The novelty has already been done: about emotions in emotional education and the emancipatory legacy

Abstract

In the present work, a critique of the Emotional Education proposals is carried out through three theoretical perspectives: on the one hand, a focus on problematizations and centered on the technologies of the self; on the other hand, the diverse cultural studies that frame the objects dedicated to the happiness of each individual person with the demands of contemporary capitalism; and, finally, as the engine of these reflections, the pedagogical perspectives that have been built in Latin America in the 20th century and their interstices to think the affections in the pedagogical bond. Thus, fundamentally, it is intended to criticize the positions that advocate building an emotional education from the paradigm of human capital and in correlation with the implications of neoliberal governmentality in the classroom. The work has as its axis the conception of emotion and the social aspect of Emotional Education, in addition to the discussion with the neurobiological and moralistic vision that these proposals take up. By returning to the critical perspectives of Latin American pedagogy, an attempt will be made to think about the place of emotions in the classroom and show that the position of emotional education leaves these approaches aside, brandishing a series of connotations that return to a biological, individual perspective and of subjective responsibility of the students. With these axes, one of the law proposals, and the theoretical framework that supports it, in the province of La Pampa, Argentina, will be addressed. With this case, the aim is to make explicit the distance in which these positions are with respect to the pedagogical legacy of our region.