Suffering and existential projectuality. Rethinking emotions for a school of affectivity

Abstract

Today the world of education has to deal with a problematic, almost polymorphic, aspect of pain: on the one hand, still prevails the tendency to "domesticate" pain, to remove it, on the other, the pain becomes more and more "public" since it is mediatic. It is no coincidence that Illouz (2006) states that social media have become a means to give public visibility to suffering since the pain shown publicly becomes a fundamental prerequisite for self-promotion.

In today's connected society, immersion in the kaleidoscopic media universe risks of pushing young people towards a deep crisis of relationships and identity, a crisis that emerges significantly from that nomad wandering (Maffesoli, 1997) that distinguishes the structure of social media in which ambit appears to be the emotional dimension that accompanies children in their wanderings over the web, that is the delegation to technology of the most complex emotional aspects of life.

Is it possible to follow a pedagogical path that, without denying technological progress, is able to construct an educational project that teaches young people above all to live the fragility, suffering and idea of the end as inseparable conditions of life and, therefore, as horizons of meaning of existence?

In this sense the school, as an educational institution, could be considered as the privileged place that is able to carry on a real affective education, an education that is able to work on the awareness of the pedagogical force of fragility, of living emotions in a constructive way, in giving them meaning, a habitus that can serve as a value platform for the younger generations.