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Epilogue

from Part III - Inventing Affective Pedagogies for Democratic Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 April 2021

Michalinos Zembylas
Affiliation:
Open University of Cyprus
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Summary

As I am writing this epilogue, the world is struggling to recover from the terrible consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, people in the United States and several countries around the world are gathering for mass anti-racism demonstrations following the death of black man George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis. Perhaps it is still inappropriate to speak about the post–COVID-19 era, just when the dust of suffering around the world has not settled yet, if it ever does. And yet, we must confront here and now a simple yet fundamental reality that has re-emerged in this era, as our quest for the role of democratic education continues: the long-lasting and intensifying precarity of humans on the basis of health, education, social, economic and racial inequalities (Butler, 2020). As Butler has written aptly, “The virus alone does not discriminate, but we humans surely do, formed and animated as we are by the interlocking powers of nationalism, racism, xenophobia, and capitalism.” The pandemic as well as the massive anti-racism protests that have swept across the United States have exposed and reinscribed, according to Butler, “the spurious distinction between grievable and ungrievable lives, that is, those who should be protected against death at all costs and those whose lives are considered not worth safeguarding against illness and death.” As this reality becomes more profound, one wonders whether there can be any viable education “response” that is able to stop the tide of bigotry, oppression and racism that are intertwined with the phenomenon of right-wing populism that has been the focus of this book. What if the theoretical ideas proposed in this book fail not because the theory is bad but because the “problem” has become so firmly rooted in the “heart” and “soul” of humanity (Lebron, 2013) that it cannot be uprooted anymore? Put another way, why would someone believe that a bunch of theories that take seriously the affective dynamics of right-wing populism in democratic education can offer a sufficient way forward to combat the bigotry that is so deeply embedded in the affective economies of everyday life?

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Affect and the Rise of Right-Wing Populism
Pedagogies for the Renewal of Democratic Education
, pp. 209 - 214
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Epilogue
  • Michalinos Zembylas, Open University of Cyprus
  • Book: Affect and the Rise of Right-Wing Populism
  • Online publication: 17 April 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108974578.016
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  • Epilogue
  • Michalinos Zembylas, Open University of Cyprus
  • Book: Affect and the Rise of Right-Wing Populism
  • Online publication: 17 April 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108974578.016
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Epilogue
  • Michalinos Zembylas, Open University of Cyprus
  • Book: Affect and the Rise of Right-Wing Populism
  • Online publication: 17 April 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108974578.016
Available formats
×