Affective, political and ethical sensibilities in pedagogies of critical hope Title Exploring the notion of ‘critical emotional praxis'

In a previous book (Zembylas 2007), I discussed the pedagogical potential of ‘critical hope’ and some of the transformative possibilities that pedagogies of critical hope entail. In that book I argued that critical hope could inspire the formation of pedagogical spaces in which educators and students identify, narrate, explain, advocate or resist certain aspects of their emotional, historical and material lives; however, I did not pursue the political and ethical implications in much detail, especially in relation to the development of ‘pedagogies of critical hope’ as spaces for the constitution of strategic affective alliances. In this chapter, I wish to come back to my original discussion, utilizing an enhanced theoretical perspective and focusing specifically on how pedagogies of critical hope are valuable resources that respond to feelings of despair, pessimism and fatalism about social injustices in the world. I will argue that we need pedagogies which recognize the political, ethical and affective sensibilities of hope and that educators and students need to mobilize those sensibilities towards new social imaginaries that are grounded in social praxis and solidarity.