Search

This theoretical paper proposes to expand our understanding of 'confessions of racism' in the context of anti-racist education through the lens of 'affective governmentality'. Confessions of racism are admissions of racism or declarations of privilege that foreground self-criticism and self-purification. The notion of affective governmentality turns attention to how confessions of racism function to normalize psychologized, individualized and depoliticized understandings of racism. Rather than outrightly dismissing confessions of racism though, given their probable persistence in popular and education discourses, an attempt is made here to re-frame them in order to highlight structural racism and inspire transformative action. It is argued that this re-framing could provide students and educators engaged in anti-racist education with a more effective path ahead. The paper concludes by suggesting that confessions of racism are used pedagogically in the classroom to revitalize attention to structural racism and transformative action rather than to foreground self-criticism and self-purification.

This paper seeks to revisit the concept of "pedagogy of discomfort" through the combined lenses of Lauren Berlant's work on "inconvenience" and recent theorization of "affective infrastructure" to clarify how an infrastructural understanding of "discomfort-as-inconvenience" might provide deeper insights about the pedagogical and political risks and possibilities of discomfort. In particular, the paper highlights three insights: first, it expands our understanding of discomfort by situating it in the broader context of the inconvenience of other people, as an ethics and politics of coexistence; second, it calls for a contextual approach of a pedagogy of discomfort that examines discomfort as a multifaceted affective event entangled with other material, social, and political elements; and third, it enables educators to create environments that could enrich the moral and political potential of a pedagogy of discomfort, by paying attention to the affective conditions in which students and educators find themselves when they encounter different manifestations of discomfort-as-inconvenience.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how teachers understand the role of affects and emotions in manifestations of the nation and nationalism in schools. In particular, the paper examines how teachers' political orientations -- conservative or progressive -- are entangled with their understandings of 'affective nationalism.' To do so, the authors use data from an exploratory qualitative study with 21 Greek-Cypriot primary and secondary school teachers, who were interviewed about their understandings of nationalism, affect and school practices in the context of ethnically divided Cyprus. The longstanding Cyprus conflict fuels intense national feelings that are manifested in school commemorations, practices, and policies, hence the study explores the extent to which teachers understand these manifestations as affective nationalism. The findings show that teachers' political orientations are intertwined with how teachers view and evaluate nationalism and its affective dimensions. The analysis provides insights into the different pedagogical and political visions that compete at the intersections of affect, nation, and nationalism in schools.

This conceptual paper aims to discuss how to address the dangers emerging from scholars' proclamations of positionality and identity in debates on decolonisation in comparative education. The approach proposed engages with two ideas that were central to the work of French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy and were further developed by Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe: "dis-enclosure" and "being-in-common." The author argues that these two ideas offer an alternative ontology of decolonisation that challenges the binary logic of identitarian thinking (e.g. western/non-western; white/non-white) in which proclamations of positionality and identity may often be rooted. This argument highlights the theoretical and political advantages of adopting a non-identitarian perspective for decolonisation debates in comparative education. The paper concludes with considering the implications of this alternative ontology of decolonisation in comparative education, with a specific focus on how scholars can foreground a shared responsibility for 'reparative futures' in research, writing, and teaching.

This paper suggests that the phenomenon of 'cancel culture' has significant pedagogical implications for teacher education. In particular, the analysis problematises the phenomenon of cancel culture, focusing on how issues relating to race, racism and structural injustice are framed in social media. It is argued that for teacher education programs wrestling with how to guide teachers to deal with cancel culture, it is not enough to emphasise critical thinking, media literacy, debate and free speech. It is also important to avoid reproducing social media's framing of cancel culture as an individualised and psychologised phenomenon, and urge teachers to pay attention to structural issues of race, racism and injustice. It is suggested that despite the political or other risks involved, teacher education programs can make a valuable contribution to public debates by engaging cancel culture in ways that nurture vigilance and restorative justice measures.

