Teaching Philosophy in the Performance Society: neoliberal technological implications in school and the importance of emotions in learning

Abstract

In the contemporary digital era, subjects are undermined by the technological pandemic that employs new ways of acting and thinking in their lives. The performance society is a product or this new period. Excessive demands and excessive positivity mark subjects suffering from psychosomatic pathologies, such as anxiety and depression. In the school context, this reality is exponential, due to the demands on students, denial of emotions that do not follow the logic of performance and “irrelevance” of subjects that question this social becoming. The reflection present in this article considers the teaching of philosophy as an emancipatory landmark of the aforementioned phenomenon and, in addition, has the objective of highlighting the importance of considering students' emotions as a tool to aid learning, contrary to the nexus of a social body dominated by performance. The research guiding methodology is critical bibliographic theory. The present study is divided into 3 topics that examine digital reality in human life, as well as inferences in school reality and the teaching of philosophy as a resistant practice on uncriticality. As a result, it was concluded that the neoliberal logic of technological performance is a powerful tool in shaping subjects and in the expropriation and exploitation of an individual surrounded by surveillance capitalism and information capitalism. Both phenomena come from this environment taken over by digital reality and directly affect the school environment. However, philosophical teaching, supported by the importance of considering reality and student emotions, is evoked as a masterful form of resistance and perseverance in the formation of criticality.