Tender public pedagogy: Being fragments in more-than-human figurations of public space

This article outlines the concept of tender public pedagogy , which refers to the educationally saturated care for a fragile common good: the commonality shared by humans and non-human others. The deficit of such spaces is experienced as a planetary catastrophe. Drawing on the thoughts of Olga Tokarczuk, the article presents the concept of the fourth-person narrator as foundational for tender public pedagogy. This pedagogy is outlined through four antecedents. The central question is not what such pedagogy is , but under what circumstances it can occur. Methodologically, the text unfolds as a pedagogical story about a regenerative and more sustainable world, theorized in line with a non-anthropocentric reconstruction of Norbert Elias’ relationism and his concept of figurations. Here, tenderness is seen as a key tool of regenerative transition, and is related to an ontology of the fragment and François Jullien’s concept of gap ( écart ) that doubles as a bridge.