School strike for climate and Hannah Arendt

Abstract

School strike for climate was initiated by Greta Thunberg, who went striking alone outside the Swedish parliament in August 2018. A year later, millions of people were striking around the world. The message of school strike for climate highlights the lack of action on behalf of politicians and adults with regard to climate change and its effects. In this article, the phenomenon of school strike for climate is approached and read through Arendt's ideas about politics, acting and thinking. Arendt’s notion of politics is that it is constituted by speech and acts, and that it concerns our common world (that is, not issues that are associated with a private sphere). Arendt argues that when we act, a space of appearance opens up. This is an intersubjective space, where we appear to each other as unique individuals, and where something new takes place. Although Arendt did not pay much attention to children and placed them in a private sphere rather than a public one, I argue that her thoughts on politics are relevant in regard to school strike for climate. I propose that school strike for climate can be seen as both demanding action (from others, in this case adults and politicians) and being action in itself in an Arendtian sense. In a similar manner, the school strikes position the child in two ways in regard to politics. Children should not have to be political actors, but they may be, if adults do not act.

I read the school strike for climate as a space of appearance, where children appear to each other as well as to adults. However, unlike Arendt but in line with Butler’s development of Arendt’s theorising, I put emphasis on the bodily and physical dimensions of the notions of action and space of appearance. It matters that the striking students are children. I argue that school strike for climate cannot be properly understood if the (child) bodies of the striking students are not being considered. The school strike message emanates from a child subject position, containing demands that the future must be saved, referring to the ontologically vulnerable situation children are in given their young age and the climate changes to come. Developing the notion of space of appearance further, the Earth as such can be seen as a space of appearance, and the strikes then not only constitutes a space of appearance but also has one as its objective, a liveable Earth.

Another aspect of the physical dimension of space of appearance in relation to school strike for climate, is that takes place out in the streets and not in the enclosed space that class rooms constitute. The striking students urge politicians and adults to listen to scientific facts about climate change, yet, the students leave a space marked by facts – school – to be present at the heart of the public space instead, outside parliament buildings. Notably, school is deemed to be a less strategic space to be in compared to a public arena when the mission is to save the future. Closely linked to this judgement, is the school strike message that education, with its future-oriented temporality, becomes meaningless if there is no future. This is analysed in the article by using Arendt's distinction between knowing (science) and thinking (meaning). It is argued that school strike for climate highlights the need for thinking in the Anthropocene, and a type of thinking that leads to action regarding climate change.