Affect Theory and Comparative Education Discourse

Essays on Fear and Loathing in Response to Global Educational Policy and Practice

Irving Epstein

• Verlag: Bloomsbury Academic
• Jahr: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781350043626
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Didattica
• Thema: Didattica comparata

What does educational policy-making and institutional practice entail in an era of globalization? Global interactions challenge conventional assumptions governing the certainty of geographical boundedness; simplistic notions of citizenship and identity; fixed notions of time, space and movement, and clear distinctions between economic modes of production and consumption. Irving Epstein argues that conventional educational institutions and the policies that support them tend to ignore such anxiety by affirming a belief in educational modernism to the exclusion of other possibilities. What is missing in most of these analyses is an appreciation for the role of affect in determining how our encounters with these practices become significant and how our efforts to find meaning in those policies and practices lead to their acceptance or rejection. This book is the first application of affect theory to comparative education themes and shows how it can help to form a more robust discussion of the policy-making process and the popular reactions to it. After discussing the key concepts associated with affect theory, he presents a total of six case studies. Three of the cases depict relationships between educational, cultural, and social organizations whose purposes conflict with one another but whose presence is indicative of a loss of faith in the efficacy of public schooling. Three of the cases are illustrative of an even greater systematic rejection of educational institutional aim and purpose.

Part One

Fear

1

Addressing Mass Atrocity in Chile: Learning and Unlearning as a Function of Social Memory

Introduction: Historical, Collective, and Social Memory

How societies address events of mass atrocity is indicative of the ways their members express their sense of collective identity and ethical compass. Schools and educational institutions have traditionally played a key role in helping to frame these concerns by reproducing the official knowledge that is posited as representing historical truth in ways that infer consensus regarding the nature of a people’s past. A number of factors arising in the mid-to-late twentieth and twenty-first centuries have contributed to a questioning of this role, however. On the one hand, the notion of historical memory and its distinctive characteristics that purport to set it apart from other forms of memory and recognition have been contested on a number of accounts. Critics have noted the impossibility of divorcing the subjective biases of the individual researcher from the act of accurately interpreting historical subjects and events. The claim that one must define historical objectivity as dependent upon a personal distancing from the actors, conditions, and events of one’s study is unsatisfying to many, particularly when one’s task is to understand the full implications of historical trauma and atrocity. The privileging of political history to the detriment of social and cultural research areas as the more legitimate source for investigation, renounced by professional historians since the late 1960s but a bias that certainly remains true in the construction of school textbooks, is an additional area of concern for those whose interests lie with crafting a holistic understanding of trauma and mass atrocity. Furthermore, critics have noted the disparate degrees of inequality that subjected groups experience and are then unable to chronicle before larger more powerful audiences. As a result, the presumption of consensus that underlies the crafting of official knowledge for the purpose of expressing a shared understanding the meaning of mass atrocity has become less defensible.

Efforts to differentiate the concept of historical memory with the notion of collective memory have also been criticized as the demarcation seems overly rigid and at times arbitrary. Indeed, the notion of collective memory, or the shared memories of a community or cohesive social group itself has been questioned. Certainly, not all groups are cohesive nor are communities functional. The concept of collective memory has thus been criticized for its inelegance and lack of elasticity in denoting the fluidity with which personal recollection contributes to the social imagination in ways that evoke reciprocity rather than subservience to the dictates of the larger group. As a result, Olick and Robbins (1998) have encouraged the use of the term social memory to more accurately express the ways in which the historical, collective, and personal interact with one another in ways that are especially relevant when confronting instances of social trauma and mass atrocity. In this chapter, I argue that the framing of official knowledge, as conducted by educational institutions, and the efforts to tap into social memory through adherence to memorialization, both exhibit deficiencies in their abilities to evoke authentic popular engagement with the ramifications of mass atrocity. The evolution of memorialization into a global movement though, also raises questions regarding popular trust in the relevance and adequacy of formal educational institutions to address issues of ultimate social concern. The principles of affect theory, with particular regard to meaning-making, contingency, and assemblage are useful in helping to frame this discussion.

Globalization of Human Rights Discourse and the Narrowing of Educational Mission

From the mid-twentieth through the early twenty-first century, we have seen two contradictory trends with regard to global approaches that address mass atrocity. On the one hand, the movement to memorialize mass atrocity has expanded rapidly and has taken on a global presence with a proliferation of monuments, museums, and memorials specifically designed to respond to the horrors of past events. This movement has found support among nongovernment as well as state-related entities. On the other hand, in spite of the global expansion of educational access to previously underserved population groups in partial fulfillment of millennium and now sustainable development goals (United Nations 2017), neoliberal trends have promoted a narrowing of school curricula at all levels (Connell 2013). The effects upon the treatment of events evoking collective trauma and mass atrocity have been deleterious. The privileging of skill-based instruction to the detriment of support for systematic educational engagement with some of the basic moral questions that speak to issues of identity and the common good has been well documented in general terms but is of intense interest here. Even when the wish to pursue such engagement does occur, by framing mass atrocity events as part of the larger historical narrative that is posited as official knowledge, the resulting distancing of affect compromises supportive initiatives. At the same time, the institutional authority to dictate what constitutes official knowledge is presumed to be unimpeachable and is only periodically contested, even when the politicized and arbitrary nature of the formal curriculum is exposed.

