Exu and Einstein Dancing Around a Bonfire: Towards a Cosmopolitical Science Education

The post-pandemic world is characterized by a number of dilemmas, ruptures, and contradictions, which entangle (i) the rise of the extreme right, (ii) increasing social inequality, and (iii) scientific denialism. Consistently with a view that recognises education as both an ontological-political process and a form of pedagogical organization which aims at constructing an “ideal being,” our goal is to discuss a vision of scientific education that responds to challenges faced by societies in post-pandemic scenarios. To do so, we start from the cosmopolitical proposition, as conceived by authors such as Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Isabelle Stengers, and Bruno Latour, proposing that both Nature and Society are products of collective practices carried out in complex networks of humans and non-humans agents. We move on to discuss how the cosmopolitical proposition enables us to simultaneously reconcile propositions from different collectives without falling into a state of immobility in decision-making processes, as witnessed during the pandemic. In order to achieve a radical cosmopolitical and decolonial perspective, as discussed by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, we introduce elements from afro-diasporic cosmovisions, based on Luiz Rufino’s Pedagogy of Encruzilhadas, to contemplate the role of scientific education in cosmopolitical education.