Browsing by Author "Carstens, Delphi"

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    The Anthropocene crisis and higher education: A fundamental shift
    (South African Association for Research and Development in Higher Education (SAARDHE), 2016) Carstens, Delphi
    This article seeks to address a fundamental shift that has occurred in reality; a displacement that requires us to critically account for the ways in which knowledge is both being produced and taught at universities. The recent re-naming of the current geological epoch after anthropos has some chilling implications for humans and the ecosystems on which their livelihoods depend. As pedagogues, the crisis of the Anthropocene demands that we make drastic interventions in the way we teach and in what we teach. My aim is to suggest ways in which Deleuzoguattarian schizoanalysis, intersecting as it does with critical posthumanism, the affective turn and the new materialisms, might assist us in this process of crafting socially and environmentally-just pedagogies that are relevant to the contemporary situation. In so doing, I will address some of the uncanny ethical, ontological, epistemological and affective configurations of these theoretical perspectives to show how these ideas may impact the curriculum of socially/environmentally just pedagogies and the practice of such pedagogies in higher education.
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    “A kind of symphony”: new nature in Jeff VanderMeer’s southern reach trilogy
    (University of the Western Cape, 2022) Reiners, Rustin; Carstens, Delphi
    The Anthropocene is the proposed name for a new geological epoch that has come about due to significant human changes to climate and environment. In response to the Anthropocene crisis, this thesis proposes a re-evaluation of the agency of non-human interlocuters – ultimately questioning the place of humans in the natural world. This viewpoint is explored through an examination of the New Weird, a literary genre that blends elements of transgressive horror and speculative fiction, often with an environmental lens. A close reading of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy reveals an attempt to challenge the conventional boundaries between human and non-human, which is predominantly achieved through an invocation of the ecological uncanny – a blurring of ontological, epistemological, and ethical boundary lines between humans and the environment. The Southern Reach novels present an environment where the fixed laws of nature proposed by reductive science begin to unravel. Therefore, VanderMeer – through elements of the genre of contemporary fantasy and science fiction known as the New Weird – casts doubt on the separation of humans and nature. The critique of the human/nature binary is something that is explored extensively by continental philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, as well as feminist scholars like Stacy Alaimo, Rosi Braidotti, Donna J. Haraway, and Elizabeth A. Povinelli, who can all broadly be termed as ‘new materialist’ thinkers – owing to their insistence on cultivating new modes of thinking about human and non-human relations. It is through the combination of various new materialist theories and New Weird fiction that I am able to formulate an argument for a less anthropocentric reading of the Anthropocene; an interpretation that draws no distinction between nature and the human, and which allows for different forms of existence that exceed the human.
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    A schizoanalytical praxis for social justice education
    (University of Johannesburg and UNISA Press, 2017) Carstens, Delphi
    This paper uses Deleuzoguattarian schizoanalysis to interrogate concepts of social justice in relation to the crisis of neo-liberal capitalism by referring to the work of the Situationist International movement, the posthuman philosophy of Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari as well as Afrofuturism. Providing an array of new theoretical responses as well as pedagogical models that directly engage with social justice issues, Deleuze and Guattari offer an immanent model for a politics and pedagogy that is primarily concerned with becoming. I argue that finding new ways of dealing with the notion of change, or in terms of Deleuzoguattarian philosophy, becoming, is critical to making sense of contemporary concerns around issues of decolonisation as well as the move toward progressive transformation in education. This paper argues, furthermore, that addressing issues of social justice requires a type of shizoanalytical approach that is future-orientated and aligned with posthuman and not postmodern concerns. A schizoanalytical approach, as I will argue, intersects not only with critical posthumanism, but also with the new materialist and affective turns in current scholarship, drawing together varied environmental, political, and social concerns that pertain to the practice and scholarship of contemporary pedagogy in South Africa and elsewhere.