Notes on:
Zembylas, M. (2012) 'Pedagogies of
strategic empathy: navigating through the
emotional complexities of anti-racism in higher
education'. Teaching in Higher
Education, 17 (2): 113-25.
Dave Harris
There seems to be a bit of a row back on the role
of empathy—it is OK as long as it is used
strategically, as it 'opens up affective spaces
which might eventually disrupt the emotional roots
of troubled knowledge -and admittedly long and
difficult task' (113).
Strong emotions like 'anger, resentment, and fear'
are found in discussions of racism and
anti-racism. Boler has warned us that
discomfort may be unavoidable and even necessary,
and others have shown how discomfort can 'block,
defuse, and distract the transformation of
students'. We can see the general outlines
in Ellsworth's 1989 critique of critical
pedagogy. The earlier Zembylas has also
argued that emotional responses need to be
addressed with 'explicit pedagogic attention' when
discussing these matters. This paper is
about what we might realistically expect and how
we might work tactically to act as '"conduits for
students' affective responses"'(citing Lindquist,
114).
Jansen has noted that the critical theory has
limits when making sense of troubled knowledge and
transforming those who carry its burden in divided
communities. Knowledge can be troubling and
discomforting. Jansen's example refers to
post apartheid South Africa, where troubled
knowledge includes 'white's knowledge about their
past' which can lead to 'shame, distress, and self
defensive anger [and] atonement'. Critical
theory might need to be supplemented with
additional pedagogical resources, focused on
emotional aspects specifically and they are
complexities. We have to realize that the
burden of dealing with troubled knowledge 'is
unevenly distributed'. Pedagogy should aim
at 'the formation of new affective alliances among
members of a divided community'. Strategic
empathy is one such resource, and he offers
prospects and risks: in particular, it involves
teachers having to empathize, sometimes against
their own emotions, with the troubled knowledge
that students carry, even if this troubled
knowledge disturbs other students. The
approach can undermined the emotional roots of
troubled knowledge and assist integration into
more socially just arrangements.
Personal experience shows the problem, teaching a
course on cultural difference and social
inequality at the Open University of Cyprus.
The assumption was that all participants were
homogeneous—Greek, orthodox Christians, white,
middle class teachers. Topics covered
included stereotyping, discrimination and racism
both in Cyprus and abroad, and various
communication and teaching models, including
multi-culturalism. The intention was to
raise awareness of 'the ubiquity and multiplicity
of racism in our everyday lives' (115).
Cyprus was divided by the 1974 Turkish invasion,
and there has been some recent labour
migration. Racist incidents have raised
concerns, and studies of the Greek Cypriot media
and education system have shown discrimination and
strong negative stereotypes towards immigrants, as
well as the older split between Greek and Turkish
Cypriots. As a result, loyalties are
complex—Greek Cypriots have to coexist with
Turkish Cypriots and deal with the increased
number of immigrants.
One incident arose where Zembylas was accused of
being too immigrant friendly and too hostile to
Greek Cypriots, and this produced an outburst
against immigrants but denying racism and wishing
to remain as proper Greeks. This led
Zembylas to wonder whether he had somehow
disregarded their immediate fears, concerns and
emotional uncertainty [!] He realized that
his teaching could be seen as just a moralistic
approach, sympathetic only to immigrants. He
should have taken into account the strong emotions
of his students. He eventually saw a way to
'find strategic ways to empathise with students'
troubled knowledge, even if this knowledge was
upsetting to me' (116).
What are the emotional roots of racism and anti
racism? [A review of the issues concerning
emotions follows, with the usual themes—emotions
are not individual but social and political;
sociologists have long been interested in
emotional expressions; emotions play a crucial
role in bonding and social division as in
connections between bodies; we need to see how
emotions get attached to certain ideas, including
race]. Fanon pioneered the work here to show
emotional undercurrents attached to racism.
Racism itself is social political and historical,
'constructed and discursive' (117), and has a
material existence in bodily markers and emotional
practices which lead to bonding and
division. Racism is also complex, not just a
matter of inequality, and not just a matter of
cognitive beliefs. In particular, we need to
account for its 'embodiment and affectivity' and
how this leads to 'exclusive subject categories'.
There is some recent research showing how direct
experience is less influential than 'social,
political, and educational forces' which provides
social and spatial boundaries and attach
particular emotions to them. Berlak has
described how arguments between black teachers and
white students produced 'shock and surprise, after
a heated exchange', and how this broke the
originally neutral and uninvolved discussions to
reveal residual racism and emotional undercurrents
[and the need to confront them]. Critical analysis
of emotions will help us understand these
reactions and navigate their way through the
'emotional complexities of racial histories'
(118), experienced by both teachers and
students. Thus [the familiar conclusion]:
'Anti racist pedagogies, I argue, are essentially
pedagogies of emotion'[so the emotional dimensions
have now become not just present, but central].
Normally, the issues are addressed through calm
systematic analysis, with emotions ignored.
But there is troubled knowledge, including 'the
other's "knowledge of injury"' [and not just with
'race' either] . Classically, critical
theory has analyzed the structures of oppression
in order to liberate the marginalized, but this
'has little value in conflict and post - conflict
societies'. There are classrooms that are no
longer homogeneous with 'a common understanding of
oppression, but deeply divided places' with
contested narratives underpinned by the politics
of emotions. Educators themselves can carry
this troubled knowledge. Jansen worked in
post apartheid South Africa and notice that those
who benefited from apartheid 'carry with them
troubled knowledge from the past', yet now had to
work with former victims. The multiple
stories about this trouble knowledge should be
engaged to build common understanding.
