Going Postal: Pedagogic Violence and The Schooling of Emotion

Going Postal: Pedagogic Violence and
the Schooling of Emotion

LYNNWORSHAM
The point of critique is not justification but a different way of feeling, another
sensibility.
Gilles Deleuze
... decolonization isalways aviolent phenomenon.
Franz Fanon
Going Postal in Practice and Theory
Aphrasewith arather short history,goingpostal hasprovento bequiteportableduring
itsbrieflife. I cameacrossit most recentlyinPremiereMagazine, where it servesasthe
clevertitleofthe letters-to-the-editorsection. To getto the glossypagesof amagazine
devotedentirelytothepromotion oftheentertainment industryandthe manufacture
ofcelebrity, the phrasehadto travelquiteadistancefromitsplaceof origin:the inner
workings 0 fV .S.postal facilitieswhere incidents of violence, usually deadly, have
occurredwith alarmingfrequencyinthe lastdecade.Sincethe mid-1980sPost Office
employeesaresaidto begoingpostalwhen they murder andinjureco-workers,often
their supervisors, asaway of settlingworkplace grievancesperceivedto bebeyond
resolution or appeal. Coined in this context and in an effort to wrest from
senselessnessasenseof something unprecedented in labor history, the phrase then
moved with surprising speedinto the vernacular of postmodern America, where it
nowmaybeusedto referto anyviolentoutburst, howevermundaneandinconsequen-
tial. Itsappearanceinthe pagesofPremiereMagazineseems to suggestthat oncegoing
postalgoesto Hollywood to entitleapopularcourt ofopinionandappeal,the meaning
ofthephrasehasforeverchanged.Perhapsgoingpostalhasnowbecomemerelyacatchy
phrasewhoseattenuatedpower existsonlyinitsabilityto incitethe anonymous letter-
writerto averbaldisplayworthy offifteensecondsofnotice. Ifso,then perhapshere
the full deadly force of"nobodiness" canbe contained andwill not collidehead on
with the fullforceofthe desirefor "somebodiness,"andthus inthis venuethe circuit
mayberewired-the short circuitthat transforms,forexample,a"nobody" likeMark
DavidChapmanintothe"somebody"whokilled]ohnLennon. Orperhapsgoingpostal
hasbecome just another empty catchword that preservesno memory of what was
originallycarriedinitsterms, no memory ofthe outragethat begetsrageandfurther
outrage. If so, then the linesof articulation must bewideopen, andgoingpostal may
soonturn up asthe namefor anupdatedversionofthat adolescentkissinggameonce
called"post office." In any event, the strange career of this phrase-its increasing
214]AC
distance and abstraction, alienation and estrangement, from the objective conditions
that gave rise to it-has followed awild logic that we can neither bear to remember
nor afford to forget.
In these pagesgoingpostal will therefore remain acanny phrase for remembering,
for example, the execution of fourteen women byaman who, on December 6, 1989,
walked into an engineering classroom at the University of Montreal and reportedly
shouted, "I want the women!"! There was laughter-everyone thought it was ajoke,
a game-as he ordered the women to one side of the room and the men to the other.
Before he opened fire, he called the women a"bunch of feminists." In adesperate
effort to quickly reeducate the gunman and reverse the inevitable course of events,
one woman screamed, "You have the wrong women; we are not feminists!" But this
disavowal alone could never have reversed the momentum of aparanoid logicwhich,
in abject misrecognition, crossed the personal and the political to justify the
annihilation of difference.
Goingpostalwill also remember the senseless mayhem created in Stockton,
California by Patrick Purdy, who armed himself with an assault rifle, walked onto a
schoolyard at midday recess,and beganshooting. Five children were killedandtwenty
nine were injured before Purdy turned the gun on himself. Although news reports
indicated that the slaughter might have been motivated by racial bitterness-an influx
of Southeast Asian immigrants into the area in the 1980shad taken jobs that Purdy
felt should have been his-public memory has sinceerasedthe gunman's smiling face
and its recitation of euphoria and rage. In the aftermath, what remained for most of
us was only an abstract senseof the event asanother moment in the ongoing stalemate
over constitutional rights and gun controL What remained fora time inthe daily lives
of the surviving children of Stockton was a game they called "Purdy." This child's
play took two forms: the players either reenacted the slaughter with atoy assault rifle
placed in the hands of an appointed villain, or they revisedthe original event by taking
up toy guns and, in righteous and justifiable vengeance, staging the villain's ritual
execution." In 1989,Stockton was the fifth in aseriesof school assaultsthat year that
began when awoman walked into aWinnetka, Illinoisschoolroom, saying,"1'mgoing
to teach you alesson about guns," and then shot and killed an eight -year-old boy and
critically wounded fiveothers.
