Reimagining Freire: beyond human relations

By bridging critical pedagogy and environmental praxis, the contributions in this forum build on Freire’s legacy while stretching his work. As the authors attend to more-than-human life, they theorize and enact relational ways of knowing. Through participatory and multisensory pedagogies, they counter dichotomies between nonhuman and human nature, student and teacher. In this response, I consider how this (re)centering of more-than-human relations expands—and counters—Freire’s thinking, including how he articulates humanization as a primary, liberatory aim of teaching and (un)learning. Along with insights from Black geographies and Black feminist ecologies, bell hooks guides my response. hooks critiqued and engaged with Freire’s work with radical care, with space for complexity and accountability. This way of reading feels particularly suited to this forum, as the authors reimagine Freire’s contributions to critical (environmental) pedagogy for the twenty-first century and beyond.