Emotionally-vulnerable subjects and new inequalities: the educational implications of an 'epistemology of the emotions'

Motivated by very different goals, various interest groups argue that the British government should address problems with citizens' emotional well-being. Concerns about emotional vulnerability and poor emotional well-being amongst growing numbers of children, young people and adults produce ideas and approaches from different branches of psychology and psychoanalysis. These compete for legitimacy throughout the education system. In part, such developments can be seen as the latest manifestation of a long-running tendency to psychologise intractable educational and social problems. The roots of the psychologisation of emotional vulnerability also lie in a deeper philosophical and political disenchantment with an externally-seeking, autonomous human subject and forms of curriculum knowledge that support it. One effect of these related trends is an epistemology of the emotion that privileges an emotionally vulnerable identity as integral to contemporary human subjectivity. One outcome is to offer emotionally-focused pedagogy and knowledge, particularly for those deemed to be educationally and socially disadvantaged. The paper argues that, despite being highly unfashionable in sociological, political and philosophical theory, a humanist view of subjectivity challenges the new inequalities and diminished forms of pedagogy and knowledge this epistemology offers.