The 31 papers on education for a post-apocalyptic world collected in this book range from philosophy to political sciences and from archaeology to appied desaster mitigation; the authors contribute perspectives from four continents.
The collapse of civilization, the end of the world as we know it, has long been a cultural imaginary, but has rarely been as topical as it is today. Beyond the phantasmagoria of violence, depression and despair, the conviction of being doomed has always been a challenge to imagine a new, post-apocalyptic world, be it utopian or dystopian. Beyond questions of immediate survival, there is a growing concern about how to educate humanity for a new life after the end of this world. In this volume, the editors, Michael A. Peters and Thomas Meier, renowned scholars of educational and apocalyptic studies, have brought together 31 contributions that offer a diversity of perspectives on such post-apocalyptic education, from abstract philosophical reflections to applied studies, from historical and political analyses of how we got into the current situation of global devastation to decolonial perspectives and essayistic explorations.
Michael A Peters & Thomas Meier: Civilizational Collapse and the
Philosophy of Post-Apocalyptical Survival An Introduction - Collapse -
Petar Jandri: Apocalypse: Postdigital Readings and Response - Ruth Irwin:
The Transcendental Aesthetic as Simulacrum: Truth, Preppers, and the End of
the World as we Know It - Joćo José R.L. de Almeida: Wittgenstein's
Philosophical Investigations and the civilizational collapse - Babette
Babich: Günther Anders Apocalypse Blindness and the Post-Apocalyptic - Paulo
Ghiraldelli: Machinic subjectivity - Peter McLaren: Surplus Fascism and the
Post-Digital Apocalypse in the Age of Anti-Woke Terrorism - Decolonial -
Marianna Papastephanou: The Cosmopolitics of Apocalyptic Thought - Antonio
Miguel, Carolina Tamayo & Elizabeth Gomes Souza: The fifth horseman of the
apocalypse - Makere Stewart-Harawira & Georgina Tuari Stewart: Mori in the
Post-Apocalypse - Adrian Hermann: Adventures from the Rubble: The
(Post-)Apocalypse as a Mode of Play in Tabletop Role-Playing Games - Ecology
- David A. Turner: Living at the Edge of Chaos - Benjamin Green: Ecological
Civilization: Engaging the complexity of ecological crisis - Greg William
Misiaszek: Without a Possible Vaccine, Ecopedagogical Paradigm Shift Vital to
Avoid Ecological Collapse - Zhou Guowen & Cai Xinyi: Reflections on
environmental ethics of boundary and domain -- Based on the Taoist View of
nature - Maryam Dezhamhooy & Leila Papoli-Yazdi: Margins with the central
role: an archaeology of living with toxics and pollution - Education - Trevor
Norris: Education, the Far Future, and the End of Times - Arjen E.J. Wals:
Earth centered an invitation to relational transgressive learning as a
counter-hegemonic force in times of systemic global dysfunction - Michael
Jopling & Peter Bennett: Is this the promised end? Low end theory,
education and the illusion of survival - Yi Chen & Boris Steipe: Cultivating
Knowledge: The Anti-Apocalyptic Potential of Bildung - Yusef Waghid:
(African) University Education Discourse in a Crisis: On the Brink of
Collapse? - Change - Steve Fuller: An education for end times - Sharon Rider:
Where Do We Stand? (Or How to Do Something in Particular) - Marek Tesar,
Andrew Madjar & Adriano De Francesco: Future Horizons: Doing Pedagogy at the
Edge of Chaos - Holger Hestermeyer: International law and cooperation in
times of crises - Actualities - Shail Mayaram: The Nation as Lament: The Sars
Corona in India and the Reshaping of the Social and the Political - Michael
A. Peters: Xis Global Civilization Initiative - Henry A. Giroux:Mass
Shootings in the Age of the Apocalypse: Politics and the Ghosts of History -
Thomas Meier & Michael A. Peters: Never-ending ends: Present, past and future
a postscript - Notes on the contributors
Michael A. Peters(FRSNZ)is Distinguished Professor at Beijing Normal University, and Emeritus Professor University of Illinois. He has published 120 books and 500 papers. He received the Social Science and Humanities Leader in China Award (2022, 2023) (Research.com) and is ranked 1st in China and 5th in Asia for Education, (AD Scientific Index, 2023). He has Honorary Doctorates from Aalborg University, Denmark and SUNY, NY.
Thomas Meier has been trained as an archaeologist and holds a professorship in pre- and proto-history at Heidelberg University. He is director of the Käte Hamburger Center for Apocalyptic- and Post-Apocalyptic Studies at Heidelberg University. Over the years Thomas has focused more and more on the epistemology and conditions of academic reasoning with special focus on critical inquiry and materialities.
