From Pedagogy of Pain to Pedagogy of Care: Interpreting the Discursive Shift

Abstract

This paper traces a discursive shift in South Asian educational discourse from a pedagogy of pain—grounded in discipline, punishment, and emotional repression—to a pedagogy of care, framed increasingly through empathy, affect, and relationality. Drawing on personal narratives and theoretical insights from Foucault, hooks, Freire, Noddings, and Tronto, it argues that these pedagogical models are shaped by broader structures of power. While traditions of care and pain have historically coexisted, the contemporary emphasis on care must be seen in light of neoliberal appropriations that redefine it as emotional labor, personal responsibility, and a means of institutional control. Through a sociological lens, this paper examines how both pain and care function as technologies of power—either reinforcing conformity or fostering critical consciousness, depending on their deployment. Ultimately, it argues that care retains radical potential, though this is increasingly constrained by its commodification and depoliticization in neoliberal regimes.