Thread by @avghaly

@JKSteinberger On auto-disempowerment and its deep cultural internalization esp for ecological crisis: a 🧵
In my course on cultural aspects of #biodiversity loss & species extinction students’ auto-disempowerment always arises 1/

@JKSteinberger The course is about cultural imaginaries, ways of thinking. We apply this to their auto-disempowerment phenomenon too 2/

@JKSteinberger I remind them: you’re at a top public university in an extremely wealthy country. You have access to education, resources, you have great privilege in this. You are highly empowered. The question is: What do you want to do with this power? 3/

@JKSteinberger Students said they wanted to do something, to continue meeting after the course concluded. We did, every week. Since 2017. They treat the university as their subject - what operative ideas govern practices, relations to the nonhuman world? How can we envision otherwise? 4/

@JKSteinberger They identify an issue, research it, consult experts and groups with shared interests, find people in positions to advise them, share knowledge, collaborate. 5/

@JKSteinberger They use art and public campaigns to communicate their findings to the university community. Working with facilities and textiles experts they installed micro plastic filtration technology across all the dorms to filter synthetic fibers from the uni’s waste stream 6/

@JKSteinberger They mounted in collaboration with a local sustainability artist a public art installation to communicate the issue, their research, and their actions 7/

@JKSteinberger They won as undergrads a large green grant in competition with faculty and graduate student projects. They are currently working on reducing the university’s light pollution, measuring light levels, faculty input from astronomy, entomology, env hum 8/

@JKSteinberger They are learning how to ask a question, analyze from all angles, find resources and advisors in areas beyond their knowledge, research, devise a plan, convince others to support them, execute, course correct, use their agency in the world 8/

@JKSteinberger Several of them worked on a public exhibition which was profiled in a major international academic journal 9/

@JKSteinberger Former members of the group are now working in fields of climate policy, in grad school at intersections of climate and epidemiology, green transitions, applying to work or study in society and environment. I’m a humanist by the way, not a scientist. 9/

@JKSteinberger They’ve been asked to speak before the legislature by a green lobbyist group, are presenting their ideas to the university president for reframing the sustainability plan to include impacts on biodiversity… & more. They have become the small army they thought was needed. End/

@JKSteinberger Postscript: the course materials include eg Melville E Kolbert John Berger EO Wilson’s letter to Thoreau history of still life and animal painting anti colonial conservation media Indigenous thought and recent novels visual art poems on extinction