Degrowth and Form: Reflections on Education’s Lateral Possibilities

Abstract

In this paper, it is argued that degrowth cannot be discussed in vacuo. Rather, it must be read through its relationship with form. Form and the formative prompt us to engage with learning and growth. Like growth and degrowth, learning and unlearning leave us with more questions than answers. The linearity imposed on learning by a logic of growth needs to be contested. An effective, albeit lateral critique of the logic of growth in learning is found in the pedagogies of unlearning and indirectness, both of which suggest a particular focus on the contingencies of life, which, understood in their aporetic nature, reveal that which can only be embraced through the unforeseen. Discussing the work of Latouche, Unamuno, Rancière, Saeverot, and Torgersen amongst other, this paper concludes with a discussion of degrowth in Ivan Illich’s parable of the snail, and D’Arcy Thompson’s discussion of growth and form.

Keywords

• form
• growth
• degrowth
• learning
• unlearning
• indirect pedagogy