Existential Educational Experimentation in a Climate Changing World

Philosophy of Education Society Annual Conference, 2025
Call for Papers for the Phenomenology and Existentialism SIG Panel

Existential Educational Experimentation in a Climate Changing World

“A harmonious future,” Simone de Beauvoir (1962) once wrote, “is only an uncertain dream” (p. 129). Beauvoir’s words, penned in the wake of World War II, sting with an uncanny precision in the twenty-first century. Today, hope for a harmonious future feels at best textured by naïveté and at worst lost to the ideological promises of capitalism. But Beauvoir’s words aim at the “fundamental ambiguity of the human condition” (p. 128), all the more present in a climate changing world. Proliferating anthropogenic climate crises present clear existential threats. These threats are diverse and multiple, defying universal presentation and meaning. We ask: what does it mean to be educators in a world of constantly changing climates? Can educational experimentation grapple with radically undetermined futures and ongoing existential threats? And what, precisely, might such experimentation entail?

Phenomenology and existentialism are intertwined with experimentation, as both entail experiments in and about lived experience. Phenomenologists and existentialists have challenged the ways of engaging philosophy, pushing the creative boundaries of philosophical research by experimenting with literature, theater, poetry, performance art, and more. The diversity of phenomenological and existential projects engaging in experimental practices offers new ways of approaching and thinking about pedagogy.

Climate crises might evoke anxiety, futility, bad faith, or despair, as the potential uninhabitability of the earth appears increasingly inevitable and determined. But this position is fatalistic. Relying on probabilistic logic, climate fatalism ignores or denies the fundamental ambiguity of the human condition. Bearing radical indeterminacy in mind, what can educational experimentation offer in the face of anxiety, despair, fatalism, and nihilism? How does fatalism function politically, educationally, or otherwise?

Thinking with Beauvoir, the future is not determined. An uninhabitable earth is not inevitable. We invite contributions grappling with the ambiguity of human existence in a climate changing world. We engage a broad conception of climate that might include discussions of climate change, socio-political climates, educational climates, climates of denialism, or something else. We encourage radical interdisciplinary entanglements with existential and phenomenological experimentations as they pertain to various climate crises. We welcome proposals for experiments engaging traditional existential and phenomenological thinkers, as well as contemporary thinkers writing in the wake of traditional thinkers and concepts, especially queer, feminist, and critical theorists, eco-deconstruction and eco-phenomenology.

We encourage authors to consider the following key themes and topics:

• Climate education / educational climates

• Ecological pedagogies

• Political ecologies

• Temporal climates

• Denialism and difficult knowledges

• Hope, futility, despair, and nihilism

• Inheritance, pedagogy, and future generations

• Risk, vulnerability, and resilience

• Climate anxiety

• Subjectivity and selfhood

• Climates of power / powerful climates

  We will also consider submissions beyond these themes, insofar as they explicitly deal with experimentation, educational research, and climate from existential and/or phenomenological perspectives.

  The Phenomenology and Existentialism SIG at the Philosophy of Education Society is seeking 250–500-word abstracts from scholars whose interests broadly fit with these questions, and who are excited about the opportunity to experiment with their ideas in a collaborative manner. Authors should submit works in which they will demonstrate an experimental pedagogical practice. These abstracts will form a panel that will then be submitted to the PES program committee for consideration at next year’s conference, which will take place from March 6 - 10, 2025 in Baltimore, Maryland.

  Once the abstracts are selected, participants will work closely with the SIG committee to think about how they might enact these ideas in a practice-oriented workshop session delivered at the PES Annual Conference.

  The deadline for abstracts is Wednesday, September 4th, 2024. Please send these to: [email protected] with “CFP” in the subject line.

  Questions can be directed to the chair of the PES Phenomenology and Existentialism SIG: [email protected].

  Further information about the conference can be found here.

  Using a blind peer review process, the PES Phenomenology and Existentialism SIG will evaluate submissions based on (1) standard measures of academic quality, (2) considerations of topicality,

(3) the extent to which they lend themselves to some collective experimentation or enactment and (4) their fit with the themes of the conference and the SIG.

Notification of the committee’s decision will be sent out by September 27th. Participants will then meet with the SIG panel in October, 2024 (exact dates TBD) who will work with them to formulate a cohesive panel proposal and to develop the experimental aspects of the submissions. This will then be submitted to PES for final review by the PES program committee by November 1st, 2024, for consideration for PES 2025.