Teaching in Higher Education
Vol. 17, No. 2, April 2012, 113125
Pedagogies of strategic empathy: navigating through the emotional
complexities of anti-racism in higher education
Michalinos Zembylas*
Program of Educational Studies, Open University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus
(Received 28 August 2010; final version received 5 July 2011)
This paper constructs an argument about the emotionally complicated and
compromised learning spaces of teaching about anti-racism in higher education.
These are spaces steeped in complex structures of feeling that evoke strong and
often discomforting emotions on the part of both teachers and students. In
particular, the author theorizes the notion of strategic empathy in the context of
students emotional resistance toward anti-racist work; he examines how strategic
empathy can function as a valuable pedagogical tool that opens up affective
spaces which might eventually disrupt the emotional roots of troubled knowledge
an admittedly long and difficult task. Undermining the emotional roots of
troubled knowledge through strategic empathy ultimately aims at helping
students integrate their troubled views into anti-racist and socially just
perspectives.
Keywords: strategic empathy; antiracism; emotions; critical pedagogy
Strong emotions anger, resentment, and fear often follow discussions of racism
and explorations of anti-racism (Ahmed 2004). Over the last two decades, scholars in
education have analyzed the emotional challenges of understanding racism and
teaching about anti-racism in higher education (e.g. see Boler 1999; Ellsworth 1989;
Leibowitz et al. 2010). Bolers theorization on emotions and education, for example,
highlights that students feelings of discomfort may not only be unavoidable but
also necessary when educators teach about social justice and anti-racism. Other
researchers (e.g. Berlak 2004; Razack 2007; Zembylas and Chubbuck 2009) have also
provided observations of how and why these discomforting feelings are persistently
able to block, defuse, and distract the transformation of students.
Needless to say, students emotional resistance to anti-racism is not unknown to
critical theorists. Ellsworths (1989) well-known critique of the limitations of critical
pedagogy to instill transformations in students has sparked several debates that have
also touched on the emotional implications of doing anti-racist work in higher
education. Elsewhere I have argued that there needs to be an explicit pedagogic
attention to students emotional responses during classroom discussions of racism,
social justice, and critical pedagogy (Zembylas 2007). In this paper, I suggest that if
we look again at these emotional responses particularly in relation to what we
realistically expect, as educators, from students we might need to reevaluate the
moral undertones of our pedagogies and reconsider how we may work to tactically
*Email: [email protected]
ISSN 1356-2517 print/ISSN 1470-1294 online
# 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2011.611869
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114 M. Zembylas
position ourselves as conduits for students affective responses (Lindquist 2004,
189).
My point of departure is Jansens (2009) acute observation that under some
circumstances critical theory (interpreted broadly) is severely limited for making
sense of troubled knowledge and for transforming those who carry the burden of such
knowledge on both sides of a divided community (256, added emphasis). Troubled
knowledge is the knowledge which is troubling and discomforting, for different
reasons, to different sides of a divided community. Jansen refers to post-apartheid
South Africa, a conflict and post-conflict setting, in which troubled knowledge e.g.
whites knowledge about their past is governed by particular affective attachments
that range from shame, distress, and self-defensive anger to atonement. If critical
theory cannot always supply mechanisms to respond to problematic emotional
responses, then what other pedagogical resources are available to educators?
The short answer is that these resources need to target the heart of the issue, that
is, the emotional aspects of students resistance; this implies that pedagogies of mere
critique are perhaps not adequate to address the varied emotional manifestations of
this resistance. The longer answer, which I will attempt to elaborate in this paper,
must address the complexities of how the burden of engaging emotionally with
troubled knowledge is unevenly distributed in different members or groups of a
divided community. The inevitably emotional nature of discussions of racism and
explorations of anti-racism in higher education indicates how troubled knowledge
itself is not interpreted uniformly. This argument suggests that critical pedagogy, at
least in the context of conflict and post-conflict situations, requires the use of those
pedagogical resources that enable the formation of new affective alliances among
members of a divided community.
The purpose of this paper is to explore the prospects and risks of what I consider
to be one of those pedagogical resources, namely, strategic empathy. Strategic
empathy is essentially the use of empathetic emotions in both critical and strategic
ways (Lindquist 2004); that is, it refers to the willingness of the teacher to make
himself/herself strategically skeptic (working sometimes against his/her own emotions) in order to empathize with the troubled knowledge students carry with them,
even when this troubled knowledge is disturbing to other students or to the teacher.
