Faculty of Education SOTL@UJ

TOWARDS A SOCIALLY JUST PEDAGOGY

The Affective Turn

Bella Vilakazi

23 October 2014

An artist…invents unknown or unrecognized affects and brings them to light as the becoming of his characters…Artists are presenters of affects, the inventors and creators of affects. – Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

The Affective Turn

Political

Economical

Social

Affects

desires

awe

The Affective turn in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Research approaches for SOTL@UJ

and my PhD study

Baruch Spinoza24 Nov 1632 - February 1677

Gilles Deleuze & Guattari Brian Massumi

Mind Body Affects Affection Affects Emotions

The question of the body and mind Descartes Spinoza

Substances • Mind• Body

• Mind• Body

Interaction / Relationship Correspondences

Existence Mind and body can exist without each other

Mind & Body are two attributes of one

Causality Causality (Clough, 2007)

Dualism Mind: thinks, feels, decidesBody: Occupies spaceNo mental properties

Mind & Body are two attributes of one

Affects in the Spinozian perspective

Baruch Spinoza24 Nov 1632 - February 1677

• The mind and the body have powers to affect and be affected

• The mind has power to think

• The body has power to act, engage, perform

The mind has power to affect and be affected

Internal & external ideas

The body has power to affect and be affected

Responding to intensities of other bodies

Affects in the Spinozian perspective

Mind Power Body Power

Relations Correspondences Autonomy

Michael Hardt’s observation

Power to affect and be affectedRelationships

Correspondences

Mind

Autonomous Separate development

Body

Autonomous Separate development

Borrowing from Critical Realism

• Causality – related and corresponding powers

• Relationships have causal powers or causal liabilities

• Powers have enduring, lasting and unchanging properties

• They are there with or without our understanding of them

• Affects are powers

• Spinoza’s ideas resonates with the Critical Realist philosophy

Empirical – Perceived, observed, experienced events

Actual – Events or non-events that are generated by powers or mechanisms

Real – Powers or mechanisms with enduring properties

Spinozian & Critical Realism Mind Power Body Power

Borrowing from Bhaskar’s transformation model

Correspondences

Relationships

The mindInternal & External ideasenablement/constraint

The bodyInternal & External intensities Reproduction/Transformation

“The perspective of affects, in short, forces us constantly to pose the problem of relationship between the mind and body with the assumption that their powers constantly corresponds in some way” (Hardt, 2007

We know nothing about a body until we know what it can do, in other

words, what its affects are, how they can or cannot enter into

composition with other affects, with the affects of another body,

either to destroy that body or be destroyed by it, either to exchange

actions and passions with it or to join with it in composing a more

powerful body – Deleuze and Guattari

Always be nice to the nurses

We have power to affect and be affected

Gilles Deleuze & Guattari

The Affective turn in the Deleuzian perspective

Affects Affection

The Affective turn: The Deleuzian Perspective

“we are products of affects and powers” (Zembylas, 2006:305)

Modes of existence

AffectionMode of existence(state of affected

body)

Modes of existence

Modes of existence

Modes of existence

• Autonomous

• Mode of existence

• Powers to affect an be affected

• Non-subjective

• Unpredictable

• Embedded in social practices

• E.g. Love, hate

Emotions

• Of the mind

• Modes of existence

• Subjective

• Personal

• Social constructs

• Cultural constructs

• E.g. “ I feel this way”

Brian Massumi: Affect and Emotion

Affects Emotions

“Affect is autonomous because it possess the capacity to

cause impingement, but it attains the level of emotion

when it receives conscious attention/reflection”

(Zembylas, 2006:310)

Michalinos Zembylas and the Affective Turn

Michalinos Zembylas and the Affective Turn (2006)

Affect: Becoming

Modes of existence

Affection

Mode of existence(state of affected

body)

Modes of existence

Modes of existence

Modes of existence

“we are products of affects and powers” (Zembylas, 2006:305)

Places for political transformation

Affective communities Affective economies

Zembylas’s approach in the Affective Turn…

Recognition Witnessing

Eye witnessing

Bearing witness • Empathy• Compassionate imagining• Not shaming

“Acknowledging the human dignity and the agency of the other”

Creating affective connections• Pedagogic relationships

Enables us to understand difference and accept that all of us share the same problems and possibilities

“Witnessing can make us ethically responsible and experience politically liberating affects” (Zembylas, 2006)

Pedagogic encounters & relationships in teaching

and learning

Affective Communities

Epistemological access Classroom

Culture

Affective practices

Affective practices

Affects

Social practices

Pedagogic relationships

Discourse and discourse

Forming to know “that”

Forming to learn “how”

Recognition

Affective practices: The formative feedback practice

Affective practices

Epistemological access

• Wally Morrow and the meaning of epistemological access

• Gilbert Ryle on epistemology (Muller, 2014)

• Knowing what

• Knowing how

• Margaret Whetherell and the juke box dance

Epistemology: The formative feedback practice

The juke box effect

Affective practices: The formative feedback practice

Being and becoming

“there is also the possibility of a kind of solicitude which does not so much leap in for the Other as leap ahead of him in his existential potentiality –for-Being, not in order to take away his ‘care’ but rather to give it back to him authentically as such for the first time. This kind of solicitude pertains essentially to authentic care … it helps the Other to become transparent to himself in his care and to become free of it” (Heidegger, 1998:159

What is the Affective Turn offering just pedagogies

• Transformative possibilities

• Contribution to politics of care

• Contribution to developing citizenship

• Participation in teaching and learning

• Indigenous knowledges

• Powerful knowledge

• Transformation of pedagogic practices

“Human unity – as embedded in friendship, hope, pain, and shared vision – is above all an affective unity, not a subjectified emotion” Donna Harraway.