Description
How do we enter the discipline of IR as sensing and sense-making living beings and what affective landscapes do we move through as we encounter and work through questions of the ‘political’? Students’ learning journeys in the discipline often revolve around the norm of ‘objectivity’ – as a particular, affective yet dispassionate mode of relating to the subject matter – as a trade-off between recognition and connectedness, status and solidarity, visibility and social change. Drawing on experimental pedagogical research the paper sets out to both narrate and theorize pedagogical practice as a continuing self-reflexive journey in constant negotiation of student experience, learning needs and professional ambitions, especially when it comes to the study of statecraft, war, violence and the lives of ‘others’. It focuses on how transformational experiences may be curated within the field of IR by cultivating an approach to text, ‘theory,’ representations and everyday practices that is sensitive to the complex life worlds and practices of their origins, and equally, appreciative of the life worlds and practices of their reception.