The use of strategic empathy, as I will argue, can function as a valuable pedagogical
tool that opens up affective spaces which might eventually disrupt the emotional
roots of troubled knowledge an admittedly long and difficult task. Undermining
the emotional roots of troubled knowledge through strategic empathy ultimately
aims at helping students integrate their troubled views into anti-racist and socially
just perspectives.
Emotional resistance in a higher education class
I want to start with a brief reference to a personal experience that will provide the
context to further analyze some of the emotional complexities involved in doing antiracist work in higher education. For the last five years, I have taught a year-long
course entitled Cultural Differences and Social Inequalities at the Open University of
Cyprus. Operating from the assumption that participants in this course belong to a
homogeneous cultural, religious, ethnic, and class group they are all Greek,
Orthodox Christians, white, middle-class teachers at the primary or secondary school
Teaching in Higher Education
115
level I invite them to reflect systematically upon their emotions related to the topics
we encounter throughout the 30-week course. These topics include issues such as
stereotyping, discrimination, and racism in Cyprus and abroad, cultural values,
intercultural communication, interethnic conflict, and multicultural teaching models.
I put particular emphasis on designing a curriculum that raises students critical and
emotional awareness of the ubiquity and multiplicity of racism in our everyday lives.
Cyprus has traditionally been a country of out-migration throughout the twentieth
century and especially after the 1974 Turkish invasion that divided Cyprus into its
north part (still occupied by Turkey) and its south part (government controlled area).
However, migration of labor (mainly from Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern
Europe) to the Republic of Cyprus started in the 1990s as a result of the relatively
quick economic boom that has turned Cyprus into a host country for immigrants. In
recent years, a number of racist incidents (e.g. random attacks against immigrants,
especially non-white ones) have raised concerns whether Greek-Cypriots are
xenophobic and discriminate against immigrants. For instance, there have been
research studies covering the Greek-Cypriot media and education that show the
existence of discrimination practices and the presence of strong negative stereotypes
toward immigrants e.g. views such as the immigrants take our jobs, they threaten
our national identity, and they are usually criminals (see Trimikliniotis 2004;
Zembylas 2010). The situation is further complicated in light of the unresolved
political conflict between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots for the last 50 years.
My students, in other words, have to negotiate a complex situation: on one hand,
they have to deal with the increasing flow of immigrants that changes Cyprus rapidly;
on the other hand, they need to negotiate the challenges of co-existing with those
many of them consider to be enemies (i.e. Turkish Cypriots).
Two years ago, an incident in the context of this course made me reevaluate my
pedagogical approach toward anti-racism. After a week-long presentation that
documented incidents of racist behaviors and practices in Cyprus, there was a heated
exchange with two students who said they found that my approach was too
immigrant-friendly and involved Greek-Cypriot bashing. These students went on to
say that I was not fully justified to take the immigrants side and that the incidents I
presented were isolated . And then they burst out saying that:
Immigrants and illegal settlers from Turkey come here, receive financial aid and free
medicare from the government, without doing any work, whereas poor [Greek]
Cypriots, citizens of this state, do not have these benefits. We are NOT racists, as you
seem to imply! We just want to have a fair treatment. . . we want to be left alone to live as
Greeks in a Greek Cyprus.
It was admittedly bold and courageous on the part of these students to express their
feelings in such strong terms, yet this encounter shocked me. My first thoughts were
that I had clearly failed in my teaching, because this reaction revealed that my
argument did not get across. I wondered: Was I strategic about my anti-racist work
with these students or did I completely disregard their fears, concerns, and emotional
uncertainty about immigration and the political situation in Cyprus?
Further reflection upon this incident revealed the limits of my teaching
seemingly perceived as a moralistic approach that sympathized only with the
immigrants sufferings, while completely ignoring the feelings of those who saw their
116 M. Zembylas
country changing so rapidly. I was forced to look deeper into my understanding of
the emotional complexities involved in doing anti-racist education with teachers. One
thing was clear: these students expressed some strong emotions that somehow should
have been taken into account rather than dismissed as possible indications of racist
views. It was only months later when the whole class asked deeper questions that I
could see the need to find strategic ways to empathize with students troubled
knowledge, even if this knowledge was upsetting to me. But, how could someone do
this work without undermining anti-racist values in the classroom? Perhaps before
answering this question, we need to take a step back and address an important issue:
What are the emotional roots of racism and anti-racist work?