Without such understanding for 'the emotional
expression of racist views', students will be
alienated. It is not enough to analyse the
formation of hegemony, and we need to focus on
people carrying troubled knowledge. [This
seems to be a strange argument here that racists
and other oppressors are not victims of hegemony
themselves, needing to be liberated by the same
critical analysis. So what does produce
racism? Only the beneficiaries and
oppressors are racist? It badly needs studies
like Cashmore on the 'everyday logic' of
racism]
It is important not to take sides too early, but
this 'happens in critical theory'(119) [so it
needs to be less emotional and more
analytic?]. Zembylas notes that his own
taking of sides failed to engage students'
emotional concerns, some of which 'may have been
legitimate, others not so'. Some clearly
felt injured because they were perceived as
perpetrators. What is needed is to grasp
that racism causes injury to both self and
other. Critical theory classically stresses
reason and knowledge, but 'this has systematically
ignored the deep emotional structure of faith and
belief', and it can even deny the emotional
impulses pushing teachers towards critical
pedagogy, and their own beliefs.
The goal is to create safe spaces to discuss these
matters 'in critical and productive dialogue', to
not take sides. At the same time, we need to
make sure that 'the recklessness of accusation is
[not] simply tolerated' [so we all need to get
cool, academic and reasonable—this stance triumphs
over emotional commitment after all?] Such a
pedagogical spaces will be fragile. It might
involve the deliberate adoption of a pedagogy of
discomfort 'to enhance the learning experience of
students who struggle to understand racism and
social injustice'[what a euphemism! Those
who do not agree are to be discomfited?].
Even so, 'many things can go horribly wrong'
(120)—misunderstanding, the emergence of troubled
knowledge, and 'perhaps disruptions'. Not
all students respond in the same way, not all
benefit, some resist, some experience
distress. We need to think strategically, to
ask 'under what circumstances discomforting
learning may help' [not before time!].
Empathy might have a role. It is ambiguous
as we know from earlier
work. Boler has distinguished between
active and passive empathy [discussed elsewhere],
and favours the former. Passive empathy
tends to lead nowhere. Both Boler and
Zembylas have pointed to the dangers of empathy,
which include 'pity, voyeurism or empty
sentimentality', but there is also a
'reconciliatory perspective', which can draw both
sides 'into shared human community' leading to
'rehumanization of the other', and she had
reflective engagement, including 'realizing that
the other is like me' (121) [so the Same triumphs
again]. This can be expressed in [classic
bourgeois counselling] terms: '"I recognize the
troubled knowledge you carry and the emotional
injury this inflicts on me, others or your self,
but I choose to rebuild our emotional
connectedness"'[just making this statement is
enough then?]
Reconciliatory empathy, except that even
individuals were troubled knowledge possess the
same rights and this 'involves a genuine effort to
get to know the other' without categorizing [usual
tautology here -this defines reconciliatory
empathy, and also assumes its effects]. It
involves emotional openness to 'traumatic racial
injury'[dramatizing the issue here—did people
fight wars of liberation only to overcome
trauma?], and tolerates paradox, even seeing it as
enriching. These paradoxes include having to
recognise the wounds of the perpetrator from the
burden of troubled knowledge. Here [unlike
the earlier discussion of wounding as unhelpful],
recognizing it is a sign of ethical responsibility
and invites reflection. Woundedness can be
the basis for relationships with victims, 'new
affective connections'.
Lindquist offers a personal example about students
becoming uneasy to talk about events in Iraq, and
claims that the war was unjust. She found it
difficult to stay silent, but developed
'empathetic engagement' with their 'conservative
and uncritical positions'. Apparently it
worked. She made herself '"strategically
naive"'(122), by asking how they wanted to conduct
the discussion, and then trying to develop empathy
for their positions. This is strategic
empathy, and in the involves educators in 'the
difficult work of empathizing with views' that one
may find unacceptable or offensive', without
condoning them, of course.
In his case, he tried to provide space for
students complex responses, trying to imagine what
it would be like for some to think that Cyprus was
once a place with a clear identity, threatened by
immigration; what it felt like to be unequal to
immigrants; how a 'structure of feeling' had
developed that lead to resentment against
immigrants and other enemies. He also
realised there was an ethical responsibility here,
and a need to teach 'with ambiguity, ambivalence
and paradox'[instead of just preaching at them
like he used to?]. He realized that
strategic empathy was relational, and 'both
emotional and strategic'[otherwise it would look a
bit cynical?]. There is a need to avoid
premature closure and sustain 'the possibility of
transformation'[a bit of a hint of teacher
heroism].
To develop a pedagogy of strategic empathy, we
should based teaching and learning on troubled
knowledge, developing a 'new ethical relationality
and emotional culture in the classroom. We need to
trace 'histories' of refusal, shame, anger,
resentment, and so on' (123), combining affective
connections with critical interrogation [tautology
and reassertion of the problem].
In conclusion, emotion needs to be recognized as a
component of troubled knowledge. Social and
cultural norms are 'deeply entrenched', and
challenging them means a challenge to emotional
relations to them. We should focus on how to
access 'the deep emotional knowledge of race
experience by students were most likely to resist
change'. This will require not just 'the
same old rational argumentation about the moral
value of anti racism', but a new pedagogy focusing
on emotional complexities. We need to keep
such an approach within boundaries, however.
Questions that remain are aware that teachers
should become therapists, what happens when
students leave the classroom, how we might deal
with our 'own prejudices and limitations' and
perhaps undertake therapy ourselves.
Nevertheless we should at least think about
whether strategic empathy could become valuable.
References include Ellsworth, E. (
1989) 'Why doesn't this feel
empowering? Working through the repressive
myths of critical pedagogy'. Harvard
Educational Review 59(3): 297-324.
back to
Zembylas page
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