This paper contributes to international scholarship on racial literacy in teacher education. Specifically, we consider filmic counter stories as bodies that carry an affective charge with the potential to ignite dialogic and embodied/emotional learning. The football documentary The Final Quarter is our case study. This film traces the racially explosive final years of First Nations Australian, Adam Goodes' elite playing career. The film floodlights football as a site for public pedagogy where people learn racism, with the film offering means of developing racial literacy through examining its encounters. The paper describes racial literacy and establishes affect/embodiment as a contribution to the field. We analyse the film using an affective-discursive lens and genealogical methodology and consider implications for teacher education. We argue that language is insufficient for understanding racism and that the affective intensities activated by film may help to pedagogically illuminate the role of emotions in reproducing racism.

The goal of this paper is to explore arguments about the moral (in)appropriateness of counter-contempt as a justified moral and pedagogical response to racist contempt. Drawing on debates for and against contempt in moral philosophy, the paper suggests a "contextual" approach to contempt that pays attention to both the specifics of the concrete situation that agents are in when they are experiencing racist contempt and the context of the agents themselves, understood as the conceptual and affective tools that are available to them in order to discern and challenge the meaning of racist contempt. The paper discusses the moral and pedagogical dilemmas entailed in efforts to cultivate in the classroom (and beyond) the "right" kind of contempt--both as a pedagogical stance and as a political message--which does not backfire but instead inspires a productive engagement with racism.

This article examines how trauma and affective injustice permeate the school life trajectory of a female student (Sofia) in Argentina. The study is theoretically grounded in the field of trauma studies in education and contributes to this literature by attending to affective injustice, a concept that has not received much attention yet. This study foregrounds Sofia's experience of affective injustice and demonstrates that this concept is crucial in further understanding students' experiences of affective trauma in school. Assembling rich materials (report cards, interviews, psychologists' reports, social media posts, autobiographical texts) that span over a period of 17 years, the study uses qualitative perspectives to show how Sofia understands and experiences affective injustice in various phases of her school life. In particular, these experiences are presented in the form of an assemblage of expressions showing how Sofia communicates her claims of affective injustice using varied means and resources ranging from linguistic, behavioural, biographical, creative, emotional, bodily, and artistic expression. The paper concludes with a discussion of the educational implications of the study.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to provide a clarification of how 'education in a postliberal world' differs from the concept of 'postliberal education;' and second, to contribute to an understanding of the backlash against liberalism and liberal education in recent years. The paper is primarily conceptual and only secondarily descriptive in that it prioritizes the importance of clarifying the conceptual haze surrounding the notion of postliberalism and related terms (i.e. illiberalism, anti-liberalism); it is argued that this conceptualization is necessary as these concepts have different educational implications in different political contexts. The paper outlines a number of broad dimensions that are important to explore in future research on the entanglement between postliberalism and education; it also discusses how the concept of postliberalism could be used fruitfully to account for changes in education in ways that take into consideration the recent critiques against liberalism and liberal education.

This article puts in conversation Georges Bataille's contributions to critical theory of fascism with contemporary affect theory, and outlines some implications for antifascist education. The purpose is to critically engage with the role of affectivity in fascism and antifascist education and unpack the risks entailed in antifascist education as a case of 'affective education,' thereby extending our understanding of the affective dimensions of antifascist education. If antifascism requires attunement to antifascist affects and sensibilities, as Bataille suggests, then there are important ethical and political risks for antifascist education. In particular, if antifascist education must stoke a passion for democracy, then there are concerns about where to draw the line that enables a non-dogmatic, non-manipulative antifascism. The article discusses whether or how it might be possible to remedy some of these ethical and political risks through particular strategies.

The aim of this paper is to turn attention to the role of affects and emotions in fundamentalism, and examine two interrelated dilemmas that emerge when university instructors come across students who express fundamentalist beliefs and emotions in the classroom: pedagogical and ethical dilemmas. The paper examines these dilemmas through the analysis of an incident in which the author engaged with a student holding religious fundamentalist beliefs. The analysis brings two significant bodies of literature together -- the literature on fundamentalism in different disciplines and the body of work that theorizes the cultural politics of affect and emotion -- and sheds further light on an emerging concept in education, namely, 'emotional fundamentalism.' Through an examination of the ways in which affects and emotions are entangled with fundamentalism, the paper suggests ways in which educators and scholars may expand the concept of 'emotional fundamentalism' and rethink how we might engage with it in higher education.

