Rethinking critical pedagogy in times of polycrisis: towards a generative praxis of entanglement, complicity and hope

This paper asks how critical pedagogy might be rethought under conditions of polycrisis, where overlapping crises (climate change, systemic inequality, political fragmentation, wars, genocide and ongoing conflicts) appear recursively entangled rather than amenable to conventional analytical frameworks. I suggest that critical approaches mobilised through clearly demarcated categories (oppressor/oppressed, complicit/resistant) and teleological narratives of progress may prove inadequate for non-linear, recursively entangled complexity. Drawing on Edgar Morin’s paradigm of complexity, supplemented by affect theory and psychoanalytic insights, I explore what might be termed a generative praxis: a mode of critique working from within acknowledged entanglement and implication rather than from positions of exteriority. I argue that generative praxis operates along four coordinates: epistemic humility and situated agency; the affective dimensions of critique; working from within entanglement and complicity; and hope as ongoing collective practice. Through pedagogical examples, I explore how generative praxis develops capacities for engaging complexity while enabling ethico-political response.