Emotions and racism
No more than two decades ago work on emotions in sociology, cultural studies, and
political science was almost non-existent. Emotions have usually been characterized
as psychologized entities within the individual rather than analyzed in their social,
cultural, and political context. At the same time, the idea of emotions as
manifestations of social and political life is not new and exists since Webers work
on emotional context, Marxs association between alienation and the relations of
production, and Goffmans interest in emotional expressions and social life (see
Bendelow and Williams 1998). As work in sociology, cultural studies, and political
science has progressed, there have been stronger arguments suggesting that we avoid
viewing emotion as a private psychologized entity. By contrast, it has been
emphasized that we need to appreciate how emotions are in power relations and
create particular boundaries of bodies and worlds (Ahmed 2004).
In particular, Ahmeds (2004) theorization suggests that emotions play a crucial
role in the ways that individuals come together, and move toward or away in relation
to others. This argument challenges the assumption that emotions are individual or
private phenomena and supports the position that emotions are located in
movement, circulating between bodies. Hence movement is always embedded within
certain socio-political contexts and connects bodies to other bodies; attachment to
certain bodies (which are perceived to be similar) and distance from others (which
are considered to be dissimilar) take place through this movement, through being
moved by the proximity or distance of others. If emotions shape and are shaped by
perceptions of race, for example, then one should observe to see how certain
emotions (e.g. anger, resentment, fear) stick to certain bodies or flow and traverse
space.
Srivastava (2006), therefore, asks the rhetorical question, What do emotion and
race have to do with one another? (60). Several scholars have acknowledged the
emotional investments and implications of racial oppression (Essed 1991; Roediger
1991; Stoler 1995). It is in Fanon (1967) that we find what is perhaps considered still
the most powerful depiction of racializing and racist embodiment and affectivity
(Hook 2008). Analyzing the colonial context of Algeria, Fanon argued that black
white unequal relationship and the resulting oppression can lay bare the anomalies
of affect that are responsible for [its] structure (1967, 10). The accounts by Fanon
and others expose the deep emotional undercurrents and foundations of racial
conflict (Srivastava 2006, 61). Racial matters evoke a range of powerful emotions
Teaching in Higher Education
117
that push researchers to take a more careful look into the relationship between
racism and emotion.
Racism, as Hook (2005) has argued, is a phenomenon that is as political as it is
affective, discursive, psychological, and ideological. Taking as a starting point
contemporary theorizations of race and racism (Balibar and Wallerstein 1991;
Blumer and Solomos 1999), classifications of race must be understood as social and
political constructions that are embedded, however, in socio-spatial, political, and
historical structures, and have real and uneven material consequences. That is, the
constructed and discursive nature of race is recognized as a political project for the
formation of particular individuals and social groups. Race has a materiality that is
partly to do with the aspects of racial discourses that are constructed as being
material (e.g. bodily markers are used to stereotype people) and partly about the
emotional practices through which bodies are drawn together or apart on racialized
terms (see Riggs and Augoustinos 2005).
As Hook (2008) has cautioned, racial prejudice cannot be explained as merely a
construction, as only the effects of asymmetrical social structures, or as simply a
matter of cognitive beliefs. Lane (1998) has also warned about the limitations of onedimensional theoretical frameworks that attempt to explain racism by sole reference
to either conscious (and unconscious) beliefs or social history. To understand racism,
in other words, one has to adequately account for the embodiment and affectivity of
race and racism. Therefore, racial stereotypes are enacted through particular
emotional practices that fixate us and them into exclusive subject categories.
Consequently, it is important to look at the ways in which race and racism are
embedded in emotional practices and discourses and create certain inclusions/
exclusions. Recent research shows how individual fears are cultivated through the
intervention of social, political, and educational forces and are less the outcome of
direct experience (Zembylas 2008, 2010). The politics of hatred and fear sustain those
emotional practices and discourses that enable anti-immigration and racism to
flourish, curtail civic liberties, and promote attacking everyone who is different
(Zembylas 2009). The formation of social and spatial boundaries aims to protect the
integrity of (presumed) racial origin and attaches particular emotions (e.g. pride,
resentment, anger or hatred) to this origin (Jansen 2009).
