Critical education policy studies construe contemporary education policies as technologies of neoliberalism that shape teachers’ experiences, identities and feelings. The emotional dimension of teachers’ experiences of these policy regimes has featured in critical policy analysis; however, affect theory has been under-utilised. We contend this has kept the individual subject as a focus of analysis and closes the field to novel ways of thinking about the role of affect as a pre-individual force conditioning social and political struggle. We argue that post-humanist affect theories, which de-centre the individual subject and emphasise pre-individual forces, enrich the analysis of education policies, teachers’ emotions, social transformation and political struggle as dimensions of affect. These non-subject-oriented theories of affect call for expanding the territory of sociological thought and critical education policy analysis.