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In this chapter, Michalinos Zembylas examines how psychoanalytic and sociopolitical perspectives of trauma and emotion can work as a pedagogic 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, I analyse a detailed example of the political appropriation of one emotion—fear—as it stems from a particular context, and show how reconciliation possibilities are essentially "undone" by the restrictive engagement with trauma narratives. To this end, I propose 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.

DOI: 10.1007/978-90-481-3945-3_7

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