From Anthropophagy to Gambiarra in Postdigital Education

Abstract The current social, environmental, and geopolitical global crises call for educators’ engagement in more imaginative and future-focused postdigital education practices. Students need to learn to work together, to creatively, critically, and productively collaborate, in order to develop the capacities they will need to tackle the complex environmental and social problems our world is facing. This article argues that existing pluriversal narratives from the Majority World have much to offer to postdigital education and may help enrich Minority World’s narratives that at times seem stuck with ideals of digital homogeneity and neocolonial practices. The article introduces anthropophagy and gambiarra as concepts that originated within the historical, political, and cultural context of Brazilian movements and which over time have evolved to become part of everyday practices and discourses. Both concepts may offer postdigital education scholarship novel analytical lenses which can be used to explore future-focused education that is willing to embrace hybridity and diversity, where ideas can come together through practices of improvisation and care and repair, and while maintaining a critical engagement with technologies.