Reimagining the future in the age of the anthropocene: insights from critical public pedagogy

ENPublic pedagogy plays a crucial role not only in the implementation of existing modernization projects but also in nurturing and cultivating imagination and deliberating and envisaging the future. However, public pedagogy itself often becomes a tool of propaganda in the hands of government and/ or dominant and elite groups unless it is accompanied by critical theory and critical pedagogy considerations. These theoretical approaches seek to provide a profound criticism of all possible forms of subordination and negate the opportunistic and instrumentally predicted visions of the future. This chapter examines informal and nonformal learning in museum communication and science fiction as a critical method of learning about the future in the Anthropocene era. The chapter presents an interpretation of ideas of destiny, utopias, and dystopias, in the sci-fi novels of Stanisław Herman Lem, Ursula Kroeber Le Guin, and the brothers Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky. Keywords: Anthropocene, public pedagogy, critical pedagogy, critical theory, imagined future, science fiction, museums. [From the publication]