Jan Jagodzinski

This chapter is written in specific sections, each section having its own question and search for its temporary closure. The flow of these segments are more staccato-like, each separated by ***. The chapter reviews the many issues that form the backdrop of colonialism, Indigeneity, and current politics. I review some aspects of indigenous education in a preliminary way that becomes more developed in the following chapters. I also review the difficult question of ‘primitivism’ and the impossibility of a ‘post’ in colonialism. I have a close look at issues that surround Indigeneity in relation to appreciation and appropriation where identity politics comes to matter.

This chapter addresses the more esoteric attempts of pedagogy in the post-Anthropocene. Issues of magick, shamanism, witchcraft, and animism (once more) are examined. The concept of aisthesis comes up within the concept of Deleuze and Guattari’s theorizations on affect and the inhuman. These are aspects that relate to the Outside by way of cosmology and metaphysics. Another aspect of Indigeneity is introduced by way of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in relation to the way language ‘carries’ a culture’s unconscious and conscious embodiments. The last section looks at the idea of toxicity in the context of Indigeneity.

This chapter introduces contemporary clairvoyant societies and the dominance of algorithmic governmentality. I discuss the contradictory theories of both Stiegler and Bataille regarding tool use and sapienization. The theories of Simondon are also addressed along with Deleuze and Guattari’s machinic vision. This is followed by looking back at grammatological pedagogy and the place of affect in Lacan’s pedagogy, ending with a section called posthuman tensions that raise issues regarding digitalization.

In this chapter I review technology in education such as the smart classroom. I review the technological innovations in education including gaming and learning management systems, and the like. I also review connectivism in education and the role of algorithms in education that have become prevalent. I end with opening up a long conversation on postphenomenology in education as related to technological usage. There is an extended discussion on the designed interfaces (human to machine) when it comes to technology and education. Included in this chapter is the idea of the lure of technology as part of its animist attraction. What would an adequate pedagogy for twenty-first-century technology be like? What are its design potentials? There is a closing speculation.

This chapter reviews Bernard Stiegler’s concept of the Neganthropocene and his pharmacological approach. I look at some of the reviews of this concept and raise what educators have said in relation to Stiegler’s scathing critique of social media. I especially do a close reading of anti-entropy, negentropy, and anti-antropy. I discuss the difficulties of this approach for education and return to cosmotechnics. I end with a coda regarding his claims of psychic apparatus, noesis, noopolitics, noosphere, nootropic, and nootechnics.

This chapter continues to question the Neganthropocene. It specifically revisits issues regarding the entropy of a system. Bataille’s ‘accursed share’ is called on to show alternative ways of thinking about the economy. I review a number of socio-philosophers who are engaged in rethinking the post-Anthropocene along economic lines, especially re-evaluating bio-based economy (BBE). The energy expenditure of the technosphere is raised. I end the chapter by questioning to what extent Heidegger’s philosophical framing is still useful for the post-Anthropocene.

In this closing section (Chaps. 13 and 14) I reiterate yet another version of my own attempt to imagine an ‘adequate’ education-pedagogy for the post-Anthropocene, but once more very obliquely. I have worked through previous attempts as to what I call a ‘pedagogy of in|difference’ and this is yet another attempt to make education’s apparition appear, or at the very least to point to its possible appearance. The central concern, as a first generalization, in this remaining section is the concept of anorganic life that Deleuze and Guattari evoke but do not fully articulate. I take this concept to be cosmological in its scope, addressing the forces of the Earth that we engage with at quantum levels with the proviso that the planet is indifferent to our existence. I articulate the polysemous meaning of an immanent in|different pedagogy to address the post-Anthropocene problematic through its two superimposed paradoxical terms: difference and indifference along Deleuze and Guattarian lines.

This chapter supports Mark B.N. Hansen’s thesis developed in Feed-Forward regarding twenty-first-century media. It is suggested that it is an adequate response for a cosmotechnology for the post-Anthropocene. I develop a possible example to illustrate what this may be. This theory is embellished by excursions into Deleuze and Guattari’s position regarding the Outside; I develop my own thoughts on technology referred to Lassen and Macht technologies that are in tension with one another. Limitations of data are raised including Gregory Chaitin’s Omega principle. What may be possible subversions are discussed. Lastly, Parisi’s critical computation and ‘blind optics’ of machinic vision are introduced.

