Abstract
This chapter begins with the idea that in order to create ‘reparative futures’—futures that recognize and seek to repair historical injustices—it is inevitable to engage with ‘difficult knowledge’. In particular, this chapter takes on the case of ‘post-truth’—a word that has become a buzzword in recent years, reflecting the disruption of rationality and objectivity by emotion and personal belief—and discusses how post-truth claims about race and racism constitute forms of difficult knowledge in educational settings. The chapter argues that educators need to develop pedagogical resources that deal with post-truth as difficult knowledge in ways that recognize and seek to repair ongoing histories of racial violence, oppression and domination. For this purpose, the chapter considers how nurturing ‘affective solidarity’ may constitute an affective tool for reparative pedagogies, that is, pedagogies that create transformative learning spaces which seek to make a contribution in repairing historical injustices and inequalities.
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Notes
- 1.
‘I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world,’ as Trump said in the summer of 2019 in response to a reporter’s question if he was bothered that ‘more and more people’ were calling him racist.
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Zembylas, M. (2023). Post-Truth, Difficult Knowledge, and Reparative Futures: Nurturing Affective Solidarity for Transformative Learning Spaces. In: Walker, M., Boni, A., Velasco, D. (eds) Reparative Futures and Transformative Learning Spaces. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45806-4_2
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