32 ACUMEN • SPRING 2023 ISTOCKPHOTO.COM Emotion and Affect in the Classroom In addition to the themes of renunciation and modernity, one of the things Pitkin took away from her deep dive into Khunu Lama’s life was a sense of the creation and transmission of knowledge as a relational process, and how emotion and affect are central to Buddhist modes of interpersonal connection—especially between teachers and students. “I feel like my own teaching has really evolved as a result,” Pitkin says. “Over the same period that I’ve been working on this book, I’ve also been rethinking how I imagine the space of the classroom, starting to understand it as a place where the students and I are exploring questions together and producing knowledge together.” “The learning is coming from the students,” Pitkin added. “It’s not something that I’m single-handedly providing to them. But rather, we’re making something together. And that’s a relational process. It’s a process of discovery in each class, and there is a way in which I think that approach comes from my learning about the kind of teacher Khunu Lama was.” ● tradition, and specifically at the theme of renunciation, through the frame of one person’s life in the crucible of the 20th century,” Pitkin says. “I argue that Khunu Lama’s life, writings and activities— particularly narratives about his renunciation— create opportunities to see how the whole received binary of modern versus not-modern falls apart.” “I’m writing against ways of thinking about modernity that suggest a kind of hierarchy,” Pitkin says, “where some societies are labeled ‘truly’ modern and others aren’t, or where people who are labeled ‘not-modern’ are framed as primitive or backward.” “That kind of modernity-as-progress story often gets framed as benevolent or helpful by governments and other powerful actors, but that progressivist way of thinking about modernity can actually be a tool of enormous cultural violence,” Pitkin adds. “By contrast, Khunu Lama’s own writings, and work by Himalayan and Tibetan authors about Khunu Lama’s life, reveal more nuanced and capacious ways of thinking about 20th century history and its disruptions, using interpretive tools drawn from Buddhism.” “ I’m writing against ways of thinking about modernity that suggest a kind of hierarchy, where some societies are labeled ‘truly’ modern and others aren’t...”
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