Emotion, Trauma, and Critical Pedagogy: Implications for Critical Peace Education

• In Event: 49.072 - Critical Perspectives on Peace Education: Engaging Localized Research and Praxis in the Pursuit of Justice

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to critique some of the existing literature in critical pedagogy and the way it tends to overlook or downplay the strong emotional investments of troubled knowledge in posttraumatic situations. Examining existing literature in critical pedagogy reiterates the argument that the discourse of critical pedagogy constructs and sustains its own disciplinary affects (Lindquist, 2004; Yoon, 2005; Worsham, 2001). My main contention is that some of the theoretical orthodoxies in critical pedagogy can be challenged and may be productively enriched by new ideas on how affect and emotion might be harnessed by teachers to deal with troubled knowledge. My analysis builds further on this argument and highlights the importance of foregrounding rather than backgrounding the complexity of difficult emotional knowledge and its pedagogical implications. Working from the assumption that critical pedagogy, especially in the context of posttraumatic societies, must engage this terrain of difficult emotional knowledge in ways that have not been sufficiently addressed by the current rhetoric of critical pedagogy, I look to work that gestures toward a discourse of critical pedagogy which considers troubled knowledge as a source of fruitful and responsive learning. As it will be emphasized, this argument entails making pedagogical space for understanding troubled knowledge in more nuanced terms.

The critical interrogation of troubled knowledge in posttraumatic contexts marks a valuable intervention in the broad domain of critical pedagogy precisely by focusing on identifying and challenging the affective technologies and emotion-informed ideologies that underlie possible responses toward troubled knowledge—by students and teachers alike—and seeking to make a concrete difference in the lives of those who still suffer from carrying the burden of this knowledge. The process of dissolving categorizations of ‘us’ and ‘them’ in posttraumatic settings is a matter of observing very carefully the consequences of the underlying ideological and emotional attachments of the pedagogies that are being implemented. These attachments need to be engaged and interrupted in sensitive and critical ways. It is precisely in this context that critical emotional praxis (Author 2008, 2013), as an overarching concept that is theoretically grounded in critical pedagogy in posttraumatic societies, intersects with critical peace education.

A critical consideration of the emotions of conflict and peace in schools enables new directions for a radical re-interpretation of peace education efforts. Principally, this re-interpretation is positioned within the micro-political terrain of the schools and the classrooms, rather than the macro-political structures of a conflict. In this manner, this paper is essentially concerned with re-considering the implications of the macro-political structures of a conflict in micro-political pedagogical encounters, and aims at developing capacities for renewed critical approaches in peace education. In particular, this paper lays out a ‘road map’ for how critical pedagogies of peace education may use the power of emotion to bring about small transformations and openings in ethical encounters with others. And here is where the notion of ‘critical emotional praxis’ provides the overarching theoretical framework to do so.

Author

• Michalinos Zembylas, The Open University of Cyprus