Relation and emotion in antiracist pedagogies: Social studies teachers encounter the legacy sites

ABSTRACT

This article charts the experiences that emerged as part of a two-day workshop in Montgomery, Alabama at the Equal Justice Initiative’s (EJI) Legacy Sites that took place in the spring of 2023. In this exploratory case study of seven social studies teachers from two counties in Georgia, the author explores what emerged in participants’ emotional, relational, and affective experiences that exist alongside, and are also tangled up with, the more rational/cognitive elements of factual historical knowledge. Using a psychoanalytic concept called “political mentalization,” the author illustrates the emotional and relational aspects of antiracist pedagogies that may be necessary for setting the conditions for transformational outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Affect
• antiracism
• emotion
• psychoanalysis