2018/05/01 by CATHRYN VAN KESSEL, Cathryn van Kessel, KEVIN BURKE +1
Psychology · #Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion #Paranormal Experiences and Beliefs #Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health
paper · doi:10.1111/1467-9752.12301
Teaching as a profession can be read as an immortality project, a form of compensation to help resolve a certain kind of existential terror. Terror management theory can help us understand the ways teachers might compensate for their limitedness as humans by imposing prescribed attributes on their students. In response to the freighted reality of teaching as quasi-missionary work, we suggest a new orientation, namely that the profession embrace the terror of the future that it cannot know. Through a theoretical engagement with Weak Theology in the context of Eugene Thacker's philosophical ‘doomcore’, we hope to re-orient the educational project into one with lower stakes, a shift from immortality to more ‘goodness’. The desired result is to refocus on the relationships we develop with other humans as well as with the planet.