Mutual Becomings? In Search of an Ethical Pedagogic Space in Human-Horse Relationships

Abstract

The chapter is framed by the posthumanist discourse within environmental education. It scrutinizes texts on “mutual becoming” in human-horse relationships and reveals unquestioned anthropocentric and speciesist assumptions, suggesting a more critical and liberating understanding of mutual becoming and posthumanist learning. The empirical basis of the chapter is an autoethnography informed by multispecies ethnography and zooanthropology, which brings the socio-cognitive potential and needs of the equine learning partners to bear on what an ethical pedagogic space could be.