Challenging amnesias: re-collecting feminist new materialism/ecofeminism/climate/education

This paper discusses the apparent amnesia with regard to insights manifested in ecofeminist thought and applies a re-collective analysis to thinking on the implications of an ecofeminist new materialism for contemporary environmental education research, and curriculum practice. We engage with a conversation between feminist new materialism and the tropes of ecofeminism at this very unusual time in human history, making visible such interactions. Drawing attention to this and other apparent amnesias and, arguing from a genealogical perspective, we argue the scholarly and conceptual disruption caused by rapidly changing environmental (hence social and cultural) conditions can be fruitfully understood and analysed through a reconceived new materialist ecofeminism. This is especially important given the unequal impact of the climate emergency on women and the continued absence of a truly coherent focus on women’s interests – another amnesia – at this moment when the climate dominates all human and other than human life. In exploring the relationships between feminist new materialism, ecofeminism and the more-than-human, we theoretically + materially consider the conceptual challenges of confronting the climate emergency as viewed through the lens of articulating feminisms; and we promote possibilities for further conceptual and practical environmental education research.