Necropolitics and sentimentality in education: the ethical, political and pedagogical implications of ‘making live and letting die’ in the current political climate

ABSTRACT

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 pedagogical intervention. This intervention entails numerous challenges such as: the risk of traumatising students; the danger of superficialising colonial histories, structural racism, and contemporary geopolitical complicities producing such deaths; and, the challenge of finding productive ways to respond pedagogically to the emotionally difficult spaces of learning that are created, without sentimentalising death. The analysis makes an attempt to reclaim the entangled meanings of necropolitics and sentimentality in pedagogical discourse and practice by re-visioning the sentimental in ways that interrogate the normalisation of death-making in the current political climate.

KEYWORDS:

• Necropolitics
• sentimentality
• pedagogy
• ethics
• politics
• dead-body images

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.