Then, too, there isthe national teaching that took place, alsoin 1989, in the wake
of the Central Park rape. The principal lesson here would reinforce a familiar
teaching-the catechism of fear and shame that schools women to accept responsi-
bilityfortheirown brutalization-but it focused attention primarily on the terrible
relation that may link boredom and urban violence. Wildingentered the national
vocabulary and the post modern imaginary through this caseto describethe seemingly
rando m acts 0 f unmotivated savagery commi tted by bo red and restless gro ups 0 f
youths looking for something to do. Nothing, at least initially, explained the wilding
in Central Park, none of the usual social or psychological topoi for locating,
naturalizing and, in a sense, organizing urban crime for its profit of meaning.'
Wilding, by definition, seems to refuse to wear the faceof poverty, race, gender, sex,
or even madness. The term itself suggests a form of play, except that here the
Pedagogic Violence and the Schooling of Emotion 215
disappearanceof the players(that is,their anonymity) inthis brutal gamemay not
signalasuspension of the rules asmuch asrender them more deceptiveand more
desperate.
If it isto bedefinedby apoverty of reason,then perhaps wildingshould not be
associatedwith the incidents of violencethat occurred in Montreal, Stockton, or
Winnetka,orwith anyoftheincidentsofschool,workplace,andfamilyviolencewhich,
in the last decade,haveincreasinglypunctuated the everyday-most recently, in
Jonesboro (Arkansas),Newington (Connecticut),Milwaukee(Wisconsin),Orange
(California), West Paducah (Kentucky), and Pearl (Mississippi). From Pearl to
Paducah, the incidenceofviolenceinthe U.S. ison the rise:workplace homocide is
the fastest growing category of murder, where the number has tripled in the last
decade;murder istheleadingcauseofworkplacedeathforwomen. Thephenomenon
of wilding, becauseit appearsto beinacategoryof itsown, may not shedany light
on theseformsor on more symbolicformsofviolenceor their effects-for example,
the repeatedbroadcastofthevideotapedbeatingofRodneyKingbyL.A. policemen;
or the ritual humiliation of AnitaHill by the all-male,all-whiteSenateJudiciary
CommitteeandbeforetheAmericanpeople,whoseneedforaneducationontheissue
of sexualharassment hasbeensuggestedasjustification for her public shaming.
Yet,inmyview,wildingisanexemplaryinstanceofgoingpostal.It willtherefore
proveinstructiveforwhat it willofferarhetoricof"pedagogicviolence,"astudythat
wouldseekto describeboth theformsandeffectsthrough whichviolenceislivedand
experiencedanditsobjectiveor structuralroleintheconstitutionofsubjeetivitiesand
inthe justificationof subjection. The increaseinviolence,especiallyinincidentsof
goingpostal,suggeststo methat itistimeto reconsiderthe realandsymbolicfunction
of violence. In the liberalview, violenceoccursat the very limit of the socialorder
where it displaysthe fragilityof meaning,identity, andvalue;andthe "progress"of
modern society canbe measuredin the successfulsubstitution of persuasion and
consentforviolenceandforce.Butthisviewdrawsattention awayfromthe factthat
violencealso(andincreasingly)arisesfromwithin the authority of existingsocial,
political, andeconomicarrangementsandservesquiteeffectivelyto reinforcetheir
legitimacy. Given that violenceseemsto be apermanent andpervasivefeature of
capitalistsocieties,circulatingitseffectswidelythrough the reiterativeteachingof
media, a study of pedagogicviolence may add an additional chapter to Michel
Foucault'shistoryofdisciplinarysocietybyreturningagainto the bodilyrhetoricof
violence,to itsvisibleandinvisiblescarificationofthe individualandsocialpsyche.
More specifically,the concept of pedagogicviolenceseeksto makevisiblethe
relationship betweendisciplineandviolence,betweenwhat ismost legitimateand
what ismost illegitimate,to openfor examinationthe symbolicviolenceimpliedin
teachingandlearning,the realviolencepreparedinschooling,wherever schooling
happensto occur. Theconceptofpedagogicviolencebringstogetherphenomenaset
apartfromoneanotherbythepartitioningandindividuatingtechniquesofdiscipline;
therefore, I seeit asahorizonal or border conceptthat locatesthe point atwhich one
kindofthingbecomesvisibleassomethingentirelydifferent.Initsoriginandeffects,
wilding is, as I will suggest later, far less pathological than it is normal {and
216JAC
normalizing), for it demonstratesandconfirmstheefficacyofdominant pedagogy.
