weird pedagogy
// ongoing pedagogical experiments //
Weird pedagogy is an experimental (albeit always insufficient) pedagogical anti-model, a fabulated programme for the unprogrammable that seeks to problematize, and ultimately counter-actualize, potentials of and for pedagogy at the (so-called) end of the world.
This strange non-pedagogical project emerged from my PhD research and is further developed in the book titled Pedagogy at the End of the World: Weird Pedagogies for Unthought Educational Futures (Palgrave MacMIllan, 2023), both of which investigate the “end of the world” scenarios that now characterize education and its reasons in Anthropocene times. By interrogating the apocalypse habits and anthropo-scenic views through which educational futurity is most often imagined today, these projects are oriented toward the creation of pedagogical concepts that work to problematize and resituate questions of educational futurity in relation to the planetary realities raised by today’s pressing extinction events. This creative task unfolds through a series of speculative studies of educational futurity, each of which is positioned as an experimental site for probing the limits of pedagogical unthinkability so as to speculate, through concept creation, on alternative orientations to educational futurity. Specifically, the trajectories of educational futurity explored are linked to the problems of sustainable futures, energy futures and working futures. Importantly, each of these speculative studies endeavours to move beyond just analysis and critique of the epistemic constraints and conceptual affordances that have come to condition pedagogical possibility. By putting (apparent) educational givens in contact with a range of seemingly alien objects, transversal theories and strange examples (i.e. the computational imaging of a black hole, the derivative recalibrations of speculative finance and the strange programming of reality TV) the speculative experiments that make up this work reframe and reorient both the educational problems and solutions raised by today’s “end times” scenario. It is from this experimentation that a weird pedagogy emerges, that is, an experimental (albeit always insufficient) pedagogical anti-model, a speculative programme for the unprogrammable that seeks to problematize, and ultimately counter-actualize, potentials of and for Pedagogy at the End of the World.
NOW AVAILABLE! PEDAGOGY AT THE END OF THE WORD: WEIRD PEDAGOGIES FOR UNTHOUGHT EDUCATIONAL FUTURES >>>
"Nothing might seem more worthy than a pedagogy that saves the world. Nothing might seem more impossible than a pedagogy in end times. Beier’s Weird Pedagogy challenges the assumptions of futurity embedded in the philosophy and practice of education in order to forge a pedagogy that embraces the challenges of twenty-first century disruptions. Rather than simply coping with end times, Weird Pedagogy creates a new theory of time and education. Beier’s timely and stimulating book is essential reading for those working in philosophy of education, and in Extinction/Anthropocene studies." (Claire Colebrook, Professor of English, Philosophy, and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Pennsylvania State University, US, and author of The Death of the Posthuman: Essays on Extinction, Vol. 1 and Sex After Life: Essays on Extinction, Vol. 2 (Open Humanities Press 2014))
"If educational theory and philosophy had its own ‘X-Files’, it might look something akin to Beier’s reorientation of education to the weird. In this remarkable book, Beier accomplishes the difficult task of subtracting educational thought from its normative foundations, revealing in turn much stranger conditions for thinking and doing education. An important book and singular contribution to educational thought." (Jason Wallin, Professor of Media and Youth Culture in Curriculum, University of Alberta, Canada, and author of A Deleuzian Approach to Curriculum: Essays on a Pedagogical Life (Palgrave Macmillan 2010))
"Beier’s radical new mapping of pedagogy both deconstructs the powers and pleasures of pedagogy, while creating strange and optimistic futures for how we think and teach the world that can be implemented now as acts of activism and imagination. Beier takes critical ecological and ethical issues to show the urgency of the role of pedagogy in undoing anthropocentric dominance." (Patricia MacCormack, Professor of Continental Philosophy, Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge, UK, and author of The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene (Bloomsbury 2020))
