Pedagogies of Shadowy Relations
Pedagogies of shadowy relations think with Plumwood’s (2008) notion of shadow places, those often hidden away places of economic and ecological support, “all those places that produce or are affected by the commodities [we] consume…the places that take our pollution and dangerous waste, exhaust their fertility or destroy Indigenous or nonhuman populations…”, (pp. 146-147). Shadow places are often disassociated from our everyday dwellings—those of attachment, the places we care and assume responsibility for—they are the places that uphold our nice clean ways of living while disregarding agency and relations of earthly others.
A sewage “stink” infiltrates the forest. Odours intensify as chainsaws sever, backhoes excavate, concrete is poured, and tanks are put into place. Faces scrinch, noses get pinched, and screams of “let’s get out of here, it’s disgusting” fill the air. But this is not something we can run from, a 5,000m3 concrete attenuation tank is being installed in the forest to stop our wastewater from overflowing along the coastline during heavy rains (CRD, n.d.). Construction of the tanks combined with the olfactory encounter of our own waste calls on us to dwell in this shadow place, to attune to the complex shadowy relations we bring to our everyday human and more-than-human entanglements. We are summoned to confront the very uneven effects of our consumption, commodification, urban sprawl, and pollution through the smells of expelled human waste, food scraps, and chemicals from homes and industries. We are reminded we are settlers on unceded Lekwungen territories, uninvited guests on Chekonein Family Lands, and implicated in the dispossession of this Land.
These pedagogies disrupt romantic notions of children in nature and unsettle nature/culture divides while reminding us we are part of an interconnected ecosystem (Taylor, 2013, Common Worlds Research Collective, 2020). They reveal we are not innocent, but implicated and deeply enmeshed in the destruction, marginalization, and degradation of those human and more-than-human inhabiting shadow places through our habitual capitalist production and consumptive ways of living. These pedagogies expose injustice while inviting us into the grimy process of learning with, to take seriously how we might become accountable to entanglements of shadowy relations found within everyday place encounters, inevitably connecting us to shadow places, and drawing attention to interdependent ecologies. Such pedagogies demand cultivation of “… a multiple place consciousness” (Plumwood, 2008, p. 147) grounded in an ethics of care, knowledge, and responsibility beyond the places we dwell. Pedagogies of shadowy relations ask that we disrupt singular notions of place that exist for our benefit and instead demand attunement to what may not be readily seen, often goes unnoticed or sits along the edge of our everyday place encounters. These pedagogies of shadowy relations require a collective and active engagement with place that foregrounds injustice resulting from our living well, while cultivating care(full), generative, and responsive approaches to those interconnected and multiple place relations hidden away, suppressed or perhaps wafting through the air.
Sherri-Lynn Yazbeck
References
Capital Regional District. (n.d.). Arbutus attenuation tank. Wastewater treatment project. https://www.crd.bc.ca/project/capital-projects/arbutus-attenuation-tank
Common World Research Collective. (2020a). Learning to become with the world: Education for Future Survival. Paper commissioned for the, UNESCO Futures of Education report (forthcoming, 2021). https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374032?fbclid=IwAR0YU-sJserzEoHPvkRHkYAYO1Eq_nyFjHmcH8Em0n4KJx0BZib4hP5bk8A
Plumwood, V. (2008). Shadow places and the politics of dwelling. Australian Humanities Review, 44, 139-150. http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p38451/pdf/eco02.pdf
Taylor, A. (2013). Reconfiguring the natures of childhood. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203582046