Radical Hope: Or, the Problem of Uncertainty in History Education

Abstract

Curricular questions of what and how knowledge should matter take on particular urgency when the knowledge at stake refers to cultural devastation in history. Whereas narratives of progress and discourses of "protecting the child" continue to dominate the public imaginary, a number of curriculum theorists have begun to explore the multiple ways in which educators have and continue to represent such histories in the classroom. This emergent literature offers a theory of pedagogy not as a set of skills to apply, but a way of asking questions about the ethical obligations, ontological crises and anxieties at work in efforts to teach and learn from difficult histories. My article elaborates on the problem of uncertainty from the vantage of two psychoanalytic thinkers who are also interested in the work of introducing the child to a world that fails: D.W. Winnicott's discussions with mothers on the problem of "disillusionment" and Jonathan Lear's discussion of "radical hope." In bringing together these examples, I offer a theory of education that articulates what is hopeful about the capacity to tolerate the disillusionment of both learning from and living in difficult times. At stake is a model of history education that can survive the disillusion of the promise of certainty and still dream of tomorrow.

The emotional regimes of reconciliation in history textbook revision: reflections on the politics of resentment and the politics of empathy in post-conflict societies

“…This is a challenge that raises questions not only about the extent to which students of one community can empathise with members of another community (in the light of distinctions between 'victims' and perpetrators' , which are often blurred) or work through their resentment, but also about what it means to take into account the contexts in which this happens, defined by trauma, political norms and 'structures of feeling' . The contributions of history education in particular -critical thinking, multiperspectivity, caring and democratic values (Farley 2009; McCully 2010) -are not possible without pedagogical practices that are 'reconciliatory' across social and political boundaries. Reconciliatory pedagogical practices are the pedagogies which foreground the need to elaborate how we might learn to live together with ever-increasing emotional and political complexities 'by focusing attention on aspects of pedagogy such as dialogue, the "discourse of possibility", remembering and witnessing, and the affective dimensions of difficult, contested knowledge' (Hattam, atkinson, and bishop 2012, 6).…”

“…This identification with the aggressor may happen for a variety of reasons ranging from gaining a sense of power some students don't have at home or at school to (conscious or unconscious) participation in social movements or organisations that promote aggression and violence. The dilemma that a psychoanalytic understanding of empathy raises is how to respond when students empathise in ways that suggest their affiliation, and even desire for, aggressive components of psychical life through their identification of perpetrators of history (e.g., see britzman 2000; Farley 2006Farley , 2009simon 2011a, 2011b. This 'response' is not about providing a 'solution' to the dilemma, but rather an ongoing analysis of the psychic mechanisms that recognise the complexities of empathy and their possible implications at multiple levels.…”

“…I am indebted to one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting this clarification. 2. although the theoretical framework of this paper is grounded in the history and politics of emotion, I would like to acknowledge the immense contributions of psychoanalytic work in education in relation to emotion (e.g., see britzman 1998, 2000Farley 2006Farley , 2009simon 2011a, 2011bTaylor 2011). This work takes into account the radically unpredictable quality of affect when taken from the vantage point of psychoanalysis.…”

The Abandonment of Hope: Curriculum Theory and White Moral Responsibility

“…In this article, I suggest that an ideology of hope, even "educated" (Giroux, 2003) and "radical" (Farley, 2009) conceptualizations, might be problematic, especially when practiced by White scholars because it operates to reinscribe White privilege and perpetuate the assumption that Whites can transcend the critique of Whiteness (Applebaum, 2010). The call for an abandonment of hope not only relinquishes the possibility for White moral innocence but also challenges traditional notions of moral responsibility that "not only fail to expose White complicity but also contribute to the normalization of denials of complicity that protect systemic racism from being challenged" (Applebaum, 2010, p. 5).…”

The School Bus Symposium: A Poetic Journey of Co-created Conference Space

“…Using language(s) as praxis opens new ways of listening to a charged colonial past (Simon, 2012;Tuck & GaztambideFernández, 2012;Stanley, 1999), cultures, and citizenship (Byram, 2010). In fact, repairing some of the impacts of the annihilation of educational rights to language(s) (Egéa-Kuehne, 2012) cannot be achieved without re-claiming indigenous languages and place-based learning (Simpson, 2014;Battiste, Kovachs, & Balzer, 2010;Chambers, 1999;Blood, Chambers, Donald, Hasebe-Ludt & Big Head, 2012;Farley, 2009). As the bus starts moving, I look out the window and dream that imagination transcends nations.…”