Learning from a more-than-human perspective. Plants as teachers

• Published in: The Journal of environmental education 2020-03, Vol.51 (2), p.144-155
• Main Authors: Carvalho, Isabel Cristina de Moura, Steil, Carlos Alberto, Gonzaga, Francisco Abrahão
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Ceremonies; Empirical analysis; Environmental education; Ethnography; Flowers & plants; Humanism; Indigenous Knowledge; indigenous peoples; Indigenous Populations; indigenous shamanism; Learning; Learning Experience; more-than-human; Posthumanism; power plants; Religious Factors; Urban Areas; Urban environments; urban Shamanism
• ISSN: 0095-8964; 1940-1892
• DOI: 10.1080/00958964.2020.1726266

Modern philosophy have categorized the enlightened human as the exclusive holder of reason. The modern notion of learning established an unbridgeable gap between human ways of learning and those of "non-humans." We assume that learning is a skill of all organisms and not an exclusively human prerogative. We prefer the "more-than-human" expression instead of "post-humanism." The reason is to avoid the prefix "post" and its meaning, very often teleological, evolving beyond or surpassing what was left behind. Our argument comes from an empirical analysis of ritual practices of a neo-shamanic kind based on the power of plants, found in Brazilian urban settings. We started from an ecological cosmovision where learning is a movement of life.