Marianna Papastephanou University of Cyprus Since Plato’s allegory of the cave two educational-philosophical critical modes have stood out: the descriptive and the normative (rea...

The present paper theorises white discomfort as not an individual psychologised emotion, but rather as a social and political affect that is part of the production and maintenance of white colonial structures and practices. Therefore, it is suggested that white discomfort cannot be critically addressed merely in pedagogic terms and conditions within schools and universities. By foregrounding white discomfort in broader terms, the aim of the paper is to provide a more holistic and dynamic account which opens up a realm (...) that situates the pedagogisation of white discomfort within the broader decolonising project of disrupting white colonial structures and practices. The paper calls for both a decolonising and a critical affective approach to pedagogies of discomfort that would focus on examining and addressing strategically how white discomfort comes to be experienced and dismantled within broader affective, material and discursive assemblages of race, racism and whiteness. (shrink)

This essay considers the ethical implications of engaging in a pedagogy of discomfort, using as a point of departure Butler's reflections on ethical violence and norms. The author shows how this attempt is full of tensions that cannot, if ever, be easily resolved. To address these tensions, the author first offers a brief overview of the notion of pedagogy of discomfort and discusses its relevance with Foucault's idea of ‘ethic of discomfort’ and the promise of ‘safe classroom.’ Then, he focuses (...) on Butler's account of ethical violence and norms to show how the subject's constitution and regulation are inextricably linked to violence in several ways. In the final part of the paper, the author turns more specifically to the ways in which a pedagogy of discomfort might entail ethical violence, suggesting how the turn to a nonviolent ethics might become possible or whether the ethical resonances of that challenge will always entail a degree of ambivalence. (shrink)

This paper follows recent debates on the ontological turn in the social sciences and humanities to exemplify how this turn creates important openings of methodological and political potential in education. In particular, the paper makes an attempt to show two things: first, the new questions and possibilities that are opened from explicitly acknowledging the methodological and political consequences of the ontological turn in education—e.g. concerning agency, transformation, materiality and relations; and second, the importance of being clear about how educators and (...) educational researchers conceptualize ontology and engage with debates on the ontological turn in related disciplines. The paper sketches some of the methodological and political implications of the ontological turn for education, focusing in particular on the concept of learning. (shrink)

(2013). The “Crisis of Pity” and the Radicalization of Solidarity: Toward Critical Pedagogies of Compassion. Educational Studies: Vol. 49, No. 6, pp. 504-521.

This paper argues that it is important for educators in democratic education to understand how the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, the United States and around the world can never be viewed apart from the affective investments of populist leaders and their supporters to essentialist ideological visions of nationalism, racism, sexism and xenophobia. Democratic education can provide the space for educators and students to think critically and productively about people’s affects, in order to identify the implications of different affective (...) modes through which right-wing populism is articulated. Furthermore, this paper points out that ‘negative’ critique of the affective ideology of right-wing populism is not sufficient for developing a productive counter politics. An affirmative critique is also needed to set alternative frames and agendas which endorse and disseminate alternative concepts and affective practices such as equality, love and solidarity. These ideas provide critical resources to democratic education for developing a culture and process of democracy that transcends the negativity of mere critique of either right-wing populisms or inadequate forms of democracy. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper aims: to draw attention to relational and political understandings of happiness in education discourses and their implications for remedying racial and social inequalities and suffering, and to illustrate how unhappiness and suffering might offer valuable ethical, political and pedagogic lessons on the limits of the promise of happiness in social justice education. The analysis draws on Sara Ahmed’s work to theorise multiculturalism and racial equality as ‘happy objects’, namely, as objects towards which good feelings are directed and bad (...) feelings are rejected. In particular, the paper analyses how those discourses operate to fabricate particular meanings for happiness, especially in relation to how they address racial and social inequalities and suffering more generally. Bringing the differentiated affects of individuals and groups into the frame of analysis of happiness in social justice education paves the way for challenging the happinisation of education that we are still witnessing. (shrink)

