Stability in the heart of chaos; (Un)sustainable refrains in the language of climate crisis

Evans, Sarah ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9877-157X (2024) Stability in the heart of chaos; (Un)sustainable refrains in the language of climate crisis. The Journal of Environmental Education, 55 (1). pp. 26-37. ISSN 0095-8964

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Abstract

Set in the Capitalocene, this conceptual paper examines ‘sustainability’ in ecological education through a posthuman lens. I demonstrate how the Deleuzoguattarian concept of the refrain helps reconfigure the function of ‘sustainability’ as an affective force of unstable-stabilizing when facing increasingly violent climate crisis events. Currently, ecological education and ‘sustainability’ are presented as solutions to these effects. How ‘sustainable’ something is, is increasingly used as a standard to expound its virtues – especially in the marketing of products, consumables, and energy. However, aligning with eco-feminist new material critiques, I propose that sustainability has sedimented into a regime of inertia, functioning to perpetuate practices known to be harmful to the environment as an order-word of stoppage. This paper offers new perspectives to problems presented in the language of environmental education, in order to suggest radical reimaginings for practice in the development of pedagogy capable of harnessing the chaos of climate crisis.