Implicated literacies: Life begetting life in linguistic education

Abstract

We are almost 8 billion people to live, eat and survive on the only inhabitable planet, yet few of us care for environmental issues. Our relationship with the Nature, in general, has been one of exploitation and spoliation, following the anthropocentric modern narrative that prioritizes an egocentric mindset. The outcomes are deprivation, scarcity, depletion of natural organisms, destruction of the space as a whole. Anchored in decolonial and transdisciplinary studies, this text ponders on the consequences of the Eurocentric narratives, claims the need of collectively building a different narrative, and advocates in favor of implicated literacies, a pedagogy for language teaching that understands that “life on Earth implicates life”, and encourages the improvement of environmental and social relations in a broader conception of sustainability.