This paper addresses one of the challenges in human rights education concerning the conceptualization of a pedagogical orientation that avoids both the pitfalls of a purely juridical address and a ‘cheap sentimental’ approach. The paper uses as its point of departure Richard Rorty’s key intervention on human rights discourse and argues that a more critical orientation of Rorty’s proposal on ‘sentimental education’ has important implications for HRE. This orientation is not limited to perspectives such as Rorty’s voyeuristic approach to sentimentality, (...) but rather focuses explicitly on the emotional and political consequences of various manifestations of sentimentality. Such an orientation in HRE will not only encourage learners to become more sympathetic to the living realities of those who suffer, but it will also interrogate the conditions of hearing narratives of suffering so that possibilities for cheap sentimentality are minimized as much as possible. (shrink)

This article seeks to explore existing conceptualisations of emotional capital in educational research, and to undertake a critical analysis of these conceptualisations, including a reflection on my own explorations of teachers' and students' emotional practices. Drawing from Bourdieu's work, I offer a theoretical discussion of how emotional capital as a conceptual tool suggests a historically situated analysis of the often unrecognised mechanisms and emotion norms serving to maintain certain 'affective economies'. This point is made in reference to a brief discussion (...) of my ongoing ethnographic work over the last ten years. I conclude the article with outlining some new possibilities of theorising the potentiality and usefulness of the concept of emotional capital in the field of educational research. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the affective dimension of epistemic injustice — specifically, the affective harms and burdens of epistemic injustice on individuals and groups — and examines how pedagogy may help disrupt the affective injustice that epistemic injustice entails. This theorization facilitates the ability to recognize that affective wrongs are not separate from epistemic wrongs but are instead embedded in them. Here, Michalinos Zembylas brings recent philosophical inquiry on affective injustice into conversation with considerations of epistemic injustice in order to (...) discuss how affect-related conceptions of epistemic injustice help education scholars to illuminate the entanglement of the epistemic and the affective in the wrongs of testimonial, hermeneutical, and other forms of epistemic injustice. His analysis outlines how some theoretical concepts concerning “affective goods” — including affective freedoms, affective resources, and affective recognition — have important pedagogical implications for the role educators can play in rupturing epistemic-affective injustices. (shrink)

This paper argues that it is important for educators in democratic education to understand how the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, the United States and around the world can never be viewed apart from the affective investments of populist leaders and their supporters to essentialist ideological visions of nationalism, racism, sexism and xenophobia. Democratic education can provide the space for educators and students to think critically and productively about people’s affects, in order to identify the implications of different affective (...) modes through which right-wing populism is articulated. Furthermore, this paper points out that ‘negative’ critique of the affective ideology of right-wing populism is not sufficient for developing a productive counter politics. An affirmative critique is also needed to set alternative frames and agendas which endorse and disseminate alternative concepts and affective practices such as equality, love and solidarity. These ideas provide critical resources to democratic education for developing a culture and process of democracy that transcends the negativity of mere critique of either right-wing populisms or inadequate forms of democracy. (shrink)

In this article, we critique two theoretical positions that analyze the place of emotions in education: the psychological strand and the cultural feminist strand. First of all, it is shown how a social control of emotions in education is reflected in the combination of psychological and cultural feminist discourses that function to govern one’s self effectively and efficiently. These discourses perpetuate an assumed divide between the rational and the emotional, and reinforce the existing power hierarchies and the status quo of (...) stereotypes about the role of emotion in education. Then we use the Foucauldian notions of parrhesia and care of the self to suggest alternative ways of thinking about emotions in education. Instead of campaigning for one side or the other of the rational/emotional divide, we suggest that it may be more interesting and fruitful to examine the particular ways discourses of emotion in education construct their own brand of parrhesia. (shrink)

Educational Theory, Volume 71, Issue 6, Page 767-786, December 2021.

