Chapter 6 - Agonistic Emotions/Affects to Counter Far Right Rhetoric

Summary

Chapter 6 draws on the concept of agonistic emotions and affects to think with some of the arguments of Chantal Mouffe’s political theory and discusses what this means pedagogically in handling far right rhetoric in the classroom. To show the possibilities of the concept of agonistic emotions and affects, the chapter puts in conversation Mouffe’s work on agonistic pluralism with affect theory. The analysis makes the argument that affect theory enables the theorization of agonistic emotions and affects as an intersection of language, desire, power, bodies, and politics that can be engaged with and channeled democratically in classroom debates. The chapter makes a political and pedagogical intervention into the terrain of countering extremism in education by offering ways of addressing productively the tensions emerging from the affective dimension of far right rhetoric in classroom spaces.