Queering the environmental provocation
Abstract
Environmental provocations are a common pedagogical strategy for early childhood educators and are often planned for the purpose of contributing to the wider goals of sustainability and environmental education. However, the transformative potential of the environmental provocation is compromised by its grounding in human-centric perspectives of Place. When examined through the lens of queer phenomenology, the orientations of environmental provocations are shown to privilege familiar bodies, ideas, and things. Consequently, the provocation leads to familiar outcomes and reinforces the logic that humans can somehow manipulate and control the environment. With the aim of disrupting this logic, this paper revisits empirical documentation involving young children and a creek in Boorloo (Perth), Western Australia and proposes three queer interventions. The interventions demonstrate how queering the environmental provocation is necessary for noticing and attending to the inherent queerness of Place-child(ren) common worlds. The three practices of queering temporality, risking attachments, and queering language are proposed as speculative interventions for (re)imagining and (re)framing the environmental provocation in ways that (re)situate children within the common worlds they share with all kinds of queer kin.
Document Type
Journal Article
School
Centre for People, Place and Planet / School of Education
RAS ID
76638
Copyright
subscription content
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Identifier
Karen Nociti: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6846-611X
Comments
Nociti, K. (2024). Queering the environmental provocation. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2024.2443932