The point of departure of this article is that hospitality in education has not been theorized in terms of emotion and affect, partly because its law have been discussed in ways that have not paid much attention to the role of emotion and affect. The analysis broadens our understanding of the ethics and politics of hospitality by considering it as a spatial and affective relational practice. In particular, concepts from affect theory such as the notion of affective atmospheres and atmospheric (...) walls are discussed to highlight the notion of affective hospitality. It is argued that a greater awareness of the micro-politics of hospitality in its everyday enactment in various educational settings can show educators how specific practices of hospitality work to produce affective spaces in which the socio-historical context of privilege may be interrupted. The paper concludes with a discussion of the ethical, political and pedagogical implications of affective hospitality. (shrink)

This paper follows recent debates around theorizations of ‘affect’ and its distinction from ‘emotion’ in the context of non-representational theories to exemplify how the ontologization of affects creates important openings of ethical and political potential in educators’ efforts to make productive interventions in pedagogical spaces. The ontological orientation provided by NRT has two important implications for educational theory and practice. First, it exposes the indeterminacy and inventiveness of affective capacities of bodies, illustrating how diverse socio-materials events are variously enrolled in (...) everyday school life processes of differentiation. Second, it emphasizes an affirmative account of the ethics and politics of affect in which connections and relations forged between bodies, things and spaces constitute the basis of new configurations of affects and emotions in schools. (shrink)

Sometimes I dream that I am an astronaut. I land my spaceship on a distant planet. When I tell me children on that planet that on earth school is compulsory and that we have homework every evening, they split their sides laughing. And so I decide to stay with them for a long, long time… Well anyway… until the summer holidays. Each state of the mind is irreducible. The mere act of giving it a name, that is of classifying it, (...) implies a falsification of it. From all this, it would be possible to deduce that there is no science in Tlon, let alone rational thought. The paradox, however, is that sciences exist, in countless number… The metaphysicians of Tlon are not looking for truth, nor even for an approximation of it; they are after a kind of amazement. They consider metaphysics a branch of fantastic literature. They know that a system is nothing more than the subordination of all aspects of the universe to some one of them. Even the phrase ‘all the aspects’ can be rejected, since it presupposes the impossible inclusion of the present moment, and of past moments. (shrink)

This essay contributes to scholarly discussions on the affective politics of demagoguery, especially in relation to the rhetoric of white victimhood and resentment, by exploring how civics education could formulate an anti-demagogic pedagogical response. Contemporary understandings of demagoguery as a rhetoric that emphasizes in-group identity and frames solutions as a matter of punishing an out-group, while also converting the shared vulnerability of life into an affective politics of white victimhood, create a new urgency to reconsider how civics education may help (...) students identify and interrogate demagoguery. This essay discusses potential risks in pedagogical efforts of civics education to confront demagoguery and examines ways out of these pedagogical missteps. The essay joins other scholars who call for a reorientation in how educators promote and practice civics education so that it takes into consideration that we live in a culture that is already demagogic. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Should educators encourage students to learn moral outrage in teaching about social (in)justice? If moral outrage is a catalyst for social change, to what extent can educators nurture this moral and political emotion in the classroom? These questions are at the heart of this essay. The aim is not to take sides for or against using moral outrage in education to motivate students towards change for the better, but rather to engage in an analysis and sorting through of various (...) discourses about moral outrage as a moral and political emotion, and to figure out how those discourses operate to create particular meanings for moral outrage that are circulated through educational research and practice. The author argues for a broader theorization of the relationship between moral outrage, political emotion, and education, tentatively suggesting a renewed attention to the productive possibilities as well as risks of encouraging moral outrage in education. (shrink)

Using insights from the tradition of via negativa and the work of Emmanuel Levinas, this paper proposes that unknowability can occupy an important place in teaching and learning, a place that embraces the unknowable in general, as well as the unknowable Other, in particular. It is argued that turning toward both via negativa and Levinas offers us an alternative to conceptualizing the roles of the ethical and the unknowable in educational praxis. This analysis can open possibilities to transform how educators (...) think about the goals of education in two important ways. First, creating spaces for embracing unknowing in educational settings is an act of ethical responsibility that recovers a sense of the Other and his/her uniqueness. Second, rethinking the value of unknowing in the classroom may inspire in students and teachers a sense of vigilance, responsibility and witnessing. Unknowing is an act of embracing otherness and presents a curious element of redemption; in the lack of knowledge, the meaning of its absence is found. (shrink)

