chapter uses the example of an action by Fridays for Future Denmark in front of the Danish parliament to discuss in which ways human bodies might be involved in the transition from a well-known human-centred way of relating to the world to an unknown anthropocene way. Theoretically the focus is on a reconceptualization of the notion of aesthetic learning processes (ALPs) as this has been employed in Scandinavian discourses of arts and environmental education since the early 1990s. Following object-oriented conceptions of aesthetic experience as attunement, aesthetic learning processes are imagined to unfold at the moment when the FFF activists lie down and their bodies tune to the granite sets of the square. In order to relate these speculative ideas to concrete educational practices, the text offers an educational proposition able to connect the explicit environmental political intentions of the activists with the more implicit political intentions of reconceptualizing ALP for a pedagogy of the Anthropocene. The chapter is divided into three sections: (I) Aesthetic Learning Processes in Scandinavian Education, (II) Aesthetic Learning Processes as Attunement: Lying on the Ground, (III) Proposition for Aesthetic Learning Processes in the Anthropocene.
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Notes
- 1.
All translations from texts in Scandinavian languages are by the author.
- 2.
In the Future of Humanity-survey on the most important issues facing the world, conducted in 2019 by Ipsos MORI on behalf of Amnesty International with 10.000 informants aged 18–25 from 27 countries, 41% respondents selected climate change, followed by pollution (36%) and terrorism (31%). Among environmental issues, global warming ranked highest, at 57%. (Amnesty International, 2019).
- 3.
By Scandinavia, I intend Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
- 4.
Speculative realism is a contemporary philosophical current that aims to think reality in itself, independent of the habitual ‘correlationism’ of most modern philosophical thought (see also Harman, 2018b).
- 5.
It should be noted that Harman (2011, Chap. 8) avoids the binary of withdrawn and sensual object through the construction of his own quadruple object diagram with twelve sets of relations between real and sensuous objects and real and sensuous qualities.
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Illeris, H. (2022). Lying on the Ground: Aesthetic Learning Processes in the Anthropocene. In: Paulsen, M., jagodzinski, j., M. Hawke, S. (eds) Pedagogy in the Anthropocene . Palgrave Studies in Educational Futures. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90980-2_9
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