Alliances between Posthumanism and Global Citizenship Education: the concept of the social contract in UNESCO

This article analyzes the convergences and dissonances between Posthumanism (Ph) and UNESCO’s proposals on Global Citizenship Education (GCED), focusing on its report, Reimagining our futures together: a new social contract for education. To this end, Posthumanism–based on relational ontologies, the decentering of the subject, and emancipatory technological hybridization–is contrasted with Transhumanism, which is defined as an extension of anthropocentric and techno-solutionist humanism. Through a hermeneutic exercise based on five categories of analysis, the text reveals that, while UNESCO maintains ‘ghosts’ rooted in traditional humanism (such as the economic approach, the anthropocentric foundation of human rights, and the fear of collapse), it also demonstrates a significant shift toward Ph. This is evidenced by its promotion of curricular decolonization, the questioning of human exceptionalism, and the recognition of the biosphere as a pedagogical actor. Finally, a ‘hyperstious’ roadmap is proposed, advocating for hypo-citizenship and a subsequent ontology. In this model, citizenship ceases to be an individual status and becomes a process of collective and multi-species becoming, structured in interdependent ecotechnological assemblages and heightened political responsibility.

https://www.problemidellapedagogia.it/numeri_rivista/primo-semestre-2026/