Forging a Constellation, Recovering a Space of Memory Beyond Reconciliation and Consternation

Abstract

In this chapter, “Forging a Constellation, Re-covering a Space of Memory Beyond Reconciliation and Consternation”, Mario Di Paolantonio examines how psychoanalytic and sociopolitical perspectives of trauma and emotion can work as a pedagogical resource for developing critical insights into teaching and learning about trauma and reconciliation in schools. A major challenge for critical educators in traumatised societies which struggle for reconciliation is that emotions of trauma are often appropriated by social and political institutions, including schools, to justify particular collective narratives and ideologies. For this purpose, Di Paolantonio analyses a detailed example of the political appropriation of one emotion—fear—as it stems from a particular context, and shows how reconciliation possibilities are essentially “undone” by the restrictive engagement with trauma narratives. To this end, Di Paolantonio proposes critical emotional praxis as a pedagogical tool that could potentially invent new interpretive approaches and practices of relating with “others”—pedagogies that do not fossilise emotional injury but move forwards.