Berlak (2004) describes a particular incident in her pre-service teacher education
class in which a guest speaker an African American teacher named Sekani
aroused in students feelings of shock and surprise, after a heated exchange with a
white student on race and racism. Berlak analyzes how this incident created a
profound change in her class. As she writes:
Whereas, before Sekanis visit, we had discussed racism in tones we might have used to
talk about the weather, afterward virtually everyone was emotionally as well as
analytically engaged. Sekanis visit had inadvertently unearthed residual veins of racism
and provoked us as a class to confront them. (2004, 131)
The important point that arises from this incident as well as from the example in my
own class is the need to recognize the emotional undercurrents and foundations of
race and racism, and develop pedagogical strategies to unearth the powerful affective
component in the ubiquitous manifestations of racial practices. An account of
emotion that entails a strong social and political dimension is able to explain
118 M. Zembylas
something about the tenacity of racism and peoples reluctance to deal with it,
leading to strong emotional reactions such as people feeling hurt, offended, or
angry (Essed 1991). Not surprisingly, these reactions make it difficult to engage in
anti-racist work in the classroom. Yet, by paying attention to these reactions,
educators are essentially called upon to confront and navigate through the emotional
complexities of racial histories in their encounters with both themselves and their
students. Anti-racist pedagogies, I argue, are essentially pedagogies of emotion.
Anti-racist pedagogies as pedagogies of emotion
What many anti-racist and critical pedagogical approaches seem to lack, Georgis and
Kennedy (2009) point out, is a nuanced understanding of the emotional complexities
of traumatic racial histories. Pedagogies informed by critical theory have treated race
and racism less as a complex affective experience than as a set of social and political
issues to be addressed through systematic analysis. While critical theory in education
has not entirely ignored emotions, attention to them has been insufficient. For
Georgis and Kennedy (2009), a pedagogy of emotion in anti-racist and postcolonial
approaches involves developing a relationship to the others knowledge of injury.
The knowledge of racial injury, in other words, partly comes through as emotional;
however, this troubled knowledge is emotional for everyone, not only for the
apparent victims of racialization.
As Jansen (2009) explains, critical theory receives and constructs the world as
divided (e.g. black/white, men/women, oppressors/oppressed) and then takes sides to
free the oppressed. The focus of this work is less on what to do with the racist in the
classroom and more to do with how to empower the marginalized, that is, helping
students become critical researchers of what is around them. Such a conception of
the other side with an emphasis on oppressive processes, ideologies, and identities
has little value in conflict and post-conflict societies, according to Jansen. Needless
to say, this is not to deny the systemic and institutionalized character of oppression
and social injustice; rather, it is to highlight that classrooms are not homogeneous
environments with a common understanding of oppression, but deeply divided places
where contested narratives are steeped in the politics of emotions to create complex
emotional and intellectual challenges for educators. Educators themselves are often
carriers of troubled knowledge, as Jansen rightly points out; this has serious
implications for the strategic formation that critical pedagogies take in conflict and
post-conflict societies.
The setting in which Jansen (2009) contextualizes his analysis is post-apartheid
South Africa. Those who have benefited from apartheid carry with them troubled
knowledge from the past, yet they need to live together with the victims of oppression
while oppression and social injustice still persist. A conception of the former
oppressors (or bystanders) as not human Others will fail to engage the multiple
stories these bearers of troubled knowledge bring about the past. Unavoidably, this
will have implications in terms of building a common understanding of the present
and a shared vision of the future. Similarly, a complete lack of understanding for the
emotional expression of racist views in the classroom will alienate students who
express those views again without implying that this condones their actions or
views. Consequently, a basic premise of critical pedagogies in conflict and postconflict societies is not simply to question the formation of hegemonies in social and
Teaching in Higher Education
119
educational arrangements (e.g. media, curricula, textbooks); it is also the people
there, the bodies in the classroom, who carry knowledge within themselves that must
be engaged, interrupted, and transformed (Jansen 2009, 258).
Furthermore, taking sides too early, as it happens in critical theory, may not
always be a very productive stance when there is clash of narratives and memories.
For instance, in the example I have shared from my teaching it seems that I have
taken sides too early and failed to engage students emotional concerns about the rise
of immigration in Cyprus some of those concerns may have been legitimate, others
not so. However, what this means is that, the emotions of racism affect individuals in
different ways; emotional injuries due to racial relations are not homogenous. Some
have been victims of racism and others are injured because they are persistently
perceived as perpetrators. But there is variability and complexity in the stories
narrated by these individuals. A pedagogy that takes into consideration the
variability of emotional injury asks students to engage with the injuries of both
themselves and others and to consider what injury demands from oneself and the
other.