The global expansion of memorialization efforts in the aftermath of the Second World War is no accident, as it paralleled the growth of contemporary human rights discourse and the enactment of supportive international norms and instruments. It is clear that the emergence of a global human rights focus was influenced by the events of the Holocaust and the ensuing recognition that in its aftermath, one could no longer rely solely upon the nation-state as sole human rights protector and guarantor (Levy and Sznaider 2010). Specific to the experience of mass trauma and atrocity is the need for victims and relatives of affected groups to achieve formal recognition of their suffering. Although justice as recognition is only one way of conceiving of what the global sense of the term includes (it being separate from the concept of procedural justice or the notion of acquisition of just desserts), it is fundamental for victims and relatives that their suffering be acknowledged. Thus, memorialization has become a significant component within numerous truth and reconciliation efforts (Hayner 2011). At times the memorial has served as a substitute for the formal truth and reconciliation commission and/or the adjudication of criminality within a judicial system, and at times it has complemented those efforts. Certainly, questions have arisen regarding the therapeutic value of what has been labeled as restorative justice, whose elements include that of the memorial. Many view restorative justice initiatives that don’t include an effort to formally work with judicial bodies to punish offenders with suspicion. Memorials when constructed in the absence of judicial proceedings are thus viewed by some as ineffective social palliatives. A number of those issues will be revisited in this chapter. However, in spite of such caveats, the importance of memorialization as one important component in the framing of restorative justice and human rights discourse is widely accepted.

The narrowing of school curricula to privilege skill-based subject matter and the emphasis upon testing that has accompanied this process reify basic neoliberal principles. Whether their presence is indicative of the lack of popular trust that is directed toward teacher unions and the teaching profession in general, the willingness to commit fewer state resources to schools (rationalized through the narrowing of curricula), or the desire of corporate business leaders to train a work force according to its own priorities, the failure of educational institutions to play a more robust role in educating children and youth about events of existential significance must be viewed within a neoliberal ideological frame that has de-emphasized the importance of such engagement, but has nonetheless demonstrated global salience.

The Questioning of State Sovereignty and Legitimacy

The ethical questions arising from the aftermath of the Holocaust extend beyond the scope of discerning appropriate responses for addressing the commission of mass atrocity. They additionally cast doubt upon the essential legitimacy of the state. In his pioneering scholarship examining the historical concept of sovereignty, Giorgio Agamben (1998) argues that coming to terms with the Holocaust necessitates an understanding of how traditional notions of state sovereignty have changed. They have always been subject to ambiguity given the role of the sovereign in both protecting bare (basic) life while ending it (when utilizing the exceptionality in law that justifies state-sponsored execution). However, the premise of sovereignty upon which state legitimacy is based has become even more compromised when one analyzes the ramifications of Nazi practice. The Nazi regime politicized the most important aspects of daily life and then justified its own extermination practices on the basis of medical pseudoscience and the worst forms of racism and antisemitism that were framed with scientific justification. In so doing, it is clear to Agamben that in deference to the Nazi state example, the modern state has engaged in extreme forms of the exercise of bio-power to which Foucault in his own writings has alluded, with such practices continuing into the twenty-first century. When the worth of anyone’s life is measured solely according to the specific politics that a regime propagates, the basis for democratic governance, even when historically ambiguous, is further shaken.

While Agamben’s insights have profound implications for our understanding of the ethical viability of the contemporary state, the doubts they generate resonates in an era when globalization trends serve to evoke further questions about its continued efficacy. The memorialization of mass atrocity can be viewed in part as an embrace of the global cosmopolitanism that is part of these trends. But at the very least in a metaphorical sense, the skepticism engendered with regard to state legitimacy (or sovereignty) also targets educational policy and school curricula, insofar as the school’s role continues to be defined by its relationship with the state and the state’s embrace of the educational function it serves, whether the specific educational institution be public or private. The embrace of inclusivity that marks basic education provision, supported by law and statute, is defined according to its own terms of exceptionality, whereby students can always be threatened with restrictions upon their enrollment and the possibility of expulsion or dismissal without final recourse. In the name of inclusivity, the threat of violence as perpetrated by educational decision-makers is always present, in the same ways that the state more generally enforces its criminal and civil laws and statutes. With regard to our specific areas of concern, when state-sanctioned textbooks omit, marginalize, or slant their coverage of events of mass atrocity, the politicization that is engendered represents a concerted effort to further politicize students’ daily lives. Restrictions upon educational access that invoke students’ medical or psychological conditions or rationales that couple textbook coverage with students’ age and their presumed limited psychological capacity to comprehend disturbing historical events offer examples of bio-power being applied to daily school contexts in ways that may be less visible but no less pernicious than blanket bias or the censorship of textbook content.

