Feeling Bad, Together: The Pedagogy of Unwellness in Language and Culture Studies

Smiling, enthusiasm, attentive presentness, eagerness to be part of initiatives, and other optimism-oriented behaviors have long been the hallmark of pedagogical practices in higher education. Showing up in a “good mood” and with a “glass half full” attitude casts both instructor and student as collegial interlocutors and admirable members of a classroom community. Conversely, affective relations that deviate from optimism are a liability to the operations of the course. Feeling unwell threatens optimism-conditioned classroom relations, and unwellness becomes a burden to be managed. Those of us living with depression, trauma, and related experiences resulting from the erosion of the body-mind under neoliberalism consequently feel out of place in optimism-oriented educational settings. But unwellness can also be a resource to understand the effects of harmful structures on our bodyminds. It can be a site at which we can generate critical knowledge about the institution and thereby forge relations that help us survive in it.