Pedagogic affect: assembling an affirming ethics

ABSTRACT

This article takes as its focus the doing of pedagogic affect. We are not so much concerned with what pedagogic affect is as what it does and how it might do more. We revisit Spinozist concepts of affect, as taken up by Deleuze and Braidotti, in the context of affirmative ethics. Bringing assemblage thinking together with empirical material generated through two qualitative research projects, we map affect-ethics relations within a classroom-citizenship-test assemblage and a kinetic-fungi-tower-sculpture assemblage. Pedagogic affect emerges as constitutive of ethical subjectivities in a nexus of affect, pedagogy and power. We argue that attending to affective and material-discursive relationality in all pedagogic processes affords a practice of response-able pedagogy and invites an ethics of affirmation that augments the affective capacities of learner- and teacher-bodies, enlarging their potential to engage in ethical action.

KEYWORDS:

• Affect
• pedagogic affect
• relationality
• response-able pedagogy
• affirmative ethics
• assemblage

Acknowledgments

The first author’s research was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship. All research was conducted in accordance with protocols approved by the host institution’s Human Research Ethics Committee. Da(r)tafacts associated with the first author’s research are fully available on Figshare. Processed data are available in the associated PhD thesis (http://hdl.handle.net/11343/230614). The authors report no conflict of interests associated with the publication of this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The Immigration Museum forms part of Museums Victoria, which operates three state-owned museums in Melbourne. It primarily displays Australia’s immigration history. See https://museumsvictoria.com.au/.

2. Da(r)tafacts generated through the first author’s analytic process, such as Figure 1, are fully available through Figshare. Processed data are available in the associated PhD thesis. (http://hdl.handle.net/11343/230614)

3. https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/citizenship/test-and-interview/learn-about-citizenship-interview-and-test.