Welcome to an open lecture with professor Michalinos Zembylas
Michalinos Zembylas is Professor of Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies at the Open University of Cyprus. His work orient around questions concerning affectivity, critical posthumanism, and socially just pedagogies. With an extensive production of different publications, his most recent books are Critical Human Rights, Citizenship, and Democracy Education (2018) and Emotion and Traumatic Conflict (2015).
Time: 4 March 2019 14:00-16:00
Room: Vivi Täckholmsalen
Place: Stocholm university. P-huset, Svante Arrhenius väg 20A
Contact: Karin Gunnarsson. Email: karin.gunnarsson@hsd.su.se
The Affective Grounding of the Post-truth: Implications for Teaching and Learning
The aim of this lecture is to map a line of theorizing affect and its entanglement with the post-truth, and use this theorization to think about what it could mean for the role of educators—that is, what can be done in teaching/learning to respond critically to the affective infrastructures of post-truth politics? This question arises at a historical juncture of widespread views that post-truth politics—as exemplified in particular by Trump’s post-truth authoritarian administration— create an urgency for reframing post-truth experiences as productive pedagogical engagements. The lecture draws on affect theory to show how the affective grounding of post-truth claims works to govern our subjectivities and how emotions matter in constructing certain truths that reproduce social and political evils such as racism, sexism and xenophobia. The analysis shows how this nuanced understanding of affect, governmentality and post-truth can be helpful in educational settings to respond critically to post-truth politics, while paying attention to risks emerging from moralization or indoctrination.