The present essay discusses the value of citizenship as shared fate in sites of ethnic conflict and analyzes its implications for citizenship education in light of three issues: first, the requirements of affective relationality in the notion of citizenship-as-shared fate; second, the tensions between the values of human rights and shared fate in sites of ethnic conflict; and third, the ways in which citizenship education might overcome these tensions without falling into the trap of psychologization and instrumentalization, but rather focusing (...) on providing opportunities for social and school practices that manifest shared fate and compassion in critical ways. It is argued that what teachers and schools should try to do is to make practices of shared fate and compassion possible through creating conditions for children and young people to experience what it means to enact such practices in sites of ethnic conflict. It is also suggested that teachers and schools in sites of ethnic conflict cannot produce ‘new’ citizens on the basis of any values, no matter how ‘noble’ these values may be. The most that can be done is to help children and young people to critically reflect upon the conditions under which people in sites of ethnic conflict can act on the basis of shared fate and compassion and provide support so that these possibilities can become realistic. (shrink)

This article shows how theorising the entanglement of securitisation and education can be enhanced by attending to the power of affect and emotion. The author proposes a methodological and theoretical framework that offers the potential of a rich and promising research agenda which includes the role of affects and emotions in exploring securitisation in education. It is argued that this framework would have to do two important things. First, it would have to show how biopolitical techniques emerge from historicising securitisation (...) processes to shape an understanding of the ways in which bodies are entangled with the invisible affective infrastructures of securitisation in educational institutions. Second, this framework would have to trace the capacities of educators and students for affecting and being affected in their engagements and negotiations with securitisation processes, and specifically how these capacities become normalised or enable counter-practices of interruption. The value of this framework is in its capacity to generate empirical work that extends beyond conventional securitisation theory’s focus on language and discourse analysis. As such, what this article offers is both new ways of researching affect and emotion in educational contexts of securitisation and some insights about the pedagogical consequences of this framework of research and theorisation. (shrink)

This article examines the moral, political and pedagogical tensions that are created from the entanglement of patriotism and human rights, and sketches a response to these tensions in the context of critical education. The article begins with a brief review of different forms of patriotism, especially as those relate to human rights, and explains why some of these forms may be morally or politically valuable. Then, it offers a brief overview of human rights critiques, especially from the perspectives of Foucault, (...) critical legal studies and postcolonial theory, and emphasizes that foundationalist perspectives of human rights need to be constantly contested. The next part of the article discusses how to overcome issues of incompatibility between patriotism and human rights. The final part proposes that a ‘rapprochement’ between patriotism and human rights in the context of critical education has to take into consideration that patriotic feelings (as a form of love for one’s country) constitute a particular form of ‘emotional education’. As such, the teaching of both patriotism and human rights would benefit from the notion of ‘critical pedagogies of emotion’ that interrogates the emotional commitments of patriotism and human rights and the consequences of these commitments. (shrink)

This article tries to defend the position that Holocaust Education can be enriched by appreciating laughter and humor as critical and transformative forces that not only challenge dominant discourses about the Holocaust and its representational limits, but also reclaim humanity, ethics, and difference from new angles and juxtapositions. Edgar Hilsenrath’s novel The Nazi and the Barber is discussed here as an example of literature that departs from representations of Holocaust as celebration of resilience and survival, portraying a world in which (...) lies, hatred and violence are still perpetuated. Because of its transgressive qualities, Hilsenrath’s narrative of the Holocaust as a satire with elements of black comedy can offer pedagogical openings for using laughter to interrupt normative constructions of the Holocaust as an unspeakable and sacred event that lies outside history, and thus beyond the capacities of human understanding. It is argued that laughter is an important modality for inviting deep thinking about the Holocaust, to move it from a transcendent phenomenon to an immanent event, situated clearly in the realm of human action and worthy of understanding so as to prevent it from happening again. (shrink)

