This conceptual paper suggests the notion of 'affective justice' as a means to critically address the problem of sentimentalism within Human Rights Education (HRE). Originating in sociolegal studies affective justice focuses on how legal frameworks for human rights generate embodied, affective experiences that allow learners to engage deeply with…

In this article, we examine how thinking with affect theory offers fertility within higher education studies to see and do teaching and learning differently. For many educators in universities, the idea that teaching is a cognitive process of information transmission is still taken-for-granted. These beliefs are visible through the persistence of…

Political polarization is often argued to be a major threat to democracy. This article examines whether the two different forms of polarization, ideological and affective, may risk some of the core assumptions of democratic legitimacy. The paper argues that ideological polarization is linked with increasingly radical ideological positions being…

To explore the affective domains embedded in academic development and teacher practice, a team of academic developers was invited to consider a poem and how it reflects the emotions and feelings underpinning experiences as teachers within Higher Education. We used a method of arts-informed, collective biography to evaluate a poem to draw upon and…

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…

While significant progress has been made in broadening information literacy's (IL's) scope, its conception of the user and their relationship to information remains painfully limited. This is particularly evident when the affective or emotional factors of information seeking behaviour are considered. Thus far, IL's models and discourses have…

This essay reconceptualizes fanaticism as an activity that does not rely on the condemnation of 'fanatical' acts as "a priori" 'irrational.' Rather, it theorizes fanaticism as a method of ethical and political critique against a regime of representation. It also argues that it is crucial to understand fanaticism through an approach that…

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…

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…

Aspirations have gained significant attention within educational anthropology and yet the effects (and affects) of the imperative to aspire that undergird educational projects have been underexamined. This paper argues that aspirations within the context of material depravity often produce immaterial precarity, which I index as affective states of…

The authors considered the capacious feeling that emerges from saying no to literacy practices, and the affective potential of saying no "as" a literacy practice. The authors highlight the affective possibilities of saying no to normative understandings of literacy, thinking with a series of vignettes in which children, young people, and…

The author introduces the concept of vitality and its relation to affect. Stern defined vitality as the feeling of flow and aliveness. The author drew on research from literacy, curriculum theory, and the work of Stern to argue for the value of the concept of vitality for thinking about how literacy comes to feel vital. The author argues that…

Given that the nature of narrative has gone largely unexamined in music education literature, the purpose of this philosophical inquiry is to consider whether narrative creation and telling might be more inherently liberating or confining than Bowman (2006) suggests. I argue that narratives are ordered, temporarily frozen accounts of complicated…

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…

Often used in the plural, "tantrum" denotes an uncontrolled outburst of anger and frustration, typically in a young child. In this paper we attempt to enact a feminist project of reclamation and reconfiguration of 'the toddler tantrum'. Drawing on a range of theoretical traditions, this paper investigates the complex yet generative…