New Abstract / Mattering pedagogy in precarious times of (un)learning

This paper considers how feminist new materialist thinking may offer a resource for re-orienting pedagogy in light of pressing global issues such as climate change and political unrest. The paper applies feminist new materialist thinking to develop a new pedagogical agenda. I argue that pedagogies are always already normative or are engaged in practices that play a role in opening up to various and un-usual ways of relating and being in and to the world. Pedagogy is a worlding practice as it facilitates diverse ways of relating, thinking, sensing, acting, and is thus involved in the shaping of a ‘collective intelligence’. In this paper, I argue that one fruitful approach to pedagogy may be to focus on entanglements and affects and on finding ways of facilitating a ‘sensing’ living/being of such entanglements. The paper concludes by introducing affective geology to suggest possible steps towards a transformation of our ways of knowing, sensing, and relating.