ABSTRACT
In light of the enormity of planetary crisis, it is urgent to ask how publicness can or ought to inform an educational response at this critical juncture. This chapter explores the claim that a more expanded vision of publicness is necessary for facing up to the challenges posed by living in the time of climate emergency while keeping sight of the specifically educational aspects of these challenges. To do this, this chapter makes three moves: (1) It investigates the conception of the ‘public’ in terms of its modernist/colonial exclusions. (2) It links the idea of the public-subject to the nature/culture divide, drawing on the classic ecofeminist work of Val Plumwood. (3) It shifts towards another understanding of publicness, based on the sympoietic subject as one that is constituted through worlding practices, and it explores such practices as being at heart educational. In conclusion, the chapter outlines four characteristics of the new publicness of education that can aid us in living well with the many elements that constitute a world and in beginning to see the Earth as a living entity in her own right.
