The aim of this article is twofold: first, it seeks to discuss the relationship between democracy and colonization, and to examine the implications of this relationship for democratic education and, second, it turns to decolonial thinking as a resource for critiquing and reconstructing "radical democratic education." A decolonial…

This essay contributes to scholarly discussions on the affective politics of demagoguery, especially in relation to the rhetoric of white victimhood and resentment, by exploring how civics education could formulate an anti-demagogic pedagogical response. Contemporary understandings of demagoguery as a rhetoric that emphasizes in-group identity and…

This paper outlines a set of analytical perspectives grounded in affect theory for decolonising religious education. In particular, these perspectives are: recognising the role of religious feelings; examining the extent to which decolonial affective spaces can be created in the classroom; and, understanding how contemporary public discourses…

This essay draws on the concept of "agonistic emotions" and "affects" to think with some of the arguments of Chantal Mouffe's political theory and discusses what this means pedagogically in handling far right rhetoric in the classroom. To show the possibilities of this theorization of agonistic emotions and affects, the essay…

This paper argues that it is important for educators in democratic education to understand how the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, the United States and around the world can never be viewed apart from the affective investments of populist leaders and their supporters to essentialist ideological visions of nationalism, racism, sexism and…

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…

I highlight the importance of paying attention to the affective strategies of abolition pedagogies in higher education to mobilize abolitionist praxis. Affective strategies can make a contribution in either changing or reproducing the affective culture that has long been established at the colonial university. In the analysis here, I argue that…

The present study examines individuals' thinking during and after reading controversial historical accounts and the possible contribution of epistemic beliefs, emotions, and prior-knowledge in this context. Young adults (n = 39) were asked to read two accounts about a recent war in their country, an own-side account -- from a historian of their…

The present paper theorises white discomfort as not an individual psychologised emotion, but rather as a social and political affect that is part of the production and maintenance of white colonial structures and practices. Therefore, it is suggested that white discomfort cannot be critically addressed merely in pedagogic terms and conditions…

This conceptual and theoretical paper has two goals: (1) to analyze the consequences of psychologizing resilience in higher education and (2) to describe the tenets of a "critical approach" of resilience in higher education and how they might be productive in addressing race/racism, inequality and social change. It is argued that the…

This paper argues that a decolonising approach in human rights education (HRE) needs to examine human rights issues through a critical lens that interrogates the Eurocentric grounding of human rights universals and advances the project of re-contextualising human rights in the historical horizon of modernity/coloniality. This alternative…

This paper turns to the work of the Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos and explores how a set of concepts he developed over the years may constitute valuable tools in the task of decolonising and pluriversalising Human Rights Education (HRE). Informed by decolonial theory, Santos highlights that the struggle for global social…

This article draws on the concept of race and racism as "technologies of affect" to think with some of the interventions and arguments of critical affect studies. The author suggests that critical affect theories enable the theorization of race and racism as affective modes of being that recognize the historically specific assemblages…

Drawing on one of the author's experiences of teaching white teacher candidates in an urban university, this paper argues for the importance of interrogating the ways that benign emotions (e.g., pity and caring) are sometimes hidden expressions of disgust for the Other. Using critical race theory, whiteness studies, and critical emotion…

This paper constructs an argument about the emotionally complicated and compromised learning spaces of teaching about anti-racism in higher education. These are spaces steeped in complex structures of feeling that evoke strong and often discomforting emotions on the part of both teachers and students. In particular, the author theorizes the notion…