The central goal of critical pedagogy, as it has been conventionally practiced,
explains Lindquist (2004), has been to replace faith to reason and belief with
knowledge; yet, this has systematically ignored the deep emotional structure of faith
and belief. As Lindquist so aptly writes:
The irony is that, though the impulse for justice is largely driven by faith in the power of
moral commitments, in many forms of critical and cultural pedagogy teachers often
deny students access to the very forms of affective experience that have provided the
teachers own beliefs. (2004, 1901)
I want to further extend this theorization and emphasize how critical pedagogies
informed by emotion highlight the practices through which certain emotions and
knowledges become of most worth; that is, what it means to feel and know
something about race and racism, and how students and teachers might construct
safe classroom spaces within which the wounded of divided communities can engage
in critical and productive dialog. It is important not to rush and take one side, thus
dislodging the participants from a compassionate involvement with the emotions and
the knowledges of the other side. Again, this does not imply that anything goes and
that the recklessness of accusation is simply tolerated (Jansen 2009). Everyone
involved (including the teacher) needs to be critically engaged with their troubled
knowledges and discomforting emotions; taking sides too early will make it
impossible to constructively navigate through and transform these knowledges and
emotions.
This signals the need for what Georgis and Kennedy call a fragile pedagogical
space in which the truth of racial history and experience can be taught, but not in
such a way that it forecloses our capacity to become new people in relation to this
history, or indeed, to imagine the world altogether differently (2009, 20). In fact, it
has been proposed that a pedagogy of discomfort (Boler 1999; Boler and Zembylas
2003; Zembylas and Boler 2002) can be intentionally adopted to enhance the
learning experience of students who struggle to understand racism and social
injustice. A pedagogy of discomfort, as an educational approach, highlights the need
for educators and students alike to move outside their comfort zones. Pedagogically,
120 M. Zembylas
this approach assumes that discomforting emotions play a constitutive role in
challenging dominant beliefs, social habits, and normative practices that sustain
racism and social inequities and in creating possibilities for individual and social
transformation (see also Leibowitz et al. 2010).
Needless to say, the call for a fragile pedagogical space or a pedagogy of
discomfort should not be assumed to be always already transformative, and beyond
question. So many things can go horribly wrong misunderstandings of the purpose,
the surfacing of troubled knowledge and a supportive space for this and then
perhaps disruptions preventing the issue being resolved. It needs to be recognized,
then, that while this approach may potentially move us beyond the usthem of
critical pedagogy, it is no simple recipe for dealing with issues of racism in the
curriculum. Not all students will respond in the same way or benefit from
discomforting pedagogies or fragile pedagogical spaces; some may adopt an antioppressive change, others may resist, and still others may experience distress
(Kumashiro 2002).
Therefore, an important question that demands further exploration is: How can
teachers use strategically the emotions involved in anti-racist work to open the
critical affective space in the classroom that would enable their students to understand
the full range of implications*personal, social, cultural, emotional*of their [race]
experiences? (Lindquist 2004, 195). What this question essentially asks is the need to
examine under what circumstances discomforting learning may help teachers and
students to engage in new affective relations with others (Callahan 2004; O Brien and
Flynn 2007).
The potential of strategic empathy
Although the notion of empathy has been utilized by educational theorists for many
years, the concept itself is fraught with ambiguity and does not have a unitary
interpretation. Boler (1999) makes an important distinction that is valuable for my
analysis here, namely, the distinction between active and passive empathy. She
argues that passive empathy is a benign state of empathizing with the oppressed,
whereas active empathy leads to taking action to overcome emotional injury and
oppression. Passive empathy, in other words, runs the risk of ignoring active
responsibility to one another or failing to take action that confronts racism and
reduces injustice. In fact, as Boler notes, passive empathy in and of itself may result
in no measurable change or good to others or oneself (1999, 178). By simply putting
students in the no-win trap of guilt vs. innocence (1999, 187), then no possibilities
are created for bringing together sides with conflicting histories through a
meaningful renewal of their affective connections.
Without dismissing the numerous dangers that have been pointed out about
empathy leading to pity, voyeurism or empty sentimentality (Boler 1999; Zembylas
2008), here I want to recognize what I call the reconciliatory perspective of empathy.
