Risking Response‐Ability

Abstract “Risking response‐ability” names the risky pedagogical work of being addressed by humans and more‐than‐human others alike, and of finding ourselves called to respond. In this article, I bring Gert Biesta's account of “pedagogical risk” into conversation with Donna Haraway's notion of “response‐ability,” arguing that education's force lies in encounters that unsettle us and place us at stake. I begin by outlining Biesta's distinction between “learning from” and “being taught by,” showing how pedagogical risk takes shape through being addressed. I then turn to Haraway's work, which shows how address and response‐ability move through multispecies relations. To ground these ideas, I draw on narrative scenes from the trail, where more‐than‐human others interrupt my expectations and obligate response. Finally, by reading Biesta and Haraway together as what Barbara Stengel calls “oddkin,” I propose risking response‐ability as an orientation for philosophy of education that keeps education open to the risk of address while widening our sense of pedagogical address beyond human‐to‐human relations. In a time of ecological crisis, this framing asks us to attend to particular encounters and to the worlds our pedagogies help bring into being.