The therapisation of social justice as an emotional regime: implications for critical education
Journal of Professional Capital and Community
ISSN: 2056-9548
Article publication date: 10 October 2016
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to sketch out what one can see as the emerging “therapeutic turn” in a wide range of areas of contemporary social life including education, especially in relation to understandings of vulnerability and social justice, and then poses the question of what emotional regime has accompanied the emergence of this “therapization” movement, making emotional life in schools the “object-target” for specific technologies of power.
Design/methodology/approach
The psychologization of social problems has been very much in evidence in the development of educational policies and practices – an approach which not only pathologizes social problems as individual psychological deficiencies or traits, but also obscures the recognition of serious structural inequalities and ideological commitments that perpetuate social injustices through educational policy and practice. In the present paper, the author adopts a different perspective, that of the history, sociology and politics of emotions and affects to show how and why the therapization of social justice is part of the conditions for the birth of particular forms of biopower in schools.
Findings
There is an urgent need to expose how psychologized approaches that present social justice as an individualizing responsibility are essentially depoliticizing vulnerability by silencing the shared complicities. It is argued, then, that it is crucial to pay attention to the political and structural dimensions of vulnerability.
Originality/value
Attending to the emotional regime of therapization of social justice has important implications to counter forms of biopower that work through processes of normalization.
Keywords
Citation
Zembylas, M. (2016), "The therapisation of social justice as an emotional regime: implications for critical education", Journal of Professional Capital and Community, Vol. 1 No. 4, pp. 286-301. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPCC-05-2016-0015
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited