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On the Verge of Tears: The Ambivalent Spaces of Emotions and Testimonies

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The Pedagogical Possibilities of Witnessing and Testimonies

Abstract

What do emotions do? Are emotions possible and desirable starting points for teaching difficult and complex subjects such as injustice and historical wounds? This chapter explores the 2015 image and testimony of Alan Kurdi, pictured lying on a beach of the Mediterranean Sea, and the immense emotional response it elicited from the media. By critiquing emotions based on testimonies in teaching, by primarily following Ahmed (The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 2004) and Todd (Learning from the Other: Levinas, Psychoanalysis, and Ethical Possibilities in Education, 2003), Hållander argues that emotions are cultural practices, not psychological states, and, thus, are relational. On this point, the argument is developed in two different directions: first, the effects offered by listening; second, opacity in relation to transparency, based on the thoughts of Glissant (Poetics of Relation, 1997).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Some of these responses in media were collected from a Wikipedia page that was created after the event, see: “Death of Alan Kurdi” (2016).

  2. 2.

    I have chosen to use the word emotions in the text. The literature I am dealing with explores the concepts of emotions, affect, and feelings. The three notions are similar to each other but are used differently by the researcher. As Margaret Wetherell (2012) writes, sometimes affect includes every emotion, and sometimes, an affect only refers to physical and bodily expressions (such as crying, laughing), in contrast to feelings that represent a more subjective expression. Here I will use the word “emotions” mainly because the chapter does not investigate what emotions are or what they may consist of (and how these concepts are understood), but rather what this phenomenon, as formulated by Sara Ahmed, creates in relation to other people (2004). I focus, in fact, on what emotions can do in relation to educational possibilities.

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  1. School of Culture and Education, Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Marie Hållander

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  1. Marie Hållander
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Correspondence to Marie Hållander .

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Hållander, M. (2020). On the Verge of Tears: The Ambivalent Spaces of Emotions and Testimonies. In: The Pedagogical Possibilities of Witnessing and Testimonies. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55525-2_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55525-2_5

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-55524-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-55525-2

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