Political depression, cruel optimism and pedagogies of reparation: questions of criticality and affect in human rights education

This article argues that there is an urgent need to engage with a deeper analysis of the contemporary culture of ‘political depression’ and its affective implications in human rights education (HRE). In particular, the article focuses on the following questions: How might a theorization of political depression be relevant to efforts that aim to renew criticality in HRE? In which ways can a ‘critical’ HRE turn our attention to important ethical, political and affective questions on human rights? Can the negativity of political depression become a site for HRE pedagogies that are ‘reparative’? The article makes an attempt to articulate some of the content and strategies of pedagogies of reparation and their significance in what is currently being formulated in the literature as ‘critical human rights education’. Reparative pedagogies invite in the classroom the challenge of how students can learn from unimaginable traumatic histories, while acknowledging the affective politics of histories of violence, oppression and social injustice, without falling into the trap of sentimentality, but rather engaging in social justice-oriented action and activism.