Love as ethico-political practice: Inventing reparative pedagogies of aimance in “disjointed” times

ABSTRACT

This article draws on the conceptualization of love as ethico-political practice and a nonidentitarian strategy for political communities to present possibilities for thinking pedagogically about what the late Moroccan writer and philosopher Abdelkebir Khatibi called ’aimance‘. Khatibis's constructed term for affinity, affection, tolerance and friendship is a powerful concept for invoking love as a force for social change. The article builds on theorization of love as a transformative political concept in critical education to highlight further that aimance offers important new pedagogical openings along two directions: first, the ethical and political concept of aimance allows educators and students to conceptualize and practice a form of ‘de-colonial love’ that recognizes humanity and affinity across difference; second, an ethico-political practice of love as aimance encourages educators to invent pedagogies that are ‘reparative’, that is, pedagogies which attempt to address wound, injury and suffering within a frame that takes into consideration histories of violence, oppression, and social injustice, without falling into the trap of sentimentality. This article asks, then, how a consideration of aimance might enable critical pedagogues rethink the very contours of love as an ethico-political practice in education.

Notes

1. I am indebted to one of the anonymous reviewers for recommending McLaren's recent views on love and revolution.

2. As Babana-Hampton and colleagues (2010) explained, this term has no exact equivalence in English, so the meaning of the term is used based on Khatibi's definition provided here—namely, in the epistolary exchange between Khatibi and El Khayat (2010). As Khatibi himself says (p. 29), he did not invent the term, as was affirmed by certain writers in France.

3. Khatibi (1938–2009) was a Moroccan philosopher, novelist, poet, art critic, and author of more than 25 books; El Khayat (1944– ) is a well-known Moroccan intellectual, psychiatrist, political thinker, poet, novelist, and author (Babana-Hampton et al., 2010).

4. Derrida talks of friendship as a politics—as self-interested. He also writes (to Levinas) that our propensity to harm the other is as much a possibility as our loving the other. I am indebted to one of the anonymous reviewers for pointing this out.

5. The interface between Islamic and Western thought is evident throughout the epistolary exchange between the two intellectuals; namely, how ideas from both traditions are dispersed in their letters.

6. I am thankful to one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting this idea.

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Notes on contributors

Michalinos Zembylas

Michalinos Zembylas is an Associate Professor of Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies at the Open University of Cyprus. He is Visiting Professor and Research Fellow at the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice, University of the Free State, South Africa, and at the Centre for Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. He has written extensively on emotion and affect in relation to social justice pedagogies, intercultural and peace education, human rights education, and citizenship education. His recent books include Emotion and Traumatic Conflict: Re-claiming Healing in Education (Oxford, 2015), Methodological Advances in Research on Emotion and Education (with P. Schutz; Springer, 2016), and Peace Education in a Conflict-Troubled Society (with C. Charalambous and P. Charalambous; Cambridge, 2016). He received the Distinguished Researcher Award in “Social Sciences and Humanities” for 2016 from the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation.