ZEMBYLAS- the phantom of fascism e outros artigos

 

The phantom that haunts us (again): post-fascism, affect, and the paradoxes of cultivating an antifascist sensibility in education Michalinos Zembylas

ler amanhã: https://revistas.uece.br/index.php/revistapolymatheia/article/view/14241/12719

Ler amanhã: https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/59421365/TrumpAffect20190528-71601-1dh697p-libre.pdf?1559046130=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DAffective_Ideology_and_Trumps_Popularity.pdf&Expires=1755995442&Signature=gPg5JBGJp5-Y~~VyUgEiq1W6TjPownL~1Azz1eW~JgYl8JUK7zw8lJEQevvEImghfWj-vuto4E9M4oxQXhyD22Nb~GiLHUFODRsTmlzy9EMHcIrm7B3smud0ZhfytyUGNAnb-j-q3BIi9dBxzkhRJNsmY7tFISWSk3lrgaAonX6FQJBBQPutBJj~Y7zgoXzfOHZzICBPGVhj7QXZcsjpkUY5QyKWt3yTlBJBqqpphv6uWHJgTPCUQh-5OaejqqbVVbla8-S~IbrnvYD~JLl1ahwLE9xm0oPZ2GUkquVR3vMBakKsFfZ~0X9KgfrY1EW-9zuGnu0MOliF3X~eezJ6BA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA

ABSTRACT This article engages with the notion of ‘post-fascism’ in contemporary times, and explores how attention to the affective ideology of postfascism can inform pedagogical thinking that cultivates an anti-fascist sensibility in education. It is argued that to do so, it is necessary to somehow break fascism’s grip on the body and its affective pull. The analysis offered in this paper enables a critical interrogation of how the education field itself may be implicated to the cultivation of ‘fascist traits’ by being complicit to the structures and practices that are connected to neo-fascism such as neo-liberal globalisation. Despite the paradoxes entailed in education’s efforts to cultivate an anti-fascist sensibility, educators have a lot to gain from interrogating their own complicity and especially how they can engage with their students in anti-complicit actions that challenge fascist structures and practices in education.

559- AFFECTIVE IDEOLOGY- Bearing these insights in mind, this article critically engages with the meaning of post-fascism in contemporary times at the level of ‘affective ideology’ (Peters and Protevi 2017). The term ‘affective ideology’ is used to explicate the relation between the affective and the political; in particular, this term puts affect and ideology on equal footing, as Peters and Protevi argue, emphasising that affect and politics are inseparable in everyday life

. In this sense, one may argue that all ideologies are affective; hence by suggesting this term, Peters and Protevi critique the dominant rationalised and cognitive grounding of ideology and highlight that affective factors are central to social and political ideals and visions (see also Protevi 2009). My analysis, then, explores how attention to the affective ideology of post-fascism can inform pedagogical thinking that nurtures an anti-fascist sensibility in education. A

560- At the same time, it is equally important to delve deeper into the paradoxical role of education and educators themselves; a role that is full of tensions, contradictions and ambiguities. In particular, I hope that the analysis offered here can enable a critical interrogation of how the education field itself may be implicated to the cultivation of ‘fascist traits’ by being complicit to the structures and practices that are connected to neo-fascism. What would it mean, then, for education and educators to work towards an anti-fascist sensibility, when educational institutions have always had a paradoxical role, to say the least, in reproducing the ideological hegemony of the nation-state?2 This is the central question that drives my analysis in this article. With this in mind, my analysis brings forth purposefully the ethical and political orientation of educators and education in opposing or promoting (inadvertently or not) fascist traits – through the curriculum, the classroom climate, school culture and policies or everyday pedagogical practices. I argue that despite these paradoxes, or perhaps because of them, education and educators have a lot to gain from interrogating their own complicity and especially how they can engage with their students in anti-complicit actions that challenge fascist structures and practices in education.

564- In other words, Deleuze and Guattari view fascism as a micro-political phenomenon that is present everywhere, not just at the state level, and can suffuse everything. It is present before it manifests itself as what we normally call fascism – visible, for instance, in the way in which African Americans are treated in the US, from slavery to police shootings to mass incarceration – that is being transformed into a macro-political level through various postfascist formations (Dimitrakaki and Weeks 2019). For example, fascism at the level of everyday life in schools and classrooms is expressed in mundane events such as: the anger that a student may feel when a peer does not agree with his/her beliefs on restricting immigration; the irritation that a teacher feels at a faculty meeting when colleagues fail to share his or her viewpoint on teaching creationism (Zembylas 2021). As I have preciously argued:

It is crucial to deal with the affective appeal of fascism at the micro-political level of everyday life by paying attention to the micro-fascist seeds in the practices of a ‘tough football coach, rigid teacher, sadistic drill sergeant, authoritarian boss, or punitive parent’ (2017, 86)

Therefore, Connolly (2017) urges critics – I would add educators and education scholars, in particular – to take seriously the non-verbal forms of communication mobilised by aspirational fascist leaders. How? By attending to ‘modes of contagion within and below linguistic practice conveyed through gesture, posture, facial expression, distinctive rhythms of expressions, hand movements, tones of phrasing, jaw setting, habits of eye contact, and styles of walking’ (xxii). By paying attention to these techniques, namely, by shifting attention to the affective rather than the strictly cognitive, the aspiration is that we will begin to see the emotional dynamics of fascist rhetoric and we will understand that unless we find counter-actions to fight fascism at the level of everyday life, the seeds of micro-fascism will be constantly re-invented.

