Beyond human rights: Posthuman approaches to human rights education. ...

In this theoretical contribution I want to explore the potential of posthuman approaches to human rights education. How can human rights education be a realization of interconnectedness and relationality with other living beings? We are in need of ethical values that highlight the centrality and interconnectedness of all living. This means to transform the dominance of anthropocentrism and the dominant subject position. Relational onto-epistemologies as highlighted by posthumanist thinkers twist the dualistic split of body/mind and human/nature through understandings of interconnectivity and an ethic-onto-epistemological entanglement of being, knowledge and ethics. We are always involved, embedded and in interaction and therefore we need a new understanding of community based on empathy, accountability and recognition. These are not moral imperatives but rather a relational understanding of subjectivity (Braidotti, 2006; Barad, 2007; Bozalek, Zembylas & Tronto, 2021).

            The political and ethical implications are theories and practices that are situated in the concrete context and based on various and especially embodied forms of knowing. We have to change our habitual ways of seeing that alienate us from each other and from a sense of belonging. If we learn to perceive, feel and sense ourselves not only as part of the world but as interwoven, entangled and embedded in/with this world, our relationship to the living can change towards more caring modes of being. Embodiment as a form of presence and the ability to perceive, feel and sense oneself, others and the world is crucial to access deeper levels of perception and can lead to a systemic change towards more caring ways of living.