Witnessing in the Classroom: The Ethics and Politics of Affect

A bstract In this essay, Michalinos Zembylas explores the meaning of affect and its importance to educational efforts to create the classroom conditions necessary for students and teachers to become critical witnesses to trauma and oppression. Zembylas draws out some of the ethical and political possibilities that emerge through such efforts, and extends our thinking about the affective possibilities of witnessing . His aims are threefold: (1) to discuss the nature of affect and the affective economies of witnessing; (2) to show some of the ways in which classrooms and affect interact to produce a particular politics and ethics, especially in contexts of historical trauma; and (3) to provide a sketch of how progressive pedagogies based on witnessing can educate toward an understanding of affect that may encourage a transformative political response.