Examining the Politics of Shame and Care: Teacher-Student Relations Within Neoliberal Ideologies-Practices in Community College

• In Event: Care and Compassion in Educational Settings: Cultural-Historical Perspectives

Abstract

Neoliberalism currently serves as a dominant ideology in higher education. This ideology commodifies nearly all aspects of the educational process, but especially how educators, students, and their peers relate to one another in the classroom. Akin to business-like transactions, teacher-student relationships typically foreground individualism, rationality, control, and punitive measures that are racist and ableist (Annamma & Handy, 2019). Despite the burgeoning literature on teacher-student relationships within the neoliberal university, deeper investigations concerning its socio-emotional dynamics, especially among students from marginalized populations, can significantly advance this scholarship. This paper reports on a study that seeks to illuminate these socio-emotional dynamics through a qualitative inquiry employing semi-structured interviews with NYC-based community college students, mostly working-class people of color. Conceptually, the study draws on the feminist politics of emotions literature and queer theories to argue against seeing emotions as individual properties to suggest instead that emotions such as shame and care emerge through social practices contextualized in power relations (Boler, 1999). Thematic analysis examined interviews with seven students (the median age 25, four women, and three men). The findings of this study revealed how neoliberal educational practices typically bring forth shame within teacher-student relationships and thus promote “care-less” relations that force students to embrace a sense of isolation and individualism within learning-related contexts. These findings align with previous research demonstrating that shame is a relational emotion that operates “as a form of profound misrecognition,” entailing painful sensations associated with negative self-assessment (Burke, 2017). For shame to be addressed and for care to be fostered within teacher-student relationships, educators must embrace a “Discrit Solidarity” (cf. Annamma & Handy, 2019) that recognizes the emotions that students of color and from marginalized communities bring to the classroom, particularly paying attention to shaming experiences stemming from interpersonal oppression, while also understanding these emotions as a basis for resistance. This paper concludes with a discussion of implications for the politics of care. In following with the sociocultural and critical traditions, care is political when its role in challenging “the myth of independence” and associated emotions of shame are illuminated and reorientated toward fostering solidarity and exposing interlocking systems of oppression (Grande, 2004; Motta & Bennett, 2018).

Author

• Michael Rifino, Graduate Center - CUNY