This paper examines teachers' understandings of affective indoctrination in a conflict-affected society, focusing on how teachers' political orientations are entangled with these understandings. The exploration is conducted through a qualitative study of Greek-Cypriot primary and secondary school teachers who are identified as either conservative or progressive. The findings highlight that regardless of political orientation, teachers interpret the term indoctrination through a negative lens. However, teachers of progressive orientation view affective indoctrination as a part of everyday educational practices, whereas teachers of conservative orientation understand affective indoctrination as an exceptional case. The paper discusses the implications for teaching and teacher education. The relevance of teachers' political orientation makes it all the more necessary that teachers and teacher educators delve deeper into the political and pedagogical implications of the entanglement between political orientations and understandings of affective indoctrination in schools.

This article demonstrates how the use of affect in literature education invokes trajectories of nationalism and/or solidarity using the case of postcolonial Cyprus as example. For this, we analyse secondary school literature curricula and textbooks in both Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot educational systems. We do so by making use of affect theory -- mainly 'affective nationalism' and 'affective solidarity' -- met with Henri Lefebvre's 'rhythms' and 'truth of space,' and Raymond Williams' dominant, emergence, residual positions. Our focus questions are: What social, cultural, political meanings about the ethnic self and 'Other' are produced by literature curricula and textbooks? How can affect be used to regulate students and meanings in literature education, and what kind of 'alternative' affective meanings emerge? Our analysis shows that literature can be used in educational settings to evoke simultaneously conflicting affective ideologies and feelings. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed for literature education in postcolonial settings.

The purpose of this article is to examine the ethical tensions and considerations that arise in the world language classroom from using pedagogies of discomfort. Although pedagogies of discomfort have mostly been seen through a positive lens in the literature for engaging students with difficult issues in the classroom, there are ethical concerns, particularly in relation to the harm that students might experience. To illustrate these ethical concerns and their implications in the world language classroom, we draw on data from a number of projects in which pedagogies of discomfort have been used in university classrooms. The analysis of examples shows that while some sort of ethical violence is inevitable, there are pedagogical ways to minimize the harm on students. The article concludes by raising further ethical and pedagogical questions for exploration in the context of using pedagogies of discomfort in the world language classroom.

In this theoretical paper, I bring together work on structural, racial, and affective gaslighting to turn attention to 'affective injustice' as a distinct kind of injustice suffered by victims of racial gaslighting in educational settings. Under this conceptual framework, it is possible to explore how education spaces facilitate racial gaslighting as a form of affective injustice -- from the intentional prejudices of individuals (students and educators) to the unconscious biases and insidious norms that allow the production of racialized practices and pathologize students and educators of color for their resistance against white supremacy. I argue that a social and political theory of racial gaslighting in education offers an opportunity to identify and analyze how gaslighting mobilizes racialized stereotypes and structural inequalities to perpetuate affective injustice against marginalized educators and students. The paper concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and pedagogical implications of examining racial gaslighting in education.

In this article we address the problem of sentimentality in teaching and learning difficult histories in higher education. While sentimentality has been widely theorised, empirical research is scarce. Here we contribute an empirical investigation describing how university students in an Argentinian setting engaged with histories of loss, death, and suffering through specific pedagogical activities in ways that minimised the risks of 'empty sentimentality'. These tasks fostered students' use of linguistic and non-linguistic (artistic, semiotic) means of meaning-making in connection with difficult histories and enabled deeper emotional engagement. The study shows that the creation of critical affective spaces in the classroom cultivated students' responsibility for engaging in transformative action. We suggest that educators need to explicitly challenge the often moralising and self-indulgent character of teaching and learning difficult histories, as this character is constitutive of the very sentimentality with which pedagogical practice is so frequently charged.

The aim of this article is to call for qualitative researchers in education and other human sciences to grapple with recent developments in trauma studies and engage in reconceptualizing their research practices so that they pay attention to the catastrophic effects of colonialism on individuals and communities. Joining other critics who have called for decolonizing trauma studies, I turn to decolonial and postcolonial perspectives to reorient qualitative research practices for the collection and analysis of trauma narratives and suggest a decolonial understanding of trauma in education. In particular, I draw on literature from decolonizing trauma studies to propose two decolonial research orientations for qualitative researchers: (1) Acknowledging the problems of Eurocentric approaches to trauma in education; (2) reinventing research practices that are delinked from Western frameworks of understanding trauma, while embracing "other(ed)" ways of doing research on trauma. Specific examples are provided to show how researchers might advance these orientations.