Prompted by what is seen as a missing analysis in the discussions about passion and affect in education, this essay attempts to clarify and provide a context for understanding the contribution of Foucault in the discourse of passion. In particular, the author traces the politics of passion in Foucault's work. A ‘politics of passion’ is the analysis that challenges the cultural and historical emotional rules with respect to what passion is, how it is expressed, who gets to express it and (...) under what circumstances. It is argued that a discussion of Foucault's ideas on passion provides a way of sharpening and clarifying his politics on affect, particularly what is relevant to individual and collective emotional control in education. (shrink)

This paper discusses Butler’s theory on the possibility of precarity to serve as the nexus of ethical relations, while also exploring some of the pitfalls of her theorization to reconceptualize the pedagogical implications of a critical pedagogy for precarity. In particular, the paper asks: How can precarity—understood as an ambivalent concept, as a paradoxical nexus of both possibilities and constraints—function pedagogically in a way that challenges its moralization? How can educators engage with precarity in ways that ‘re-frame’ it so that (...) both the dangers and prospects of ethics and politics of precarity are properly acknowledged and critically interrogated in pedagogical practice? The risks and possibilities of a critical pedagogy for precarity are addressed, highlighting that there are several complexities involved as much as there are opportunities for ethical transformation and political action in school and beyond. (shrink)

This article takes up Arendt's ‘aporetic’ framing of human rights as well as Rancière's critique and suggests that reading them together may offer a way to re-envision human rights and human rights education —not only because they make visible the perplexities of human rights, but also in that they call for an agonistic understanding of rights; namely, the possibility to make new and plural political and ethical claims about human rights as practices that can be evaluated critically rather than taken (...) on faith. The paper contributes to ongoing discussions about the need for a renewal of HRE by suggesting that the paradoxes of human rights—such as the disparity between the reality of the human condition and the abstract ideal of human rights—can be politically and pedagogically invigorating by rethinking human rights in agonistic terms and formulating more robust practices of HRE. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that Roy Bhaskar's philosophy of meta‐Reality creates the middle way to theorize emancipation in critical science education: between empiricism and idealism on the one hand, and naïve realism and relativism, on the other hand. This theorization offers possibilities to transcend the usual dichotomies and dualisms that are often perpetuated in some feminist and multiculturalist accounts of critical science education. Further, meta‐Reality suggests a radically new way to re‐visit the suspect notion of emancipation. The implications for (...) critical science education are discussed. (shrink)

Prompted by what is seen as a missing analysis in the discussions about passion and affect in education, this essay attempts to clarify and provide a context for understanding the contribution of Foucault in the discourse of passion. In particular, the author traces the politics of passion in Foucault's work. A ‘politics of passion’ is the analysis that challenges the cultural and historical emotional rules with respect to what passion is, how it is expressed, who gets to express it and (...) under what circumstances. It is argued that a discussion of Foucault's ideas on passion provides a way of sharpening and clarifying his politics on affect, particularly what is relevant to individual and collective emotional control in education. (shrink)

This article draws from the work of scholars in Critical Whiteness Studies to provide a nuanced analysis of ‘white shame’ in anti-racist education. In particular, it is argued that antiracist politics and pedagogy can be enriched by recognizing the affective and political complexities emerging from white shame and shaming. The purpose is to suggest that white shame has different manifestations depending on context and subject/group, and that those manifestations are related to feelings about white privilege, white ignorance, white fragility, and (...) white complicity. The author uses examples of white shame to discuss the pedagogical principles that inform the development of strategies for anti-racist education, emphasizing how educators can capitalize on teachable racial moments in the classroom that: move beyond white students’ tendency to default to shame; and, move beyond white students’ affective investments to racial inequality, while critically equipping white students to explore responsible ways of inhabiting their whiteness. (shrink)

Illustrating the tensions and possibilities that the notion of the ethic of care as a democratic and citizenship issue may have in discourses of citizenship education in western states is the focus of this article. I first consider some theoretical debates on the definition of an ethic of care, especially in relation to issues of justice and (im)partiality. Then, I discuss the reconceptualization of care on the basis of two related but distinct themes: the reconciliation of justice and care, and (...) the rethinking of citizenship. Following this, I lay out some implications for citizenship education and answer the question of what learning and teaching for/about a reconceptualized ethic of care can contribute to changing current perceptions of and actions towards immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. (shrink)

