Teaching the Uncanny
A Dark Pedagogy for Climate Disruptions
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21570352 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Chiara Li Mandri (0009-0003-0979-816X, University of Palermo, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 41 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 1082-1097 |
| Publication date | 2025-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Australian Journal of Environmental Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0814-0626 • E-ISSN: 2049-775X |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/aee.2026.10140 |
| OpenAlex | W7128433884 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 20 |
This essay develops the notion of Dark Pedagogy as a framework for responding to climate and ecological disruption. It begins with the claim that climate breakdown exemplifies the metacrisis: a structural condition in which the very knowledge of ecological catastrophe coexists with inaction, denial, or disavowal. Climate disruptions thus reflect not only material devastation but also the erosion of social, political and cognitive frameworks that normally enable collective response. Dark Pedagogy foregrounds the parallel between the metacrisis and the psychological dynamics of disavowal, showing how familiar narratives of progress, harmony and control both obscure ecological realities and perpetuate ineffective responses. Against educational approaches that rely on hope or reassurance, Dark Pedagogy emphasises dwelling with unsettling affects as a means of confronting the uncanny instability of the world, using Giacomo Leopardi’s reflections on nature as an exemplary case. Anguish, in this context, is treated not as a symptom to be overcome but as a critical signal: it reveals the fragility of our assumptions, alerts us to the limitations of familiar frameworks and opens a horizon for education rooted in reflection, ethical engagement and attentiveness to the unpredictable, often hostile realities of the current geological era
Climate change · Cognition · Narrative · Political instability · Politics · Uncanny · Critical and Liberation Pedagogy · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism
Surplus-Enjoyment
Dark Ecology
End of Dissatisfaction?, The
Promises of the Political
Global polycrisis
Experiments with a Dark Pedagogy
Dark Pedagogy
Ecological grief as a mental health response to climate change-related loss
You’d have to be stupid not to see that’
Dark places
Dark pedagogy – speculative realism and environmental and sustainability education
Hope and climate change
Weird Reality, Aesthetics, and Vitality in Education
Enjoying climate change
Ruins of Gaia
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |