Affective Bonds and Mathematical Concepts: Speaking of Affect Through Sympathy

Abstract

In this chapter, we offer a perspective on affect in mathematics education which we put in conversation with main approaches that currently dominate the field. We articulate our theoretical commitments drawing on a brief episode in which an 8-year-old student, Filippo, works on a patterning task to which he is challenged by the teacher. We exploit theoretical considerations on the affective/tactile-kinaesthetic body and its capacity to affect and be affected, starting from the video data of the one-minute interaction of the child with the teacher. This capacity is introduced in terms of the concept of affectivity as studied by Sheets-Johnstone. Borrowing from the perspective of inclusive materialism, we do not see affect and emotion as something possessed by the individual, rather we dwell into a discussion of their impersonal nature and the way that they circulate across learning assemblages, informed by movement and change. We use the ancient concept of sympathy to better understand the productive entanglement, or sympathetic agreement, of the child and the pattern. We extend the discourse on sympathetic bonds to stress how the concept matters and the tonal differences between one experience and another.