ON POSSIBILITIES FOR REFLECTION ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THEORY OF HISTORY AND HISTORY TEACHING: AFFECT, ETHICS, AND HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Abstract

Teaching history in this second decade of the 21st century emerges as a practical challenge in the classroom and as a theoretical challenge for our disciplinary field. These challenges imply a critical reflection on representations of the past that are not centered on academic institutions, but rather a critical reflection that reaches basic education. Faced with revisionism and denialism that question the authority of the history teacher in the first instance, before students who seem to be more influenced by algorithms than by school knowledge, this work proposes a coexistence and cooperation guided by ethics in the theory of history, and by affect in the practice of teaching history. From this relationship, the problematization of historical consciousness emerges as a fundamental factor for understanding subjects in their temporalities, whether historical subjects or learning subjects (among whom are included teachers and students). The proposal is that ethics and affect coexist in a mutual commitment to combat falsifications and denialism, with strategies that sensitize students to the tragedies that have shaped our history. Thus, beyond the growing normalization of violence and hate speech, the right to exist and to resist awakens sensitivities and connections.