Political education in the climate crisis: Elaboration and reinvigoration of the agonistic model

The paper argues that the climate crisis is a political issue, not merely a scientific issue, and that agonistic democratic theory (Mouffe) remains helpful to underpin political education. It offers three elaborations that support this argument. The first is on how the category of the “enemy” in Mouffe’s work does or does not play a role in political education. The second addresses the misinterpretation of agonistic political theory as requiring the active fostering of conflict. The third elaboration is on how antagonism can be transformed into agonism. On this point, the paper argues that agonistic political education involves the uncoercive rearrangement of the desire (Spivak) to eradicate an enemy into the desire to contest a political adversary in democratic struggle. It concludes by discussing the climate crisis as a frontier of struggle that ought to play a prominent role in political education today, and that illustrates the viability of agonistic democratic education.