Configuring Monstrous Worlds: Environmental Speculations from Donna Haraway for Environmental Thinking and Education

Abstract

The environmental crisis is a turning point, which confronts us with the consequences of the extractivist, capitalist and modern worlds, at the same time that it calls for some thinking and education that make other realities possible, where coexistence with different forms of life, sustainability and socio-environmental justice are the horizons. This article seeks to present certain ideas from Donna Haraway's philosophy to configure other habitable worlds. Those ideas can be considered in different fields of environmental thinking and education. Based on Haraway's work, and in dialogue with different authors, it is proposed to investigate 5 axes: a. the tentacular thought, in order to interweave bodies, ideas and diverse territories; b. the kin generation and the question of relationships with different living beings and environments; c. the monstrous as a declassifying power and generator of new environmental understandings; d. the need for new configurations of Nature(s) as collective constructions; e. the power of the arts in environmental thought, a driving force for the imagination of possible worlds, and for the opening of new questions and affections. Our conclusions point to the need to build bridges between this author and environmental thinking and education in Latin America, as well as to enable certain compass questions, living questions to travel the paths of a wounded planet. With what thoughts do we think? What relationships do we build with other beings? How to become inappropriate, and vindicate the monstrous? What stories do we tell and what stories shape us? How to affect environmental practices and knowledge?