This paper draws on the concept of affective atmospheres to theorize how democracy and democratic education take hold and circulate in classrooms and schools. The paper asks under which circumstances affective atmospheres are experienced or even 'engineered', encompassing affective and material features that (de)legitimate democracy, democratic…

This paper brings together Arendt's insights on evil and thinking along with her concerns about the role of emotions in political life. The central questions driving this exploration are two: How does Arendt understand 'thinking' in her theory of evil and what can educators learn from this? What are her concerns about the role of emotions in…

This paper analyses the emotional governance of responses to terrorist attacks and examines the extent to which affective pedagogies in civic education may contest the emotional norms that are institutionalised in society. This analysis is important, not only because it makes visible how forms of violence (especially terrorism) have an emotional…

This article examines the important role of affect in pedagogical efforts to engage students with complicity in the social justice classroom. Recent theoretical shifts on affect and complicity enable education scholars and practitioners to move the focus away from what we do not want (i.e., more complicity) toward anti-complicity. The new openings…

This article engages with the notion of 'post-fascism' in contemporary times, and explores how attention to the affective ideology of post-fascism can inform pedagogical thinking that cultivates an "anti-fascist sensibility" in education. It is argued that to do so, it is necessary to somehow break fascism's grip on the body and its…

The aim of this article is to use necropolitics and sentimentality as theoretical entry points to broaden understandings of death as a form of power against subjugated (e.g. Black, migrant, refugee) lives. This theorising is approached through the dilemma of showing or not showing dead-body images in the classroom as an ethical, political and…

This paper asks: when political emotions are invoked in the classroom, can this be done without the process of democratic education degenerating into a form of emotional and/or political indoctrination? The source of inspiration for addressing this question is Hannah Arendt's political thought on emotion and education. The aim of the article is to…

This paper discusses Butler's theory on the possibility of precarity to serve as the nexus of ethical relations, while also exploring some of the pitfalls of her theorization to reconceptualize the pedagogical implications of a "critical pedagogy for precarity." In particular, the paper asks: How can precarity--understood as an…

This paper focuses on conceptualizing the notion of "affective nationalism" in education by addressing some key theoretical and methodological considerations. Theorizing the concept of affective nationalism in education is crucial for two reasons. First, it takes into consideration recent theoretical developments on affect, materiality,…

This article takes up Foucault's politics of human rights and suggests that it may constitute a point of departure for the renewal of HRE, not only because it rejects the moral superiority of humanism--the grounding for the dominant liberal framework of international human rights--but also because it makes visible the complexities of human rights…

This paper argues that it is important for educators in democratic education to understand how the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, the United States and around the world can never be viewed apart from the affective investments of populist leaders and their supporters to essentialist ideological visions of nationalism, racism, sexism and…

This essay draws on the concept of "agonistic emotions" and "affects" to think with some of the arguments of Chantal Mouffe's political theory and discusses what this means pedagogically in handling far right rhetoric in the classroom. To show the possibilities of this theorization of agonistic emotions and affects, the essay…

The main objective of this article is to discuss the affective dimension of resistance in critical pedagogy in a way that would recognize neoliberalism's affective repercussions. The point is not merely to show that affect is involved in the emergence of resistance in critical pedagogy, but rather to expand the articulation of resistance in…

The aim of the article is to describe and analyze the strategies used by teachers in their everyday encounters with those who express concerns towards peace education--parents, colleagues, head teachers, and students. The analysis uses a theoretical framework that builds upon critical peace education and brings into conversation the notions of…

This article is based on a year-long ethnographic research project on religious education (RE) in Greek-Cypriot schools and provides empirical evidence about the complexities emerging from teachers' attempts to address peace and security issues in a 'conflict-affected society'. The study shows that the reproduction of peace and security issues…