Contemplative Learning and Inquiry across Disciplines

14 Contemplating Uncomfortable Emotions: Creating Transformative Spaces for Learning in Higher Education

14 Contemplating Uncomfortable Emotions Creating Transformative Spaces for Learning in Higher Education John Eric Baugher Modern life is replete with opportunities for witnessing the suffering of others, and the human response to such suffering is a concern shared by educators across the humanities and social sciences. In her last monograph, Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag (2003) considers the possibility of compassionate response, yet suggests that compassion is an “unstable emotion” and people often turn away from painful realities not simply because “a steady diet of images of violence has made them indifferent but because they are afraid” (p. 100). She continues that images of suffering could be “used like memento mori, as objects of contemplation to deepen one’s sense of reality . . . but that would seem to demand the equivalent of a sacred or meditative space in which to look at them” (p. 101). In Sontag’s assessment, such space is hard to come by in modern society “whose chief model of a public space is the mega-store” (p. 119) Although Sontag’s concern is on the use of photographs, her exploration of the context within which an image is viewed has direct bearing on the possibility for creating transformative spaces for learning within my home discipline of sociology. In his now classic Invitation to Sociology Peter Berger (1963) expresses a hope shared by many sociologists that our courses will help students become “more compassionate in their journeys through society” (p. 2). Yet just as Sontag dispels the myth that vivid photographic depictions of human suffering would inevitably inspire particular responses in viewers, so too is the relation between sociological understanding and compassionate action not so straightforward. As a consequence of reducing sociological seeing to a disem233 234 John Eric Baugher bodied cognitive activity, Berger must ultimately conclude that “sociological consciousness” lends itself just as well to “malevolent and misanthropic” (pp. 175–176) actions as it does to compassionate living. In contrast, this chapter articulates a non-dualistic, emotionally embodied, contemplative pedagogy that seeks to develop within teachers and students a sociology of self-knowledge that opens possibilities for more skillfully and compassionately relating to the inner and outer dimensions of our experience. Central to my pedagogic approach is the assumption that contemplating “negative” emotions such as anxiety and fear holds tremendous value for seeing the connections between self and society and for developing the capacity for human freedom and compassionate engagement with others. In the first section of this chapter I theorize the role liminal emotions can play in creating transformative spaces for learning in higher education by drawing connections between feminist and other pedagogies of transformation as well as my own research on the development of caring capacities in hospice workers. I then describe a specific classroom exercise I use to help students break fearful habits of mind that limit our capacity to attune to complex interpersonal dynamics in emotionally uncomfortable situations. My approach is rooted in the teachings and practices of Mahayana Buddhism, and in this section I explain how my pedagogic practice invites students to experience the distinction between classic sociological and Buddhist understandings of self-referential thoughts and feelings. I then present data from students’ reflective papers from a course, “Sociology of Death and Dying,” to illustrate the value of this emotionallyembodied contemplative practice. In the final section I consider some of the implications of the research and perspective presented in this chapter regarding how to more deeply realize the ideals that inform the social sciences and the liberal arts more broadly. Holding Space for Transformative Emotions Sociology has typically been conceived as the practice of thinking structurally , systematically, and critically (Eckstein, Schoenike, & Delaney, 1995, pp. 353–363). Emotions in the sociology classroom have typically either been ignored or interpreted as barriers to learning, particularly when topics are thought to be “too close to home” or “threatening” to the self-understanding and cherished values of students (Goldsmid & Wilson, 1980, p. 143; Davis, 1992, pp. 232–238). Only recently have sociologists begun to articulate the central importance of emotions in our work as educators, a turn that coincides with the death of the long-held myth in Western social science that emotions 235 Contemplating Uncomfortable Emotions inherently stand in the way of clear thinking (Turner & Stets, 2005, pp. 21–22). Educators from diverse perspectives in the social sciences and humanities now recognize that we come to understand the mysteries of our lives...