Therefore, Connolly (2017) urges critics – I would add educators and education scholars, in particular – to take seriously the non-verbal forms of communication mobilised by aspirational fascist leaders. How? By attending to ‘modes of contagion within and below linguistic practice conveyed through gesture, posture, facial expression, distinctive rhythms of expressions, hand movements, tones of phrasing, jaw setting, habits of eye contact, and styles of walking’ (xxii). By paying attention to these techniques, namely, by shifting attention to the affective rather than the strictly cognitive, the aspiration is that we will begin to see the emotional dynamics of fascist rhetoric and we will understand that unless we find counter-actions to fight fascism at the level of everyday life, the seeds of micro-fascism will be constantly re-invented.

566- . An appreciation, therefore, of the full emotional force of fascist movements like Nazism or contemporary postfascist movements (e.g. right-wing populism, white supremacy) might encourage educators and education scholars to acknowledge the centrality of emotion to political life and deploy affects against fascist sensibility, yet not in moralistic terms but rather with humility and awareness of the historical specificity of each manifestation of postfascism

566- Furthermore, Giudici and Ruoss (2020) suggest that educators’ professional identities and knowledge do not render them immune to fascist ideology; this idea reminds us a point raised earlier about the complicity of educators and education in fascist ways of life. Similarly, Peters (2020) argues that we need a closer understanding of the institutional, work, and family conditions of microfascism – including educational institutions and how they may become complicit in the rise of fascism, either with neoliberal rhetoric, policy and practice or the development of fascistic habits in these environments. Finally, in his recent book on how Walter Benjiamin’s work has a strong antifascist potentiality for democratic education, Lewis (2020) acknowledges that ‘persuasion is fruitless’ (21) in anti-fascist education, because ‘learning does not primarily happen through reasoned argument or critical self-reflection’ (Lewis 2020). New habits of thinking, being and feeling need to be created to dismantle fascist sensibility – a task which requires fostering a pedagogy that takes into consideration the affective appeal of fascism, as Lewis points out

566- how is it possible for educators and education to nurture anti-fascist sensibility, when they are immersed in neo-liberal school practices and education policies that sustain microfascisms?

566- For example, an emancipatory anti-fascist pedagogy would mean that educators need to be attentive to their own microfascisms and those elicited by their students – e.g. by identifying the ways in which desire is mobilised in educational settings to control, repress, order or impose rules as a form of fascism (Zembylas 2021). This requires pedagogical strategies that make students aware of how they are prevented from reimagining reality and opening new potentials in their lives, if they are trapped into fixed desires about themselves and their relations to others. An emancipatory anti-fascist pedagogical strategy, then, would be to create opportunities for students to refuse to allow any fascist formula to limit their relationality with other human and non-human beings

Toward affective decolonization: Nurturing decolonizing solidarity in higher education ]

https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1080/15505170.2022.2034684

P. 8- Drawing on Fanon, Ahmed (2004, 2006) also argues that what bodies tend to do are the effects of history; there are no universal human affects and emotions, because affects and bodies are always situated in specific sociohistorical settings

P. 11- The concept of “affective solidarity” (Hemmings, 2012) is a manifestation of solidarity that has been initially grounded in feminist politics against neoliberalism’s attempts to individuate and isolate us (Vachhani & Pullen, 2019). As Hemmings (2012) argues, the basis for affective solidarity is “affective dissonance”, that is, a range of affects (e.g., anger, frustration, rage) that provide a productive grounding for a sustainable politics of transformation. In other words, affective solidary is “not based in a shared identity or on a presumption about how the other feels, but on feeling the desire for transformation out of the experience of discomfort, and against the odds” (ibid., p. 158). Hemmings suggests that affective dissonance can be processed in different ways; one may suppress the experience, whereas someone else might use it to demand change in interpersonal relationships or utilize it to justify political action. As Hemmings writes: [I]n order to know differently we have to feel differently. Feeling that something is amiss in how one is recognized, feeling an ill fit in social descriptions, feeling undervalued, feeling that same sense in considering others; all these feelings can produce a politicized impetus to change that foregrounds the relationship between ontology and epistemology precisely because of the experience of their dissonance. (2012, p. 150, added emphasis)