Re/Conceiving Outdoor Environmental Education as Riverscape Pedagogy: A Murray Cod Assemblage

Abstract

This plateau enacts Deleuze and Guattari’s (A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia (Massumi B, trans). University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1987) concept assemblage to craft a riverscape pedagogy that is informed by, and responsive to, the Murray cod, the river, and its circumstances. The Murray cod, the largest fish species in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin, has diverse cultural meanings. Cod are at once a creation being of Indigenous people, a migratory predator that breeds in response to warm floodwaters, and a fish suffering significant ecological decline as a result of changes to land and water use in its habitat. Murray Cod assemblage weaves these elements together to re/create a bioegalitarian pedagogy, part thought experiment and part teaching strategy.