Toward a Phenomenology of Mythopoetic Participation and the Cultivation of Environmental Consciousness in Education

Framing education ecologically and cultivating an environmental consciousness in the way Michael Bonnett has articulated poses a fresh challenge to educators to identify the latent aspects of educational philosophy and practice that are rooted in an Enlightenment 'metaphysic of mastery'. In 'The Significance of Myth for Environmental Education' (2019), I explored the role that mythopoetic texts could serve to predispose educators and students for qualitatively richer imaginative and affective experiences in/with nonhuman nature. Exposure to these texts, I argued, could begin to effect a work of transformation in those who read them. Here I further develop my former work and make an intervention where Bonnett's more recent work has touched upon my own: the relationship between myth, poetics, phenomenology, and environmental education. Drawing on Charles Taylor's account of Western (dis)enchantment, I develop what I am calling a 'mythopoetic participation', and explore the relationship between a poet's mythic & poetic encounter with the world (that awakens a desire for fullness-in/with-the-world) and the 'artifacts' they create. I offer a phenomenological account of how reading such texts can support environmental educators.