Butler on (Non)violence, Affect and Ethics: Renewing Pedagogies for Nonviolence in Social Justice Education

Abstract

This paper complements pedagogical efforts of foregrounding nonviolence on inner reflexive work with approaches that highlight notions of nonviolence as both subjective and collective resistance to the norms and structures of social injustice and violence. It is argued that Butler’s theorization of affect, ethics and (non)violence can serve as a productive entry point into enriching our understandings of ethical and political responses to violence in the context of social justice education, especially in renewing pedagogies for nonviolence. In particular, Butler’s construal of nonviolence as enmeshed with ethics and affect is noteworthy in social justice education for two important reasons: first, it highlights how the ethical and the political are intertwined, just as violence and nonviolence are entangled, hence theorizing nonviolence in social justice education is founded in the claim that we are all from the beginning enmeshed in both resistance and complicity. Second, Butler’s understanding of nonviolence as an interruption or suspension of norms that are taken for granted emphasizes the need to take into consideration how affective relations may be mobilized in social justice education not only on the basis of ethical appeals but also on political terms.