This more politically focused interpretation portrays empathy as a movement that
draws victim and villain (those not being absolute predetermined categories
though) into shared human community. In particular, this interpretation emphasizes
the link between the process of rehumanization of the other and empathy (Halpern
and Weinstein 2004), that is, the process which sees the other in human terms
(Gobodo-Madikizela 2008). The major function of reconciliatory empathy is
Teaching in Higher Education
121
participating in shared reflective engagement with the others emotional life that is,
realizing that the other is like me and should be invited in a renewed relationship,
despite the troubled knowledge he or she carries. Finding commonality through
identification with the other is perhaps the most difficult and yet profound step in his
or her rehumanization. Reconciliatory empathy seems to say I recognize the
troubled knowledge you carry and the emotional injury this inflicts on me, others or
yourself, but I choose to rebuild our emotional connectedness.
Reconciliatory empathy has two important qualities that make it valuable in
pedagogic terms. First, it recognizes the troubled knowledge one carries with him or
her and accepts that this individual, just like anyone, possesses the same rights. In
other words, reconciliatory empathy involves a genuine effort to get to know the
other and his or her troubled perspectives without insisting on placing him or her
into predetermined categories. In contrast, insistence on perpetuating divisions
between us (the good) and them (the bad) dismisses the others troubled knowledge.
Second, reconciliatory empathy involves emotional openness to traumatic racial
injury, in whatever form this is manifest, and tolerates ambivalence for paradoxes as
an enriching part of creating an ongoing workable relationship with the other.
More specifically, the reconciliatory perspective of empathy opens up new
possibilities for approaching traumatic racial injury in the classroom. Engaging in
reconciliatory empathy within a classroom of perpetrators and victims, for
example, means working through a number of paradoxes. One paradox is that
teachers must deal with the scenario of the perpetrator as the wounded other, as a
result of the troubled knowledge he or she carries. Teachers must create the kind of
environment of trust that allows emotions of woundedness, no matter where they
come from, to be worked through. Woundedness, writes Gobodo-Madikizela
(2008), is a sign of ethical responsibility towards the other. It invites reflection on the
historical circumstances that divide, and continue to divide, individuals and groups
who are trying to heal from a violent and hateful past (344).
The woundedness, and the emotions that come with it, draw perpetrators into
relationship with victims. If we want to allow possibilities for new affective
connections, then teachers must learn to provide space for the emotional remains
of troubled knowledge. Only by allowing ourselves to be touched, and by reaching
out to touch, write Georgis and Kennedy, might we get closer to our losses and,
therefore, to our common humanity (2009, 29). This emotional encounter is
rehumanizing because it recognizes the other as sufferer too, as an emotional human
being; to empathize with one who wronged someone is to struggle to get over
resentment, anger, and hatred (Gobodo-Madikizela 2008).1 To put this more directly,
teachers and students need to actively create a reconciliatory empathetic space for
this to happen.
What would it take, however, to manifest this kind of reconciliatory empathetic
space in the classroom? Lindquist (2004) narrated an incident in her undergraduate
class in which students felt uneasy to talk about the events in Iraq. Students, as she
reported, came from politically conservative families and became very defensive
about claims that the war was unjust. Lindquist described her own emotional
difficulties to remain silent about their uncritical positions. Yet, she decided to
follow a strategy of empathetic engagement with students conservative and
uncritical positions. Reflecting on this strategy, she wrote:
122 M. Zembylas
What made this strategy work, I think, was my willingness to make myself strategically
nave in two-moments: first, in seeking advice about how we should conduct discussions
about the war, and then later, when (working hard against my own emotional need to
negatively evaluate some of the perspectives I was hearing about the war) I worked to
communicate empathy for their positions as affective responses. (20304; the first
emphasis is added)
In this incident, Lindquist describes how she uses strategic empathy in ways that help
her navigate through her students resistance to critique their emotionally held
positions. Admittedly, progressive educators have yet to come to terms with such
resistance, as Albrecht-Crane (2005) rightly points out. Importantly, Lindquists
notion of strategic empathy seems to recognize that students and teachers live within
spaces of troubled knowledge. This notion entails that to be truly effective, teachers
have to be willing to use empathy strategically to engage in in-depth critical inquiry
of troubled knowledge, that is, an emotional willingness to engage in the difficult
work of empathizing with views that one may find unacceptable or offensive.
Notably, while empathy involves recognizing the others complex point of view, it
does not require adopting the others point of view (Halpern and Weinstein 2004).
