Ines Langemeyer: Learning in Face of a Crisis

Global crises are inescapable. This is what their global nature is about. The pandemic has been right now the most visible crisis and it has shed new light on how we may think about our world and our life today. Can we learn in face of a crisis? And what should we learn? 

My concern regarding these questions is, first, to form a clearer idea about emancipatory developments that could emerge in an exceptional situation.   

Second, my concern is that those who stand up against the detrimental effects of global crises, nowadays, are not learning in an emancipatory way (not all, but still there is a number of protesters with anti-emancipatory messages and aims). I am concerned about goals that are articulated in nationalistic, racist, sexist, and anti-ecological ways.

Third, my concern is that, world-wide, the learning in the course of trying to manage a global crises such as the pandemic fails to consider the broader picture of interdependencies between the ecological, the economic and the social problems.

Fourth, my concern is that people fail to pay attention to temporality. Especially with regard to development and regeneration, there are different time logics.

Learning therefore has to become transformative and collective. 

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