Chapter 9 - Toward Shared Responsibility without Invoking Collective Guilt

Summary

This chapter discusses how pedagogically productive is the idea of invoking in classrooms feelings of collective guilt, and attempts to explore not only the persistence of ‘collective guilt’ in students’ responses, but also the new possibilities that are opened with reframing it as ‘shared responsibility’. In particular, the analysis addresses the moral, political and pedagogical implications of viewing the phenomena of collective guilt and shared responsibility through the lenses of Hannah Arendt and Iris Marion Young. Using Arendt’s and Young’s accounts of shared responsibility offers opportunities to educators and students to make them aware of their responsibilities as members of certain social groups, rather than getting stuck in feelings of guilt. The proposed pedagogy of shared responsibility is not focused on blame, guilt or fault, but rather it has the potential to minimize denials of complicity and instead encourage students to interrogate the conditions under which they are responsive and responsible to others.