To go back to my own teaching example, using strategic empathy would mean
providing space for my students complex and nuanced responses to claims about
racism in Cyprus and reflect on how and why some people feel in certain ways. That
is, what it would be like for some to feel that Cyprus was once a place with an
unambiguous identity and now has many immigrants who threaten to change forever
its cultural and ethnic character? Where did my students feelings of resentment and
anger come from when it was hinted that there was racism in Cyprus? How did it feel
for some individuals to view immigrants as unequal to native inhabitants? It is by
now clear to me that moving these students toward critical emotional reflexivity
would require more than rational arguments. Understanding the emotional force of a
structure of feeling in a particular socio-political setting that underpins a cultural
politics of emotion such as resentment against immigrants and enemies is a key
element of using empathy strategically.
But I want to push Lindquists theorization further and argue that strategic
empathy entails an important ethical responsibility on the part of the teacher to
engage his/her students multiple stories of troubled knowledge. It is through a deep
emotional exploration of these stories that teachers and students will become able to
see common patterns in their emotional lives, to realize how common humanity is
made, and what its consequences are for positioning themselves in interconnected
ways. Strategic empathy signifies a willingness to teach with ambiguity, ambivalence,
and paradox. Strategic empathy, in other words, is a relational construct that is both
emotional and strategic. To say that a teacher uses strategic empathy means that he
or she encourages empathetic engagement with troubled knowledge, even when there
are seemingly intractable obstacles to imagine students emotional experiences. This
connectedness with the other, without rushing to categorize him or her as
perpetrator, misguided or evil, is precisely what avoids premature closure and
sustains the possibility of transformation.
Pedagogies of strategic empathy, if they may be called as such, suggest developing
a mode of teaching and learning from troubled knowledge a mode that produces a
new ethical relationality and emotional culture in the classroom. Students and
teachers who struggle with traumatic racial injury bring different emotional histories
Teaching in Higher Education
123
with them to school; in tracing these histories of refusal, shame, anger, resentment,
and so on, it becomes clear that to move beyond injury moralistic positions need to
be avoided. Therefore, developing pedagogies that utilize strategic empathy would
mean being committed to develop affective connections without dismissing the
critical interrogation of past emotional histories, knowledges, and experiences.
Conclusion
This paper has constructed an argument about the emotionally complicated and
compromised learning spaces of teaching about anti-racism in higher education.
These are spaces steeped in complex structures of feeling that evoke strong and often
discomforting emotions on the part of both teachers and students. Though the
presence or absence of discomforting emotions in the classroom does not guarantee
any anti-racist pedagogical work, emotion needs to be recognized as a significant
component of troubled knowledge. Deeply entrenched social and cultural norms
create and sustain the structures that privilege or oppress norms which are aligned
with certain emotional attachments to things like perceived racial origin (Ahmed
2004). Challenging those norms means changing students emotional relation to
them, that is, seeing the consequences of these norms as either gain or loss. Given
that there are students who are privileged by these norms, these students will not give
them up easily. However, if we want transformation, then our pedagogies should not
ignore how to access the deep emotional knowledge of race experience by students
who are most likely to resist change.
I have suggested that one possible way to deal with this conjuncture, and dealing
with it we must as educators, is not through the repetition of the same old rational
argumentation about the moral value of anti-racism. Instead, we as educators have
to acknowledge the need for new pedagogical strategies that take into consideration
the emotional complexities of anti-racist work. At the same time, the boundaries and
limits of this kind of teaching, both in and out of class, need to be kept in mind.
There are important unanswered questions that need to be tackled in future
investigations such as: Is the teacher of anti-racism to become some sort of therapist
(how are such skills developed?) and what happens when students leave class, perhaps
later in their lives? Furthermore, dealing with ones own prejudices and limitations as
a teacher focused on strategic empathy may require a therapeutic solution too.
Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to explore how strategic empathy may become a
valuable pedagogical tool in support of the emotional struggles to navigate through
troubled knowledge.
Note
1. An important clarification needs to be made here. Paying attention to emotions does not
imply in any way that conflict or troubled knowledge are attributed to hatred or
resentment; this approach would be overly psychologistic and it is clearly rejected in this
paper. In other words, attention to emotions does not undermine or silence the material
implications of conflict or troubled knowledge. On the contrary, the approach on emotions
discussed in this paper acknowledges the politicization of emotions, including its material
aspects.
124 M. Zembylas
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