Refashioning EFL Education: Reading ‘The Jungle Book’ in the Anthropocene

Abstract

Being the ‘Generation Anthropocene’ (Macfarlane 2016) requires new notions, terminology and concepts to deal with current ecological, socio-political and economic crises and to chart out a course of action for the future. Such times also call for interdisciplinary undertakings that encourage exploration and discussions about what led to the Anthropocene and how it impacts humanity, as well as those with whom humans share the planet. To conceptualize ways of teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) that incorporate the broader goals of sustainability and are more in sync with the realities of teaching in the Anthropocene, it is imperative that English language teachers reformulate their professional practices. Posthumanism, this article suggests, can provide a useful paradigm and support a nuanced articulation of the role of teaching EFL in subverting the tradition of anthropocentrism and relocating the human in synergetic networks with other nonhuman entities. A late twentieth century reaction to anthropocentricism can be found in a posthumanism that destabilizes the limits and symbolic boundaries presented by the notion of the human. Children’s animal stories, with specific emphasis on Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894), can be refashioned in EFL education by foregrounding them in a posthumanist and holistic understanding of the human and non-human alike. This article seeks to highlight interspecies relationships and to problematize stable human-non-human animal borders through a posthumanist reading of The Jungle Book. It also offers some suggestions for teaching The Jungle Book in the EFL classroom with a focus on embodiment and performance.