Introduction: Living in Dark Times

This chapter introduces the link between speculative realism and pedagogical and educational issues that acts as the background for our conception of Dark Pedagogy. Dark pedagogy is situated as an effort to understand and rethink current pedagogical and educational perspectives on how we handle issues such as the imminent climate crisis, environmental issues on a global level and ways to include the more than human into our theories and practices. Drawing on inspiration from the horror author H. P. Lovecraft and his intriguing representation of the things that threatens and haunts us humans we argue for a tri-partite reaction pattern that the meeting with the more than human of e.g. climate crisis can result in: (1) Denial, (2) Insanity, (3) Death. These three reaction patterns form the basis of the book and our development of the concept of Dark pedagogy.