ABSTRACT
Feminist and antiracist scholars have long argued that affect is central to social justice pedagogy and activism. However, dominant frameworks for discussing emotion can lead instructors to argue about classroom emotion in individualized and depoliticized ways that contradict this perspective. In this chapter, the author analyzes interviews conducted with graduate students and teaching fellows who participated in a seminar on race, language, and education connected to the university–community partnership program School Kids Investigating Language in Life and Society (SKILLS). Drawing from these interviews, the author suggests that even students who declared their support and commitment to critical pedagogy and antiracist and sociolinguistic justice frequently dismissed the role of emotion and personal experience in their own graduate classrooms. The author argues that this pervasive dismissal of emotion is underwritten by discourses that characterize emotion as individual, ahistorical, colorblind, and gender-neutral. The chapter concludes by examining how the definition and goals of sociolinguistic justice already require a critical focus on emotional knowledge and change. By recognizing sociolinguistic justice as a fundamentally affective pursuit, the chapter suggests that educators and advocates can center “just emotions” as a critical component of sociolinguistic justice theory and praxis.
