TEMPORALITY AND AFFECTIVITY IN AUTHORITARIAN EDUCATION (a case study of an exemplary lesson in a Belarusian secondary school)

Abstract

This article examines long-standing authoritarian patterns within the Belarusian general secondary education system. It focuses on how these patterns are structurally sustained through pedagogical approaches, communication methods, and emotional regimes. Drawing on an interdisciplinary research project conducted between 2023 and 2024, the study takes a critical phenomenological approach to analyse manifestations of violence in the educational environment. The central thesis explores the crucial yet often overlooked roles of temporality and affectivity in reproducing the authoritarian dynamic. Specifically, the research conducts an in-depth case study of an exemplary secondary school lesson, analysing its rigid structure and prescribed pace. The author argues that this lesson is characterised by a specific structural connection between temporality and affectivity that restricts the potential for authentic, creative, non-hierarchical cooperation between educators and students. The findings reveal that an authoritarian approach to education is enabled by rigorous linear time management and characterised by negative affective dialectics. The study concludes that, under an authoritarian regime, an exemplary lesson can be more destructive and dehumanising than a regular lesson due to the temporal-affective phenomenon of overmobilization.