The aim of this paper is to bring into conversation the concept of 'affective witnessing' and the notion of 'vulnerability' as an affective relation to reconceptualise the framework for understanding affective witnessing of vulnerability in pedagogical theory and practice. In particular, the paper explores how paying close attention to affectivity and embodied knowledge in the practice of witnessing vulnerability in educational settings -- particularly in the context of new media forms, platforms, devices and infrastructures -- may expand possibilities for engaging students in transformative action that challenges inequality and injustice. It is argued that providing opportunities for students to engage in 'faithful witnessing' -- that is, witnessing as an act of aligning oneself with oppressed peoples and taking action against inequality and injustice -- requires taking into consideration the affective dynamics of witnessing human vulnerability.

This paper theorizes time, affect, and politics as entangled by foregrounding the notion of "chronopolitics" as "affective milieus" in higher education. In doing so, the analysis emphasizes how time discourses and practices are embodied and affective, sometimes becoming sedimented, while other times functioning as a means of disruption. The paper draws on existing studies in neoliberal academia to argue that changing academics' affective habits created by dominant time discourses and practices requires the disruption of affective milieus in which time is channeled, routed and molded. The paper theorizes the potential of affect to be deployed as a means of disrupting sedimented social and political formations, practices and patterns of time and temporality in higher education and cultivating new affective habits in academia. The paper suggests that understanding time-as-affect in higher education makes an important contribution to existing research and theorizing on how academics are affected by time and temporality norms.

This paper emerges from a set of questions about what it means pedagogically to undertake the paradoxical and difficult task of "unlearning" the emotional experience of imperialism. The analysis discusses the notion of 'emotional imperialism' and the various forms in might take; to do so, the author draws on concepts from affect theory (Reddy's notion of 'emotional regimes') and decolonial theory (Fanon's concept of 'affective ankylosis') to shed light on what emotional imperialism might involve in social and political life, including education. The analysis concludes with a discussion of the political, theoretical and pedagogical implications of 'unlearning emotional imperialism' in educational settings. It is argued that calls for undoing and unlearning emotional imperialism in education are an inseparable part of new onto-epistemological, affective and political imaginaries that aim to transform colonial violence into nonimperial ways of living in our common world.

The objective of this article is to engage in a critical review of Roberto Esposito's biopolitical account by including a thoroughgoing interrogation of racism and white supremacy through the lens of Black affect studies. It is argued that both white supremacy studies and Esposito's framework could work side-by-side in ways that are productive for affirmative educational biopolitics. In particular, the analysis highlights two insights: first, engagement with white supremacy as a biopolitical category--in particular, white supremacy as an affective embodiment--is essential for the ability of education to interrogate the racialization of Black bodies; and, second, attentiveness to Black affect in biopolitical accounts is crucial for the decentering of white supremacy in education. These insights broaden the conceptual parameters of educational biopolitics by foregrounding the affective biopower of racism and white supremacy as central to affirmative educational biopolitics.

This paper suggests that scholarship on the affective life of neoliberalism in academia needs to exercise more caution when it invokes the notions of "neoliberal subjects" and "neoliberal affects." It is argued that this scholarship needs to expand its conceptual and theoretical vocabulary to recognize the multiplicities of new injunctions and prohibitions on how academics and students feel in different academic contexts in relation to neoliberalism(s). The paper surveys representative studies in higher education that show how "affective subjectivation" takes place in neoliberal academia to unravel the underlying presuppositions made about neoliberal subjects. Based on this survey, it is suggested that there are methodological, theoretical, and political reasons to avoid invoking a monolithic notion of "neoliberal subjects" in academia; rather, it is crucial to make more modest claims that are sensitive to the nuances of particular neoliberalisms and the real conditions for the formation of affects in particular academic contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the concept of "fugitive pedagogies of dread" contributes to affective, ontological and political reorientations of dread in teaching and learning for/about the future. To do so, the paper puts in conversation the concepts of "fugitivity" (from Black liberatory practices), "anticipation" and "radical futurity" (from the field of Future Studies in education), and the notion of "dread" as a political affect/emotion (from the recent affective turn in the social sciences and humanities). It is argued that the concept of "fugitive pedagogies of dread" enables students and educators to contest monolithic understandings of "dreadful" visions of futures and reframe dread as a contingent and transformative possibility. The paper concludes by discussing the pedagogical and theoretical implications of this concept for scholars and educators in the fields of education, pedagogy and cultural studies.

