Context: Social justice education; pedagogy of discomfort: idea that suffering discomfort is 'pedagogically valuable' for learning about injustice (see Boler's work); "This approach is grounded in the assumption that discomforting feelings are important in challenging dominant beliefs, social habits and normative practices that sustain social inequities and they create openings for individual and social transformation" (p.163). Author questions whether pedagogy of discomfort = 'ethically violent' - and if so, how can the ethical violence be removed from the pedagogical practice
Aim: To address the tensions that exist in the idea and practice of pedagogy of discomfort with regard to whether ethical violence is done, and how it could be avoided/ how a nonviolent ethics can be implemented. Two questions listed on p.167:
"When does a pedagogy of discomfort entail ethical violence through the imposition of a particular code of ethics on an Other who is unable to appropriate these ethics in a living way?
Is there any possibility to formulate a nonviolent ethics in pedagogy of discomfort?"
Theoretical frame: Judith Butler's notion of ethical violence (harm done in name of ethics); Foucault's 'ethic of discomfort'
Methodology: Essay
Discussion: Author starts by questioning the ethics of classroom safety in pedagogy of discomfort, where the goal for social justice education is transformation (worldviews, identities, perspectives). Authors have defended the ethical appropriacy of engaging in discomforting practices/ discussions (e.g. Kumashiro, 2002), while others have questioned the ethics of such an approach (e.g. Rak, 2003). Author examines ideas about safety and comfort (and the idea that transformations are constrained when comfortable), before then linking back to his work (Zembylas & Boler, 2003) where they argued that there is no such thing as a 'safe classroom' when privilege and inequity are considered: "marginalized students' need for safety (i.e. not being dominated) seems incompatible with the privileged students' desire to not be challenged" (p.165) - but this depends on what safe is understood to mean/ how it is operationalized. At its 'safest', pedagogy of discomfort challenges students to critically analyse their assumptions/ understandings/ unpack comfort zones: "Such a pedagogy has as its aim to uncover and question the deeply embedded emotional dimensions that frame and shape daily habits, routines, and unconscious complicity with hegemony" (p.166).
Judith Butler = 2005 'Giving an Account of Oneself' - establish notion of ethical violence/ responsibility; ethical violence is done to those who do not conform to ethical norms; thus "ethics is possible only if it can be appropriated by someone" (p.167). Ethical norms not only regularize but also limit subject positions. Butler invokes Foucault, arguing that critical self-reflection is necessary for non-violent ethics: "engaged in an ongoing struggle between a critical relation to the truth regime in which one lives and giving a 'truthful' account of the self" (words of Zembylas, p.169).
Core argument: Butler's framework offers three insights for considering the ethics of pedagogy of discomfort:
1) establishes notion of ethical responsibility
2) theorises ethical violence (not essentialist view; contextualised)
3) highlights the need for critical and strategic responses to suffering and pain
"Pedagogical discomfort, then, is the feeling of uneasiness as a result of the process of teaching and learning from/with others; insofar as the others 'de-center' us in this process, namely, they challenge our cherished beliefs and assumptions about the world, pedagogical discomfort seems to be a necessary and unavoidable step i pedagogical actions" (p.170)
If pedagogy of discomfort is ethically violent if students are asked to transform from an unstable self; on other hand, author questions how teachers can work with (disestablish certain subjectivities) without ethical violence. It is incumbent on the teacher to ensure that marginalized students "are not forced to be representative of a
homogenized group or privileged students are not forced to make their transformation 'evident' in public" (p.171)
Minimizing ethical violence as much as possible is key