Why is a live chicken banned from the kindergarten? Two lessons learned from teaching posthuman pedagogy to university students

The hierarchical human-centric paradigm has been criticized by various movements of posthuman philosophy because this paradigm forgets and dismisses nonhuman beings and entities: animals, nature, objects, and technology. When I developed a course called ‘Education and Adaptations of Animal Studies’ for university students in 2015, I learned two lessons in practice. First, many humans, pedagogues, and academics want to hold on to their anthropocentric worldview that separates them from other species. Second, in pedagogical practices humans prefer to avoid confronting the violence they do toward animals. In this article, I reflect on these two lessons learned and consider what they tell us about the dichotomies, anthropocentrism, and speciesism visible in pedagogical practices. I also discuss how posthuman pedagogy and posthuman ethics can help us ask uneasy questions that fracture the uncertain conception of human superiority.     

人类增强视角下从“Human”到“Transhuman”的标志探析

“Transhumanism”是一种思考人类未来的运动,它假定了当前人类只是其发展过程中的较早阶段而非终点,并倡导使用理性,特别是使用以现代科学技术为基础的人类增强来改善人类的生物体,从而步入Transhuman甚至后人类(posthuman)社会。通过人类增强增加Human的属性使其成为Transhuman预示着从Human到Transhuman的一个标志:“基于现代科学技术的干预永久地增加了人类的某种内在属性,并且超出了人类物种在未接受任何增强干预下的最高水平”,而增强干预在增加一些人类属性的同时也在减少另一些属性则预示着从Human到Transhuman的另一标志:“基于现代科学技术的增强干预永久地减损甚至彻底摧毁了人类之生物性、生活的真实性、个体的同一性及其生命的意义和价值之中的任意一个”。这两个标志可独立使用,它们有助于推进Transhumanism的倡导者与反对者的公开对话。     

Capitalism’s New Handmaiden: the Biotechnical World Negotiated Through Children’s Fiction

In an era when the merger between capitalism and science becomes an accepted norm, new questions need to be asked about the ethical implications of scientific practices. One such practice is organ transplantation. However, potent debates surround the just distribution and ethical implications of organ transplantation. This paper examines the ways in which children are socialised through children’s literature to accept or challenge the dominant ideologies underpinning organ transplantation. It argues that how subjectivity is constructed informs understandings of agency, and this in turn can deliver new approaches to concerns about scientific practices. This paper draws from a conference paper delivered at the Australasian Children’s Literature Association for Research (ACLAR), Wellington, NZ, 2008. Naarah Sawers is an Alfred Deakin post doctoral researcher for Professor Clare Bradford in the school of communications and creative arts at Deakin University, Australia. Her research areas focus on representations of bioethics in fictional and filmic texts for children, and environmental ethics and agendas in computer games for children.