This article takes up Foucault's politics of human rights and suggests that it may constitute a point of departure for the renewal of HRE, not only because it rejects the moral superiority of humanism—the grounding for the dominant liberal framework of international human rights—but also because it makes visible the complexities of human rights as illimitable and as strategic tools for new political struggles. Enriching human rights critiques has important implications for HRE, precisely because these critiques prevent the dominance of (...) unreflexive and unproductive forms of HRE that lead toward a declarationalist, conservative and uncritical approach. It is argued that Foucault's critical affirmation of human rights—that is, an approach which is neither a full embrace nor a total rejection—provides a critique that can be disruptive to the conventional HRE approach and creates openings that might renew HRE, both politically and pedagogically. (shrink)

Sometimes I dream that I am an astronaut. I land my spaceship on a distant planet. When I tell me children on that planet that on earth school is compulsory and that we have homework every evening, they split their sides laughing. And so I decide to stay with them for a long, long time… Well anyway… until the summer holidays. Each state of the mind is irreducible. The mere act of giving it a name, that is of classifying it, (...) implies a falsification of it. From all this, it would be possible to deduce that there is no science in Tlon, let alone rational thought. The paradox, however, is that sciences exist, in countless number… The metaphysicians of Tlon are not looking for truth, nor even for an approximation of it; they are after a kind of amazement. They consider metaphysics a branch of fantastic literature. They know that a system is nothing more than the subordination of all aspects of the universe to some one of them. Even the phrase ‘all the aspects’ can be rejected, since it presupposes the impossible inclusion of the present moment, and of past moments. (shrink)

This article examines some aspects of the entanglement between aesthetic injustice and epistemic injustice, paying special attention to how aesthetic injustice can be resisted in the classroom. The article brings into conversation Boal’s notion of aesthetic injustice with Rancière’s work on the overlapping of aesthetics and politics to suggest that a truly democratic education must work on the level of senses, so that students learn how to identify and resist aesthetic injustice in their everyday lives. Specifically, it is argued that (...) the democratic potential of education is inextricably linked to resisting aesthetic and epistemic injustice in practice. The main point of the article is that resistance to aesthetic injustice in the classroom operates as an instance of politics that mobilizes struggle against oppression. In this sense, the nature of political work conducted in democratic education is to undo the oppressive distribution of the senses. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that Roy Bhaskar's philosophy of meta‐Reality creates the middle way to theorize emancipation in critical science education: between empiricism and idealism on the one hand, and naïve realism and relativism, on the other hand. This theorization offers possibilities to transcend the usual dichotomies and dualisms that are often perpetuated in some feminist and multiculturalist accounts of critical science education. Further, meta‐Reality suggests a radically new way to re‐visit the suspect notion of emancipation. The implications for (...) critical science education are discussed. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to revisit the notion of indoctrination in education by providing a summary of the field and highlighting the role of affects and emotions in the aftermath of the ‘affective turn’. It is argued that affective indoctrination—defined as the emotional coercion or manipulation that, arguably, any form of education might use in order to be effective—is likely to invoke harm in students, intentionally or unintentionally. Hence, it is suggested that education theorists and educators in general (...) need not only to acknowledge affective indoctrination as a possible component of all education, but also to explore and take measures how to minimize the extent to which indoctrinal teaching may be facilitated through cultivating certain affects and emotions. Theorizing affective indoctrination can offer new insights into how and why educators and students adopt or resist particular political beliefs (e.g. democracy or fascism). (shrink)

This essay reconceptualizes fanaticism as an activity that does not rely on the condemnation of ‘fanatical’ acts as a priori ‘irrational.’ Rather, it theorizes fanaticism as a method of ethical and political critique against a regime of representation. It also argues that it is crucial to understand fanaticism through an approach that does not set up a dichotomy between affect and reason, disavowing the ‘irrational’ behavior of fanatics. Drawing on affect theory and particularly the entanglement of feeling-thinking, this paper emphasizes (...) that fanaticism is better understood within a framework that takes seriously the role of affects. Such a conceptual framework has important pedagogical implications for how to address fanaticism in education. This essay suggests that it is crucial to invent pedagogical strategies that are rooted in a reconceptualized notion of fanaticism that pays attention to its ethical, political and affective dimensions. (shrink)