In this article we discuss how the design of a higher education language course can challenge the power of sentimentality in the classroom. In particular, the paper analyses the role of literature in intercultural language education through the lens of affect theory, while focusing on minimizing sentimentality in the classroom, especially when the literary texts used confront students with trauma-related content involving human rights abuse, death and suffering, and trigger discomforting emotions in students such as sadness, anguish, fear and more. We suggest that it is important for educators and students in higher education to recognize the affective and biopolitical dimensions of literature teaching in intercultural language education. This is illustrated through the design of an English language course syllabus in an Argentinian higher education setting. The paper concludes with a discussion of the curricular and pedagogical implications for intercultural language education.

In bringing together the literature on post-democracy and theoretical work on the politics of affective societies, this article explores how democratic education might benefit from a sustained examination of negative emotions and affects associated with democratic disenchantment. In particular, the analysis highlights what is gained by introducing a more pedagogically and politically robust approach toward 'ugly' and 'negative' feelings in the context of democratic education in schools, namely, a pedagogical approach that recognizes the gloomy ramifications of post-democracy in the daily life of teachers and young people and inspires transformative action that contributes toward practical 'democratic innovations' in the sphere of civil society. This article contributes toward ongoing efforts for the renewal of democratic education in schools by urging teachers and researchers to rethink pedagogically how to navigate productively the ugly and negative feelings of democratic disenchantment.

This paper theorizes the affective and moral grounding of "best practice" policymaking, particularly how best practice operates as an affective regime that encourages certain affective norms. To illustrate this, the author takes up the example of best practices promoted by the CoE's "Digital Citizenship Education Handbook" for the acquisition of digital citizenship competences. It is shown that the distribution of best practices creates a set of affective conditions--especially through cultivating certain affective skills/competences and ethics/morals--that govern the ways in/though which best practices ought to be appropriately materialized. The paper discusses two implications of this analysis for education policymaking and policymakers. The first implication suggests that there needs to be work informing policymakers how affect works to create regimes of best practice; the second implication emphasizes the importance of working with policymakers to explore how they could challenge affective regimes of best practice.

This paper adds to the growing literature that critically examines the cultural politics of the OECD's framework of global competence by turning our attention to the 'affective ideology' underlying this framework, namely, how affect is used ideologically to produce specific subjectivities and moralities in students. Building upon the work of affect theories in education policy, this paper explores how the concept of global and intercultural competences, as it is manifested in the OECD global competence framework, constitutes a site of affective sense-making and affective governance. In particular, the analysis reveals two ways in which this happens: first, by capitalising on global and intercultural competencies as self-centred, emotional skills to sell policy and pedagogical ideas and tools; second, by using certain affects as moral imperatives to shape global competence in intercultural communication education. The paper concludes with a discussion of the research, policy, and pedagogy implications for intercultural communication education.

The aim of this article is to use decolonial thinking, as applied in the field of AI, to explore the ethical and pedagogical implications for higher education teaching and learning. The questions driving this article are: What does a decolonial approach to AI imply for higher education teaching and learning? How can educators, researchers and students interrogate the coloniality of AI in higher education? Which strategies can be useful for undoing the ethics of digital neocolonialism in higher education? While there is work on decolonial theory in AI as well as literature on the decolonization of higher education, there is not much theorization that brings those literatures together to develop a decolonial conceptual framework for ethical AI in higher education teaching and learning. This article offers this conceptual framing and suggests decolonial strategies that challenge algorithmic coloniality and colonial AI ethics in the context of higher education teaching and learning.

