Towards pedagogies of affective dissonance for intergenerational listening and un/learning

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2932872
AutoresDorthe Staunæs (0000-0002-6554-6632, Aarhus University, autor correspondente), M Vertelyte (0000-0002-1391-7761, Aalborg University)
Ano2025
Volume47
Fascículo1
Páginas1-13
Data de publicação2025-06-05
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoDiscourse Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0159-6306 • E-ISSN: 1469-3739
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/01596306.2025.2515025
OpenAlexW4411077162
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências citadas40

This article proposes a shift towards pedagogies that engage with affective dissonance—the visceral discomfort sparked when students and educators use divergent vocabularies around diversity, especially concerning race and racism. Drawing on Clare Hemmings' notion of affective dissonance as intergenerational tension that both divides and binds, the article positions such dissonance not as a failure but as pedagogical potential. Through empirical material from Danish high schools, the authors trace how educators engaged in antiracist work experience frustration, often feeling constrained by inadequate diversity language and by the school's commonsensical norms. Following Sara Ahmed's concept of diversity work as atmospheric, the article argues that affective dissonance—felt in bodies, words, and classroom encounters—can be a catalyst for un/learning. Rather than seeking harmony, the authors invite educators to attune to discomfort and contradiction as openings for new educational imaginaries. Affective dissonance, they suggest, is never neutral; it is entangled with colonial and racial histories and experienced unevenly across generations and positionalities. In these frictions, the article finds possibilities for affective pedagogies that listen across differences and imagine more inclusive edu-futures beyond the (white) fantasy of the classroom as a safe space

Active listening · Aesthetics · Art · Cognitive dissonance · Pedagogy · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Children's Rights and Participation · Communication · Educational Environments and Student Outcomes · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology · Social Psychology