O dispositivo planetário: uma tese curricular

Abstract

This study focuses on the ecological crisis identified by scientific communities since the late 20th century as its central problem. Rather than constituting a spontaneous representation or a homogeneous observation derived from scientific apparatuses, the ecological crisis takes on a diffuse connotation, both epistemologically and ontologically. Rereading it through the works of authors such as Chakrabarty and Foucault, I propose the concept of the planetary dispositif. I make this move by recognizing that curriculum theories are capable of fostering inventive theoretical-methodological responses to the onto-epistemological questions that arise in contemporary times. Furthermore, I argue that, like any dispositif, what is at stake are heterogeneous responses that constitute a pedagogical shift in how humanity is addressed as an imagined subject. The planetary device, in this sense, is not merely a response to the environmental crisis but a way of producing subjects, temporalities, and modes of existence. The planet, more than a threatened "object,", becomes a political and symbolic operator that calls humanity to action—whether through global policies like the UN’s 2030 Agenda or through conservative discourses that also appropriate ecological themes, such as ecofascist movements. This exercise is also shaped by the notion of ancestral catastrophe, which interrogates the future crisis scenario as the obliteration of racial and colonial violence, as discussed by Povinelli and Ferreira da Silva. To construct this conceptual framework, in addition to the previously cited authors, I analyze health manifestos, disputes around food systems, documents from global agencies on education, and far-right discourses. I also draw on authors who problematize notions such as capitalism, liberalism, and development, which permeate these different tentacles of the planetary dispositif. Finally, the notion of ancestry is discussed in the thesis as a way of figuring the planetary device, arguing that its conceptual work is not about recovering a pre-crisis or pre-capitalist past, but rather about a past constitutive of the responses that emerge on the planetary horizon.