This article contributes to contemporary theorising in comparative education by exploring how narratives of 'victims' and 'perpetrators' in postcolonial settings are understood in terms of affective justice. "Affective justice" is introduced as a framework for understanding justice as an affective practice. Through the analysis of two examples of girls' education in the Global South -- Malala's shooting in Pakistan and the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls in Nigeria -- the paper shows how these stories are circulated through sentimental narratives that fail to recognise long-standing colonial conceptualisations of education and schoolchildren. It is suggested that the notion of affective justice helps reorient understandings of education in postcolonial settings by turning educators' attention to three domains -- pedagogical practices, embodied affects, and emotional regimes. It is argued that a nuanced conceptualisation of affective justice offers insights into how educators and students can move beyond sentimental narratives to acknowledge coloniality and structural injustice.

This article builds on Charles W. Mills' foundational concept of white racial ignorance to expand his work by exploring the inner dynamics and practices of teacher education (its rationales, student teaching, practicums, pedagogies, curriculum) and explaining how the emotionalities of whiteness play a significant role in the ways that whiteness persists perniciously in teacher education. In order to hold whiteness accountable and culpable, it is argued that teacher education needs to stop emotionally deflecting anti-racist critiques by over pontificating their lackluster commitments to race, a practice which only ignores, and diverts attention away from the hegemonic presence of whiteness. It suggests that teacher educators need to help pre-service and in-service teachers be attentive to how racial politics are felt, acted upon, and reproduced, and how emotionalities of whiteness become 'ordinary' in everyday life in schools. The article concludes by outlining some implications for research and theory in critical whiteness studies.

This article argues that it is important to understand militarism in schools as an affectively felt practice that reproduces particular feelings in youth and the society. The analysis draws on affect theory and especially feminist scholarly work that theorises "militarism as affect" to consider how militarism is affectively lived in schools. In particular, the article examines the ethical and political implications of affective militarism in schools and suggests an 'affective methodology' for exploring militarism's affective logics in schools. It is also suggested that resisting militarism in schools involves a serious ethico-political dilemma, namely, how to engage with the value of honouring fallen soldiers without inadvertently condoning the moral and political ideology of militarism. In seeking insights into the affective dimensions of militarism in schools, it is crucial to identify the complicated, productive "and" ambivalent intersections between militarism in schools and broader moral and political economies of military cultures.

How should educators deal with conspiracy theories in the classroom, if at all? Do the epistemic deficiencies of some conspiracy theories make them easy prey for debunking? Can the moral and political dangers that certain conspiracy theories pose to democratic societies justify educators avoiding addressing conspiracy theories in the classroom? These questions are at the heart of this essay. Its purpose is to assess both the promises and perils of whether and under which conditions it might be pedagogically productive to address conspiracy theories in the classroom. In particular, it is argued that debunking conspiracy theories in the classroom from a narrow epistemic lens (fact-checking) is not only impossible, but also unproductive. It is suggested that a fruitful trajectory to deal with conspiracy theories is to go beyond treating them merely as a narrow epistemic problem and consider the ethical and political motivations and implications of conspiracy theories.

This article argues that a combined lens of affect theory and the aesthetics of religion provides scholarship with new methodological and theoretical insights for phenomenological religious education. These insights demonstrate the analytic value of understanding religion in terms of its affective and aesthetic dimensions, which offer renewed explanatory power for the variety of religious experiences individuals and communities undergo. In particular, these insights allow educators and students to explore what drives religious practices in everyday life without resorting to essentialist, reductionist or universalist accounts. It is suggested that reframing phenomenological approaches in religious education has the potential to make a vital contribution to developing new sensibilities of the 'secular' and the 'religious', especially in contemporary multi-religious societies. Finally, it is argued that the innovations offered by reframed phenomenological approaches provide a promising theoretical and methodological platform in religious education for engaging with the affective and aesthetic dimensions of religion.

