Affective Strategies of Abolition Pedagogies in Higher Education: Dismantling the Affective Governmentality of the Colonial University

Abstract

ABSTRACT I highlight the importance of paying attention to the affective strategies of abolition pedagogies in higher education to mobilize abolitionist praxis. Affective strategies can make a contribution in either changing or reproducing the affective culture that has long been established at the colonial university. In the analysis here, I argue that the affective strategy of invoking sentimental empathy, which is often used in education when addressing issues of slavery, racism, and coloniality, is not only superficial but also reproduces colonial-feeling rules. Instead, I suggest a number of affective strategies—such as mobilizing affective solidarity with the affective worlds of marginalized students and identifying complicity, while engaging in anticomplicity praxes—that enable educators and students to begin imagining and enacting the abolition university. I argue that a more comprehensive understanding of abolition pedagogies in higher education can be attained by a heightened attention to the affective challenges entailed in abolitionist pedagogical praxis.