Words (are) matter: generating material-semiotic lines of flight in environmental education research assemblages (with a little help from SF)

© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. We address the aims of this Special Issue by exploring, critiquing, and responding constructively to the emergence and potential significance of new materialist thought in environmental education research and the broader theoretical landscape in which such research is situated. We offer some productive possibilities for advancing postparadigmatic materialist theorising in environmental education research by deploying concepts selected from Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘box of tools’ (namely, ‘machinic assemblage’ and ‘lines of flight’), supplemented by concepts associated with SF (science/speculative fiction)—namely ‘cognitive estrangement’ and ‘object-orientated thought experiments’—to generate new lines of flight in material-semiotic environmental education research assemblages.