Michalinos Zembylas
Open University of Cyprus
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The aim of this paper
To turn to affect theory—a theory that has a
lot to offer to contemporary theorizations
of ‘pedagogy’ in general and ‘socially just
pedagogies’ in particular
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New Pedagogy Studies: Three Tenets
1. More attention to the relational encounters among
teachers and students creates openings for
unpredictable possibilities of critical knowledge and
action;
2. A deeper understanding of pedagogy acknowledges
the relationships between the macro-and the micro-
political aspects of education;
3. A broadened conception of pedagogy includes
public sites of pedagogy, offering opportunities for
educational researchers, practitioners and activists
to mobilize alternative forms of counterhegemonic
and ethical learning (Burdick & Sandlin, 2013)
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Three Tenets: Implications for
Socially Just Pedagogies
The first tenet conceptualizes pedagogy as inherently
relational, that is, it emphasizes that relationships are
central to pedagogy.
The second tenet draws attention to the relationship
among culture, pedagogy and power relations in
society.
The third tenet has to do with a broadened
conception of pedagogy that includes theorizations of
pedagogy in various sites, spaces, products and places
identified as ‘public pedagogy’.
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The ‘Affective Turn’
The ‘affective turn’ (Clough, 2007) in the humanities
and social sciences: it brings together
psychoanalytically informed theories of subjectivity
and subjection, theories of the body and embodiment,
and political theories and critical analysis.
Affects and emotions cannot be thought outside the
complexities, reconfigurations and re-articulations of
power, history and politics (Athanasiou, Hantzaroula
& Yannakopoulos, 2008).
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Implications for theorizing socially
just pedagogies
1. The affective turn has a significant impact
on how we conceptualize the relationship
between private and public sphere in
understanding socially just pedagogies;
2. The affective turn raises new questions
about socially just pedagogies and their
transformative possibilities.
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Sample questions
How can explorations of socially just pedagogies become
strategic sites of ethical and political transformation that pay
attention both to non-verbally articulated and embodied
elements and to cultural norms that are perceived
corporeally?
How can socially just pedagogies create possibilities to
resignify emotional life in ways that continuously rework and
unsettle affective attachments to particular bodies,
discourses and practices?
How do biopolitics emerge as a crucial feature of humanizing
pedagogy in the making of modern individuals and
communities imagined through the normativity of emotional
bonds and solidified through the emotional power and
performative force of identity work?
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Conclusion
All (socially just) pedagogies are essentially
pedagogies of emotions that are inevitably
implicated in the way that knowledge
operates both as a provocation of
transformation and as a way of structuring
affect in a particular social and political
context
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