Touched by injury: toward an educational theory of anti-racist humanism

Critical Studies in Education

2014

165

Drawing on one of the author's experiences of teaching white teacher candidates in an urban university, this paper argues for the importance of interrogating the ways that benign emotions (e.g., pity and caring) are sometimes hidden expressions of disgust for the Other. Using critical race theory, whiteness studies, and critical emotion studies, it is shown how whiteness ideology erroneously translates disgust for people of color to false professions of pity or caring. This phenomenon is particularly interesting because care, sympathy, and love are emotions that are routinely performed by teacher candidates (who are predominantly white females) and embedded in teacher education. Yet not much literature theorizes how these performative emotions are not exempt of whiteness ideology. To engage in a genuine process of antiracism, we argue that the emotions that undergird teachers' dispositions need to be critically and sensitively unpacked. We end with implications for teacher education, particularly in relation to pedagogical ways of identifying and interrogating narratives of caring-as-hidden disgust and cultivating critical compassion.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘When saying you care is not really caring’: emotions of disgust, whiteness ideology, and teacher education

Matias

Critical Studies in Education

2014

165

“…A pedagogical approach that takes into consideration these consequent implications will move a step further and be attentive and cautious of the increased complexity that difficult knowledge adds to (already) discomforting learning spaces in the classroom. Similar to Georgis and Kennedy's () proposition for a pedagogy of emotions as a method of moving past the limits of detached rational critique, it is important to go beyond the rational limits of critical social theory and find pedagogical ways to expose the affective limits and possibilities of our narratives and practices.…”

Section: Judith Butler In Conversation With Scholars Of Difficult Knomentioning

confidence: 99%

Theorizing “Difficult Knowledge” in the Aftermath of the “Affective Turn”: Implications for Curriculum and Pedagogy in Handling Traumatic Representations

2014

Curriculum Inquiry

175

This essay draws on the concept of "difficult knowledge" to think with some of the interventions and arguments of affect theory and discusses the implications for curriculum and pedagogy in handling traumatic representations. The author makes an argument that affect theory enables the theorization of difficult knowledge as an intersection of language, desire, power, bodies, social structure, materiality, and trauma. To show the possibilities of this theorization of difficult knowledge, the essay puts in conversation Judith Butler's work on vulnerability, affect, and grievable lives with scholarship on difficult knowledge. The essay leans on Butler's work and affect theory to make a political and pedagogical intervention into the terrain of learning and acting in the face of difficult knowledge. This intervention offers a conceptual, curricular, and pedagogical way out of dilemmas of representation and it is rooted in a political project of social action that does not disavow the psychical problematics residing therein. bs_bs_banner

“…Revolt, then, against the oppressive normalization of trauma halts the repetition of destructive strategies that remain stuck in negativity and opens up possibilities for rearticulating constructive ways of considering trauma Á such as restoring the humanity of subjects who have been stripped from it and building solidarity on the basis of common suffering (Georgis and Kennedy 2009). An important component of reconciliation education, therefore, is to explore both the restrictive and the productive forms of engagement with emotions of trauma in schools and to critically expose how trauma is appropriated by ideological-political forces and limits the opportunities for reconciliation.…”

Section: Psychoanalytic and Socio-political Perspectives Of Trauma Anmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ambivalent emotions Á for example, resentment and bitterness but also feelings of common vulnerability and empathy Á emerge from teaching and learning that recognizes the relationality of trauma; that is, if we can narrate 'our' stories of trauma to ourselves and to those who have wounded us and listen to the narratives of those we have wounded, we might set up better conditions for imagining new political relations (Georgis and Kennedy 2009;Zembylas 2008). The ambivalence of emotion, then, highlights that positive and negative emotions are provisional readings and judgments of others that change, when there are opportunities to rearticulate the past in new ways.…”

Section: Psychoanalytic and Socio-political Perspectives Of Trauma Anmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical emotional praxis for reconciliation education: emerging evidence and pedagogical implications

Irish Educational Studies

2012

This paper draws on psychoanalytic and socio-political perspectives of trauma and emotion to examine how critical emotional praxis may serve as a pedagogical tool for reconciliation education. A major challenge for teachers in traumatized societies struggling to enact reconciliation education is that emotions of trauma are often appropriated by social and political institutions, including schools, to justify particular collective narratives and ideologies. The prospects of critical emotional praxis are explored through two vignettes from an on-going ethnographic research in Cyprus, a country of protracted ethnic conflict. The first vignette focuses on how emotions of trauma are politically appropriated in a classroom while the second shows how one teacher manages to enact critical emotional praxis with her students to undermine the political appropriation of emotions of trauma. The paper concludes with a discussion of the pedagogical implications and recommendations for future research.