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Interrogating the Affective Politics of White Victimhood and Resentment in Times of Demagoguery: The Risks for Civics Education

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Abstract

This essay contributes to scholarly discussions on the affective politics of demagoguery, especially in relation to the rhetoric of white victimhood and resentment, by exploring how civics education could formulate an anti-demagogic pedagogical response. Contemporary understandings of demagoguery as a rhetoric that emphasizes in-group identity and frames solutions as a matter of punishing an out-group, while also converting the shared vulnerability of life into an affective politics of white victimhood, create a new urgency to reconsider how civics education may help students identify and interrogate demagoguery. This essay discusses potential risks in pedagogical efforts of civics education to confront demagoguery and examines ways out of these pedagogical missteps. The essay joins other scholars who call for a reorientation in how educators promote and practice civics education so that it takes into consideration that we live in a culture that is already demagogic.

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Notes

  1. The concept of ressentiment was introduced by Nietzsche (1998/1887) in The Genealogy of Morals and refers to the feeling of powerlessness by the weak who find a scapegoat to blame for their own inferiority and failure. Since then the concept has found its way in many disciplines (e.g. sociology, philosophy, psychology, psychoanalysis) and although there is no consensus as to its meaning, it generally refers to feelings of resentment emerging from social, economic and political conditions (Demertzis 2020)—e.g. resentment for the uncertainties of capitalism and the surveillance state or resentment for refugees, immigrants, the long-term unemployed, and political and cultural elites, who are blamed for the dire economic, cultural and social conditions of the nation (Salmela and von Scheve 2017).

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  1. Open University of Cyprus, P. O. Box. 12794, 2252, Latsia, Cyprus

    Michalinos Zembylas

  2. Nelson Mandela University (NMU), Gqeberha, South Africa

    Michalinos Zembylas

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Zembylas, M. Interrogating the Affective Politics of White Victimhood and Resentment in Times of Demagoguery: The Risks for Civics Education. Stud Philos Educ 40, 579–594 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-021-09777-6

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