This essay puts in conversation notions of diversity, interculturalism and multiculturalism with decolonial scholarship, and then discusses the theoretical and methodological implications for meta-intercultural education -- that is, a perspective that reconceptualises intercultural education anchored in critical and decolonial perspectives. It is suggested that a decolonising diversity approach opens new pathways for critical responses to the global discourses and practices of diversity that reinforce particular forms of colonial violence through intercultural education policies and practices. It is argued that this approach offers new insights that enable practical, everyday education interventions which disrupt institutionalised diversity work. Importantly, this approach does not mean a blanket rejection of everything that is 'Western' or 'European' and replacing it with other centric forms of knowledge production, but rather building upon decolonial critique to critically interrogate key concepts and transform our ways of thinking about interculturality and diversity in education.

How does a world of rival victimhoods disrupt our understandings of the educational subject? In which ways do competing claims of victimhood and their connections with justice have an impact on everyday educational practices? These questions are at the heart of this essay. The analysis conceptualizes the affective logic of victimhood as a terrain of struggle over competing claims to suffering, trauma and injury. The argument is that victimhood works by tactically mobilizing effective claims to suffering, trauma or injury for moral and political gains. The paper highlights implications of this analysis for everyday educational practices, discourses and relationships, and discusses the extent to which a pedagogical approach that engages students with the affective claims of victimhood -- namely, who claims to be a victim, from which position and to which effects -- can offer productive ways of navigating through competing claims of victimhood.

This paper outlines a set of analytical perspectives grounded in affect theory for decolonising religious education. In particular, these perspectives are: recognising the role of religious feelings; examining the extent to which decolonial affective spaces can be created in the classroom; and, understanding how contemporary public discourses about multiculturalism and religious difference are affectively experienced by students and educators in their everyday lives. It is argued that these perspectives contribute to push further the uncovering of colonial legacies within contemporary religious education, especially in relation to Islamophobia. Further, it is emphasised that it is imperative for the project of decolonising religious education to pay attention to the affective dimensions of decolonisation; this implies not only interrogating the affective legacies of coloniality such as Islamophobia, but also producing decolonised affective communities in classrooms and schools.

This paper suggests that cultivating an aesthetics of attention in education can be a valuable affective tool for combatting the kind of numbness often associated with the resilience of racism. The notion of "attention" broadens the frame of analysis of racial violence by taking into consideration the affective and aesthetic dimensions of attention. The paper brings together Taylor Rogers' recent theorization of "affective numbness" and Simone Weil's theory of attention to argue that the cultivation of an aesthetics of attention to others' personhood has a potentially pivotal role in education to restore hearing of non-dominantly-situated persons' cry of injustice. The article suggests pedagogical ways of engaging teachers and students affectively to resist their numbness in the classroom. The analysis argues that "paying attention" to racial violence can contribute to creating "reparative futures" in education, but care is needed to avoid re-traumatizing students of color and other traumatized students.

This paper turns our attention to a rather neglected dimension of (de)colonization, namely, the affective elements of (de)colonization in the context of higher education. "Affective decolonization" highlights that decolonization has to also happen at the level of affective life. The notion of affective decolonization complements the work taking placing in the realm of "intellectual decolonization" in higher education, by exploring what it would mean to decolonize the deeply affective structures and sensibilities of coloniality entrenched in contemporary universities, especially in the Global North. The analysis traces the potentiality of a particular affect, namely, "decolonizing solidarity," and illustrates how it might be possible to build deep decolonizing solidarities within and across higher education institutions. The paper proposes that the deployment of a "public pedagogy" of decolonizing solidarity pays explicit attention to affective decolonization and works to create teaching and learning environments in higher education that nurture affective practices of decolonizing solidarity.

This article explores how the concept of affective infrastructure might offer a productive vantage point from which to theorize the ways that affects condition education policy and politics in education. In particular, the article theorizes 'affective infrastructure' to discuss the potentialities that emerge in struggles to formulate and enact new political imaginaries for a more inclusive and equitable future in education. The analysis turns to recent literature in education policy in order to identify the extent to which the notion of 'affective infrastructure' is used, and emphasizes the political significance of 'affective infrastructure' in education policy. Finally, the article explicates a number of future research trajectories in education policy along two 'sides' of 'affective infrastructure,' namely, affects as products of infrastructures, and affective conditions as producers of infrastructures. It is argued that an affective infrastructural lens can offer new insights into education spaces, practices, and policies.