Fifteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

Climate change is arguably one of the greatest challenges currently threatening the global community, global ecosystems, and the planet as a whole. Yet, nobody panics. What is it, I wonder, that might compel people to act? And how do we teach transgressive agency development? “Think we must. We must think,” writes Donna Haraway in “Staying with the Trouble” (34). In my own courses, I seek to expand on this exhortation: “Think we must. We must think. Act we must also. We must act,” is my precept. In my exploration of what an activist classroom might look like, I look not only towards Donna Haraway but also to Jane Bennett who pursues answers to the question of what might “augment the motivational energy needed to move selves from the endorsement of ethical principles to the actual practice of ethical behaviors” (Bennett xi) and to Heila Lotz-Sisitka who posits that we need to provide to students an opportunity “to transgress the boundaries between inner and outer worlds in the human being, as a means of transformation and transgressive agency development” (Lotz-Sisitka 76).