Memorialization and Education: A Complicated Relationship

It is the basic thesis of the first portion of this book that a lack of trust in educational provision contributes to an embrace of alternative forms of knowledge creation and dissemination. With regard to the institutions devoted to memorialization and their relationship to formal schooling, the relationship is complicated. To clarify, it would be inaccurate to suggest that the global embrace of memorialization is solely due to dissatisfaction with the performance of educational institutions. As we have noted, this trend is part of a larger movement that has recognized the importance of human rights discourse in many iterations. It is also true that memorials have increasingly taken on educational functions. They have created archives for researchers, have invited the public to contribute personal artifacts that give evidence of suffering, share recollections and testimony that further document the scope of mass atrocity, and regularly create programs of interest to school-aged children and youth, while initiating adult and public education forums. Schools take advantage of these opportunities and often take children on field trips where they visit memorial sites and engage in off-campus encounters where the scope of atrocity is displayed through vivid presentation. A clear differentiation of institutional purpose and function between the school and the memorial can be difficult to discern. Nonetheless, in lieu of the school’s traditional function as cultural capital gatekeeper and disseminator (Bourdieu and Passeron 1970), it is remarkable that the memorial, which is often funded independent of state resources and operates with a greater degree of autonomy than the school, has captured the public imagination to such a considerable degree. In spite of the symbiotic characteristics of this relationship, it is clear that memorials are established to seek alternative ways of communicating what is essential to the public good, there is some degree of popular support for memorials as vehicles that are well equipped to do so, and as a result, a faith in the power of education to singularly fulfill this function is no longer viewed as unconditional.

Baudrillard and the Nexus between Education and Memorialization

There have been few cultural critics of global capitalism who have written with Jean Baudrillard’s prescience and insight. In Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976) and Simulacra and Simulation (1994) Baudrillard chronicled the dissolution of the relationship between symbol or signifier and its material object. In so doing, he noted the changing nature of modern capitalism, from a system based upon the perceived value of production, to one based upon consumption and commodification, where no intrinsic value between signifier and object is even postulated. He thus argues that we live in an age where meaning devolves into self-reference, and where fantasy and the imaginary rule. Whether commenting upon topics as wide ranging as the nature of fashion, the growing popular obsession with polling and survey research, or power dynamics of the striptease (1976), Baudrillard saw a world confined to hyperreality, where no effort is made to connect symbol to material object but where signs are constructed to create their own referents among one another. One result of this process is the elimination of the distinction between life and death, with life becoming little more than “a survival determined by death” (1976: 127). Notions of immortality, which connect an appreciation for the importance of death with giving meaning to the present, are similarly compromised, as are all modernist perceptions of time with their embrace of progressivism. His commentary regarding contemporary encounters with the Holocaust is particularly salient in this regard as he notes,

Forgetting extermination is part of extermination, because it is also the extermination of memory, of history, of the social, etc. This forgetting is as essential as the event, in any case unlocatable by us, inaccessible to us in its truth. This forgetting is still too dangerous, it must be effaced by an artificial memory (today, everywhere, it is artificial memories that efface the memory of man, that efface man in his own memory). This artificial memory will be the restaging of extermination—but late, much too much late for it to be able to make the real waves and profoundly disturb something, and especially, especially through a medium that is itself cold, radiating forgetfulness, deterrence, and extermination in a still more systematic way, if that is possible, than the camps themselves. One no longer makes the Jews pass through the crematorium or the gas chamber, but through the sound track and the image track, through the universal screen and the microprocessor. Forgetting, annihilation, finally achieves its aesthetic dimension in this way—it is achieved in retro, finally elevated to a mass level. (Baudrillard 1994: 49)

For Baudrillard, we are consigned to construct simulacra (copies without originals) and perform simulations as substitutes for substantive social interactions with cultural objects as well as with one another. To do otherwise would require the ability to create a degree of authentic engagement with the social that would result in a correspondence between symbol and object which in the current era of global capitalism can never be fully realized. For the purposes of this chapter, it seems clear that Baudrillard’s insight applies both to memorialization and formal educational initiatives that are involved in depicting the nature of mass atrocity. The reliance upon technique or form of presentation to the detriment of framing the meaning of the historical event, a willingness to commodify empathy through the construction of simulacra and simulation as modes of knowledge presentation, or the disassociation with past events through official knowledge categorization, together speak to the ways these institutions form competing narratives that share the inauthenticity Baudrillard so passionately derides. Before examining specific instances of their limitations, it behooves us to look a bit more systematically at the techniques both sets of institutions employ in order to frame mass atrocity as being socially, historically, and culturally relevant.

Memorialization and the Construction of Empathy

Cultural historians and critics make a distinction between the monument and the memorial. The monument, it is argued, evokes permanence (Young 1993: 8–11). It is often constructed in ways that accentuate its upward direction toward the sky from the ground up, unlike those memorial sites that may be situated at ground level or below. It can accompany the memorial or stand alone, but its function is one expressing a permanent recognition of the mass atrocity event and/or its victims. Memorials are constructed in a variety...