{"id":1039,"date":"2021-04-18T18:55:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-18T18:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/?p=1039"},"modified":"2025-01-16T21:03:26","modified_gmt":"2025-01-16T21:03:26","slug":"peer-reviewed-publication-post-covid-pedagogy-and-ethics-a-call-to-teach-the-banality-of-evil-the-cea-mid-atlantic-review-vol-29-2021-pp-39-51","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/2021\/04\/18\/peer-reviewed-publication-post-covid-pedagogy-and-ethics-a-call-to-teach-the-banality-of-evil-the-cea-mid-atlantic-review-vol-29-2021-pp-39-51\/","title":{"rendered":"Peer-Reviewed Publication: \u201cPost-COVID Pedagogy and Ethics: A Call to Teach the Banality of Evil.\u201d The CEA Mid-Atlantic Review, vol. 29, 2021, pp. 39-51."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dr. Mike Piero&#8217;s essay, \u201cPost-COVID Pedagogy and Ethics: A Call to Teach the Banality of Evil,&#8221; appeared in the peer-reviewed journal, <em>The CEA Mid-Atlantic Review<\/em>, vol. 29, 2021, pp. 39-51.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:<br>This essay argues that the banality of evil serves as a much-needed concept<br>through which to understand and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Toward<br>reducing COVID-19 spread, suffering, and death, humanities professors should<br>engage their students about the tendency we each have to locate evil in the other,<br>thereby exculpating ourselves from being complicit in such evil. Looking to the<br>worst Crime(s) of the twentieth century and without equating the Shoah\u2014or other<br>events of genocide and mass violence\u2014with the COVID-19 pandemic, this essay<br>draws upon philosophers like Arendt, Todorov, Adorno, Sontag, Nancy, Agamben,<br>and others to suggest that considering our own complicity in the spread of this<br>virus in the daily, banal activities of life is paramount for ethical decision making<br>today. While some\u2014notably anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, and<br>the politicians who support them\u2014are more complicit in spreading this virus (and<br>should be held responsible), to locate the \u201cevil\u201d of this pandemic\u2019s disastrous<br>spread only in them would neglect the \u201clittle\u201d ways in which most of us are complicit<br>in this global catastrophe. A post-COVID pedagogy of ethics requires us to instruct<br>students about the banality of evil to spark within them the critical self-reflection<br>needed for more just, ethical relations towards others, even beyond that required<br>by law. So long as we continue to locate evil in others alone, COVID-19\u2014and the<br>next pandemic or catastrophe\u2014will continue to proliferate through the everyday<br>actions of otherwise good people going about their daily lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Mike Piero&#8217;s essay, \u201cPost-COVID Pedagogy and Ethics: A Call to Teach the Banality of Evil,&#8221; appeared in the peer-reviewed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1040,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[49,51,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cultural-studies","category-publication-scholarly","category-teaching"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mikepiero.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Screenshot-2025-01-16-at-1.53.42-PM.png?fit=1590%2C1354&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1039"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1128,"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions\/1128"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepiero.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}