Affect & Anarchism (Poster 1)

• In Event: Theory-Stories and Social Studies Education

Abstract

Affect
This presentation conceives of affect as potential—an interrupter of the regimes of sameness that dominate the majority of P–12 schooling and higher education. As it stands, schooling is largely concerned with making sure students leave the classroom with the same norms and understandings. Added to this, if there is a politics put forth in most social studies education curriculum, it is a politics that emphasizes conformity and top-down decision-making. Through storying, this chapter aims to show how affect as difference, as potential, can be used by teachers to facilitate multiplicitous reactions to a scene or event, an approach to unfolding life in schools that is incommensurable with standardized approaches to education and curriculum.

Anarchism
The presenters of this paper are teacher educators that find anarchism to be particularly useful in reframing democratic responsibilities and working to rethink how we teach social studies in our schools. Anarchism is not a lawless, anything-goes society but rather a way of (re)organizing social relations horizontally to undermine hierarchies of domination. Drawing on social and ecological anarchism, the authors share in this work how they work with pre-service and in service teachers to propose imagining and enacting the possibilities for reclaiming decision- making from centralized systems corrupted by deep commitments to capitalism, human and white supremacy, and patriarchy, and working toward decentralized decision-making that is situational, local, and values diversity, democracy, and sustainability.

Authors

• Peter M Nelson, University of British Columbia

• John J. Lupinacci, Washington State University

• Brandon Edwards-Schuth, Augusta University