Citizenship Education and Human Rights in Sites of Ethnic Conflict: Toward Critical Pedagogies of Compassion and Shared Fate

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.     

Bearing Witness to the Ethics and Politics of Suffering: J. M. Coetzee’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Disgrace</Emphasis>, Inconsolable Mourning,and the Task of Educators

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 (re)learn the limits of historicism in comprehending conflict, oppression, otherness and suffering; also, it examines the educational implications of such a pedagogical task.     

Interrogating the Affective Politics of White Victimhood and Resentment in Times of Demagoguery: The Risks for Civics Education

Studies in Philosophy and Education - This essay contributes to scholarly discussions on the affective politics of demagoguery, especially in relation to the rhetoric of white victimhood and...     

Greek-Cypriot Students’ Stances and Repertoires Towards Migrants and Migrant Students in the Republic of Cyprus

The present paper focuses on the stances and repertoires of 30 Greek-Cypriot students with whom semi-structured, in-depth interviews were carried out about their feelings and perceptions of migrants and migrant children in Cyprus. As it is shown, stances are not the only key factor in the creation and reproduction of racial and ethnic categories; repertoires are also entangled with stances and can be broadly differentiated, highlighting the complex ways in which children and adolescents portray migrants and contribute to formulating the context of migrants’ reception in society. In addition, the diverse experiences of direct or no contact with migrants are entangled with perceptions of migrants as a whole and contribute to the reproduction of certain behavioural stances. Based on the analysis of students’ stances and repertoires, we discuss educational policies and practices that facilitate a better integration of migrant children in schools.     

Reframing emotion in education through lenses of <Emphasis Type="Italic">parrhesia</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">care of the self</Emphasis>

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.

Holocaust <Emphasis Type="Italic">Laughter</Emphasis> and Edgar Hilsenrath’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Nazi and the Barber</Emphasis>: Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Laughter and Humor in Holocaust Education

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.     

A Pedagogy of Unknowing: Witnessing Unknowability in Teaching and Learning

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.     

From the Ethic of Hospitality to Affective Hospitality: Ethical,Political and Pedagogical Implications of Theorizing Hospitality Through the Lens of Affect Theory

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(s) 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.

     

The Contribution of Non-representational Theories in Education: Some Affective,Ethical and Political Implications

This paper follows recent debates around theorizations of ‘affect’ and its distinction from ‘emotion’ in the context of non-representational theories (NRT) 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.