Fascist Emotionality and Epistemic Practice: A Challenge for the Learning Sciences

• In Event: Emotion and Sense-Making in Politicized Contexts: Expanding the Conversation

Abstract

Building on emerging work in the learning sciences on right-wing knowledge construction (Russo & Blikstein, 2022), this conceptual paper combines theorizations of fascism and epistemic practices with a focus on emotion. An exchange between a reproductive law expert and a Republican senator illuminates challenges to the learning sciences in pushing back against anti-trans and other oppressions amid profound disagreement about what constitutes legitimate epistemic practice.

Fascism here is not an ad hominem attack, but a political form that can be studied empirically. Stanley (2018) identifies fascism as ultranationalism that uses a common set of strategies, including “the mythic past, propaganda, anti-intellectualism, unreality, hierarchy, victimhood, law and order, sexual anxiety, appeals to the heartland, and a dismantling of public welfare and unity” (pp. xxviii-xxix). Fascists dehumanize marginalized groups to seize power and enforce extreme hierarchy. Stanley (2018) argues that fascists reject expertise and linguistic complexity to undermine the sophisticated debate democracy requires. Emotion is key to this intellectual debasement. Certain emotional forms are valued in fascism, including pride in the mythic past, a sense of loss of that past, anger toward those responsible, and irrational fear (Stanley, 2018). Anger and fear over the loss of patriarchal gender roles—for example those tying womanhood to birthing—are central.

While learning scientists have analyzed emotion within politicization (Curnow & Vea, 2021), a learning process which also includes shifts in epistemology (Curnow et al., 2018), emotion has been relatively understudied within studies of epistemic practices (Jaber & Hammer, 2015). “Epistemic cultures” refer to shared ways of creating and warranting knowledge within communities (Knorr Cetina, 1999, 2005). I propose that epistemic ideals (Barzilai & Chinn, 2018) may dovetail with emotion in a kind of emotional configuration (Vea, 2020) of knowledge. Conspiracy theories, for example, may be valued when they “provide simple explanations for otherwise irrational emotions, such as resentment or xenophobic fear” (Stanley, 2018, p. 65).

Toward theorizing learning in fascist epistemic cultures, this paper pursues a critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2010) of an exchange during a U.S. Senate hearing (Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on Abortion Access and the Law, 2022) between Senator Josh Hawley and reproductive rights expert Dr. Khiara Bridges. Then, I follow its circulations as an emotional object (Ahmed, 2004). The exchange began with Hawley prompting Bridges to define womanhood. I find that Hawley’s position in the ensuing disagreement, excluding trans men from the category of “men,” is based in a rejection of scientific and social complexity. That evening on Fox News, Hawley unpacked the interaction. His tweet promoting that appearance received thousands of likes, evidence that—for his chosen audience—he had accomplished an “apt epistemic performance” (Barzilai & Chinn, 2018). Attention to Hawley’s use of epistemic language about his political opponents helps us trace the emotional-epistemic ideals at work. Acknowledgement of complexity is cast as “crazy,” while an emotional attachment to cishetero-patriarchy is the only reasonable stance.

An empirical understanding of the role of emotion and politics in fascist epistemic culture may help learning scientists make stronger commitments to democracy and against dehumanization, while avoiding critiques of partisanship.

Author

• Tanner Vea, Pennsylvania State University
  Presenting Author