From the Politics of Affect to the Politics of Being Affected By/With Others: A Commentary on the Special Issue

We live in times of crises, genocides, and massive destruction of both the natural and social habitat, where justice‐centered socio‐political visions of the future enacted in the present are urgently needed. Hence, the special issue Centering Affect and Emotion Toward Justice and Dignity in Science Education could not be more timely and needed. In this commentary we first provide a brief synthesis of the empirical findings and conceptual ideas presented, and then we discuss absences and constraints. Our response is grounded within the fact that engaging with affect is crucial in addressing justice‐oriented goals in and through science education. Building on the authors’ work, we argue that to re‐imagine science education, we need to engage more thoroughly with critical pedagogies, invest in humanizing science education, decolonize our research methodologies, and consider the diversity of geographies of injustices. The manuscripts hosted in this issue present a range of examples of work carried out in different places and showcase how this is possible in ways that resist hegemonic ways of being and doing science. We end our commentary with an invitation to our community to move from the politics of affect to the politics of allowing ourselves to be affected by and with others for the purpose of resisting, repairing, and acting otherwise in science education.