Can there be a science of the sacred? Thinking with students’ feminist and pluriversal worldmaking practices

As anti-colonial and feminist scholars and educators who theorize and work at the intersections of constraint and possibility, we view our students’ critical imaginations as life-giving sources of inspiration for ‘ongoingness’ in a (post)pandemic world. This chapter tells the story of how students with very different backgrounds and histories, across two very different science education contexts, provoke us to rethink the disembodying and desensitizing practices of science, and to ask: Can there be a science of the sacred? In this chapter, we draw from students’ narratives as provocations for challenging spiritual-secular dualities, fostering (re)enchanment with nature, and getting unstuck from underlying heteropatriarchial and colonial onto-epistemologies in science and science education that do not serve us. We begin the chapter by slowing down and listening. We then bring feminist and decolonial theories in conversation with the students to reflect on the role of the sacred in science education for a (post)pandemic world.