This paper makes a case for love as a powerful force for ‘transforming power’ in our educational institutions and everyday lives, and proposes that ‘revolutionary love’ serves as a moral and strategic compass for concrete individual and collective actions in critical education. The paper begins by reviewing current conceptualizations of love in critical education and identifies the potential for further theorization of the concept of love. It continues by theorizing love as a transformational political concept, focusing on six different perspectives (...) about love; love as an emotion, love as choice, and love as response, love as relational, love as political, and love as praxis. The paper concludes by discussing what “transforming power” with a “loving revolution” could mean for educators who engage with critical education. (shrink)

This article argues that it is important to understand militarism in schools as an affectively felt practice that reproduces particular feelings in youth and the society. The analysis draws on affect theory and especially feminist scholarly work that theorises militarism as affect to consider how militarism is affectively lived in schools. In particular, the article examines the ethical and political implications of affective militarism in schools and suggests an ‘affective methodology’ for exploring militarism’s affective logics in schools. It is also (...) suggested that resisting militarism in schools involves a serious ethico-political dilemma, namely, how to engage with the value of honouring fallen soldiers without inadvertently condoning the moral and political ideology of militarism. In seeking insights into the affective dimensions of militarism in schools, it is crucial to identify the complicated, productive and ambivalent intersections between militarism in schools and broader moral and political economies of military cultures. (shrink)

This paper explores mourning and forgiveness not simply as sources of existential, political, or emotional meaning, but primarily as possible sites of reconciliation pedagogies . Reconciliation pedagogies are public and school pedagogical practices that examine how certain ideas can enrich our thinking and action toward reconciliation—not through a moralistic agenda but through an approach that views such ideas both constructively and critically. Mourning and forgiveness may constitute valuable points of departure for reconciliation pedagogies, if common pain is acknowledged as an (...) important aspect of rehumanizing the “enemy-other.” This work is difficult and the wider society may be skeptical; however, such work is about assisting a “never again” mentality develop in schools and civil society. (shrink)

How can educators and their students interrogate the ethics and politics of suffering in ways that do not create fixed and totalized narratives from the past? In responding to this question, this essay draws on J. M. Coeetze’s Disgrace, and discusses how this novel constitutes a crucial site for bearing witness to the suffering engendered by apartheid through inventing new forms of mourning and community. The anti-historicist stance of the novel is grounded on the notion that bearing witness to suffering (...) without betraying it means refusing to represent it, that is, refusing to translate history and speak of it; instead, the novel’s characters remain inconsolable before history. The essay builds on these ideas and considers whether educators and their students need to learn the limits of historicism in comprehending conflict, oppression, otherness and suffering; also, it examines the educational implications of such a pedagogical task. (shrink)

In this article, the author argues that it would be valuable to look into less paradigmatic manifestations of forgiveness in schools, that is, pedagogical approaches that acknowledge the complexity of forgiveness in socio-political contexts ? namely, how forgiveness might be ambivalent, intermingled with both positive and negative emotions, and concerned with the standpoints of both the victim who offers forgiveness and the perpetrator who seeks forgiveness. The meaning and value of ambivalent forgiveness is presented through an extended reflection on a (...) vignette from the author's ethnographic research on forgiveness in a troubled society ? his home country, Cyprus. The vignette will highlight the complexity of forgiveness and provide a specific instance where traditional models of interpersonal forgiveness may fail or, at the very least, need to be expanded to account for the socio-political or inter-group dynamics. This article ends with a discussion of the pedagogical implications of the notion of ambivalent forgiveness for troubled societies. (shrink)

At almost every election, Americans are inclined to say that this is the most consequential election in American history. 2020 is no exception. However, what is particularly remarkable about the No...