Affection as a movement of desire bound to pedagogical relations

Abstract

In this article I present my journey through the pedagogy of affection, starting from a conjuncture that made me pay attention, in the teaching of Psychology of Art, Contemporary Visualities and Arts-based Research at the Faculty of Fine Arts, to the entanglement between desire and pedagogical relations. From this crossroad, I consider pedagogical relations (inspired by Bernard Charlot, Elizabeth Ellsworth, Alfred Porres and Max van Manen) as part of an encounter between subjects and knowledge that affects the positions of students and teachers and challenges the dualism 'them and us'. Desire (based on Gilles Deleuze and Jacque Lacan) emerges in pedagogical relations as an agency that needs to leave behind the obsession to reproduce and, mainly, to interpret, diagnose and classify the student. At this crossroad between pedagogical relations and desires, affects appear when an experience of encounter of subjectivities (how we know and narrate ourselves) and knowledge (how we link ourselves to what we know) takes place. To illustrate this entanglement of pedagogical relations, desire and affects, I present two examples connected with my roles of teacher and researcher. The first one links with an Artsbased Research course where teachers and students learn horizontally and differentially. The second one, focusing in a cartography make by a secondary school teacher to give an account of her learning path, is part of a larger research project 'How do teachers learn: educational implications and challenges for social change'. Both examples contribute to explore the notion of affection as part of a substantial change in the relationships around politics, research, and pedagogy.