Towards a Theory of Collective Care as Pedagogy in Higher Education

Abstract

This piece offers a conceptual framework for collective care as pedagogy in higher education, and a proposition of how to theorize its orientations within anticolonial and feminist work on affect in education. First, I spotlight work that helps to define collective care. Next, I call on the concept of affective individualism as a way to describe what is: the taken-for-granted affective governmentality (Zembylas, 2021) that shapes how we often come together in our classrooms. Finally, I ground collective care as pedagogy as the building of affective solidarity, an affective conceptual framework for what could be, grounded in the feminist work of Clare Hemmings (2012).