This final chapter is the second part of my proposal for a pedagogy of in|difference. I start with a second generalization (building on the first generalization in the previous chapter) that addresses the limitation imposed by quantum realism, that is, the impossibility for a complete ontological, epistemological, and rational understanding of the world-for-itself, the cosmic forces of nature. The animism of uncontrollable life requires the acceptance of creative destruction. Posthumanist animacy is addressed in this sense, and I return to anorganic life and its consequences for education. The world-for-itself becomes the ethico-onto-epistemological problematic addressed by Deleuze and Guattari. I review all the nuances of in|difference in complex system and return to some of the issues raised previously regarding quantum theory. Of interest also are both Nietzsche and Schelling on Nature, which are reviewed and related to pedagogy. I distinguish between a ‘virtual Real’ (zoë, Deleuze’s ‘dark precursor,’ A Life) and the ‘radical Real’ of in|difference (pure immanence). The shift is then to problematize non|life and passive vitalism, which lead to further problematization of life|death. I end with a section of destructive creativity subtitled ‘how the earth “thinks.”’ This leads to a paideia of in|difference.

This chapter continues exploration into quantum theory. I start with Whitehead’s view of quantum and relate it to Hameroff and Penrose’s orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR) theory. The next section revisits Barad’s agential realism in more detail than the previous chapter. I especially introduce other quantum theories that challenge or displace this view. I especially go into the historical debates between Bohr and Heisenberg as Heisenberg is dismissed by Barad. This leads me to question the methodology of diffraction that has become popular. Next, I return to Orch OR theory also in more detail, stressing the gravitational consideration Penrose gives to his theory of quantum mind. The turn is made then to the quantum mind as it is considered in mathematics education. I end with the question of neuropedagogy.

This chapter looks at the symptoms of the post-Anthropocene with the speculation that the capitalist system has brought on the onset of a range of neural disorders via the media and the commodification of the social order. I hypothesize that the autistic spectrum is indicative of the cultures that we live in which have been progressively ‘bubblized;’ that is, shrinking in terms of our perspectives toward open diversity. The case of the Hikikomori is presented as a symptom of this trend. There is a side-tracked discussion regarding Žižek and Malabou concerning brain physiology and psychoanalysis: what use is psychoanalysis in brain injury cases? There is a broad discussion on the role of dopamine in brain chemistry and what are the neurological implications concerning addiction in the post-Anthropocene. Sloterdijk’s ‘bubbles’ re-emerge as does the proletarization of contemporary society where the question of the pharmakon comes up once more. The dopamine system as linked with social media within ‘limbic capitalism’ ends in a relentless laboring under conditions of precarity and deficient social support systems. Given this situation, there is a section on learning to live with climate change. There are two further important discussions. The first is about the spectrum of autism, while the second discusses the question of neurodiversity in education. In brief, this chapter frames the symptoms of post-Anthropocene and what this means to education in relation to neurodiversity.

This first chapter of this second section starts with an overview of some of the issues that I developed in the first volume. It then proceeds with a discussion of neurology—neurobiology, neuronormality, and neurodiversity, as these will be related to what is happening in the post-Anthropocene in education and the affects of media on education. This chapter spends its energy discussing brain plasticity as developed by Catherine Malabou, presenting a critique of her position. I shift then to a discussion concerning AI, especially speculative posthumanism. This includes discussions of Laruelle’s ‘transcendental computer’ and the shift that will continue to develop in that direction.

This chapter and the next review the question of what place does quantum thinking play in the post-Anthropocene, as questions of materiality are constantly raised. The quantum is theorized in relation to information, AI, and neurology, all difficult issues without much resolution. The tension is between physics and metaphysics and this is shown throughout this chapter and the next. Quantum realism is raised in relation to Karen Barad’s quantum proposal of agential realism that has been heavily embraced by feminist materialists among others. The question of quantum realism and nonrealism and the idea of the (radical) void are examined. The differences between Barad and Deleuze and Guattari come up. I also review what object-orientated ontology has to say about quantum and end by starting a review of Hameroff and Penrose’s proposal of quantum mind that they call orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR) theory.

As a follow up to Pedagogical Encounters in the Post-Anthropocene, Volume I, this book addresses three major areas in response to the post-Anthropocene: Technology, Neurology, Quantum. Each of these areas is broadly addressed in relation to the concerns that have arisen both theoretically and educationally. As in Volume I, the author terms these to be encounters as each area presents a particular problematic when addressing the phase change that the planet is undergoing where the anthropogenic labour of global humanity is contributing to climate change, endangering our very existence. Technology in education has been a significant development. There is a concerted effort to review this development placing stress on the rise of learning machines and algorithms. In the second encounter the vast literature on neurology is addressed, especially neurodiversity and the various symptoms that have emerged in the post-Anthropocene era. The last section reviews issues related to quantum theory as this is fundamental to tensions between physics and metaphysics. The volume concludes with the author’s own pedagogical proposal for the future.