Chapter 11 - For an Anti-complicity Pedagogy

Summary

This chapter revisits the important role of affect in pedagogical efforts to engage students with complicity in democratic education. Recent theoretical shifts on affect and complicity enable education scholars and practitioners to move the focus away from what we do not want (i.e. more complicity) toward anti-complicity. The new openings emerging from these theoretical shifts create pedagogical spaces to inspire anti-complicity praxes— that is, actions that actively resist social harm in everyday life. It is argued that for this to happen, it is necessary that educators navigate students through the affective and political dynamics of complicity in both critical and strategic ways. The chapter concludes by discussing how an anti-complicity pedagogy may be ‘translated’ into strategic moves in democratic education.