Keegan, 2021

Keegan, P. (2021). Critical affective civic literacy: A framework for attending to political emotion in the social studies classroom. In: The Journal of Social Studies Research, 45(1), 15–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jssr.2020.06.003


 * "Increasing political polarization challenges civic educators to prepare youth as citizens who can navigate ideological and affective boundaries."
 * "As diverse public spaces, schools are uniquely situated to prepare students to navigate affective boundaries in the broader political discourse (Parker, 2003). However, there is limited research that theorizes emotion and its role in the civics classroom. Current approaches to civic education rely primarily on deliberative models of citizenship that relegate emotions to the private sphere (Hess & McAvoy, 2015; Knowles & Clark, 2018). Recent scholarship has explored the affective dimension of citizenship, including the links between political emotion and civic engagement (Abowitz & Mamlok, 2019), and sought to better understand how teachers conceptualize emotions in the social studies classroom (Sheppard & Levy, 2019). This nascent work challenges the predominant approach of teaching students to resolve social issues through rational deliberation and dialogue (Lo, 2017)."
 * "Rather than compromise or consensus, the end result of agonistic deliberation is negotiated action steps to address a social issue."
 * "The concept of affective citizenship “identifies which emotional relationships between citizens are recognized and endorsed or rejected, and how citizens are encouraged to feel about themselves and others” (Zembylas, 2014, p. 6). The feelings youth have for the nation, neighbors, migrants, or those deemed “Other,” are not predetermined, but rather socially mediated and constructed."
 * "Emotions also circulate in schools to construct what Fortier (2010) calls the ‘affective citizen.’ According to Fortier (2010), “the ‘affective subject’ becomes the ‘affective citizen’ when its membership to the ‘community’ is contingent on personal feelings and acts that extend beyond the individual self … to the community” (p. 22). Zembylas (2014) analyzed two emotional injunctions in pluralistic societies that explain how the ‘affective citizen’ is constructed in schools. The first emotional injunction is “coping with difference” (p 12). … The second emotional injunction that Zembylas analyzes is that of “embracing the other” (p. 11). … At the same time, the imperative to ‘embrace the other’ is not unconditional. Those who do not “reflect back the good image the nation has of itself” are not welcome (Ahmed, 2014, p. 134)."
 * "The first principle of CAL is for students to examine not only what they feel, but why they feel that way."
 * "The second principal of CAL “invites ‘us to imagine standing in the shoes of others’” (Anwaruddin, 2016, p. 391). More broadly, Anwaruddin asks how we are to understand the suffering of others in order to be sensitized to violence and injustice."
 * "The third principle of CAL focuses on the affective politics of emotions, notably fear, to manipulate the populace into supporting particular policy decisions."
 * "The fourth and final principle of CAL focuses on how emotions can create a more just society."