Arhetoric of pedagogicviolencewill focusspecificallyon the way violence
addressesandeducatesemotion andinculcatesanaffectiverelationto the world. In
the viewI develophere, emotion will referto the tight braidof affectandjudgment,
sociallyandhistoricallyconstructedandbodilylived,through whichthe symbolic
takesholdofandbindstheindividual,incomplexandcontradietoryways,tothesocial
order and its structure of meanings. School, workplace, and familyviolence are
pedagogiesof emotion, andassuchtheyareparticularlyeffeetivewaysoflocatingand
anchoringus in awayof life. They areanintegralpart ofthe politicalmachineryof
what I will call, following Ann Ferguson, the sex! affectiveproduction systemof
advancedcapitalism, andthey arisefromwithin andextend (rather than radically
destabilize)itslogic. The paradigmaticinstancehereisthe institution of domestic
violence (including incest) which has been criminalized in first-world societies,
though onlyrecentlyandunevenly.
4
In what canonly bealimitedtreatment ofthe subjecthere, I ammovedby the
exorbitant instancesof pedagogicviolence,suggestedby the examplesopeningthis
paper, to consider more subtleformswhileneverthelessinsistingon their relation.
In this paper, I want to return to what I think wealreadyknow but havelearnedto
forget-namely, that the discourseof emotion isour primary education(primaryin
the senseof both earliestandfoundational). And I arguethat ifour commitment is
to realindividualandsocialchange-change that would finallydissolvethe relation-
shipbetweenpedagogyandviolence-then the work of decolonizationmust occur
at the affectivelevel,not only to reconstitutethe emotional lifeofthe individualbut
also,andmore importantly, to restructurethe feelingor moodthat characterizesan
age. To be sure, our most urgent political and pedagogical task remains the
fundamentalreeducationofemotion. Thisprojectcannotsucceedbymappinganew
regimeof meaningonto anoldwayoffeeling,onethat hasonly intensifiedwith the
.so-called"waningof affect"inthe eraofthe postmodern (seeJameson). Faceto face
with the indomitable andarchaicspirit of sex-hatredandrace-hatred,for example,
critical social theories have helped to shape an intellectual understanding of the
practicesandthe costsofothering. Yet atear isnot simplyanintellectualthing, and
achangeofheart doesnot follow,naturallyor simply,fromachangeofmind(seeNeu).
Grief, hatred, bitterness, anger, rage,terror, andapathy aswell asemotions of self-
assessment such as pride, guilt, and shame-these form the core of the hidden
curriculum for the vastmajority of peoplelivingandlearningin ahighly stratified
capitalistsociety. Thiscurriculumholdsmostof ussodeeplyandintimatelyandyet
differentlywithin itslogicthat our affectivelivesarelargelyimmuneto the legislative
effortsof socialcritiqueandto the legislativegainsof progressivesocialmovements.
I am compelled therefore to make the ultimate destination of this paper a
considerationofthetum topedagogyinAmericanliteraryandculturalstudies,which
arguably represents an effort to change, through the language of critique and
empowerment,theemotionalconstitutionofthepostmodernsubject.Inliteraryand
cultural studies,the pedagogicalturn isrelativelyrecent, beginningonly inthe late
1980s.Bythe earlynineties, education andpedagogyhadbecome, inGeraldGraff
PedagogicViolenceand the Schoolingof Emotion 217
words, the "boom subject" of the academic humanities. In abrief account of the
growing interest in pedagogy in literary and cultural studies, Graff finds in the very
nature of theory what I have called, in the context of composition studies, a
pedagogical imperative to spellout theory's implications for teaching (see"Writing").
But, in my view, the pedagogical turn in literary and cultural studies isdriven by a
recognition of the failuresof theory-on the one hand, itsfailureto effectivelycounter
the successesof the conservative educational agendas of the 1980s;and, on the other,
its failure to meaningfully confront the political consequences of postmodernism
understood asthe cultural logic of late capitalism. Interestingly, the decade of the
1980salsoclosed with the incidents of going postal suggested above and with the so-
called global triumph of capitalism represented by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
In the 1990s"Capitalists of the World Unite!" hasreplacedthe failedsloganfor worker
solidarity, and the triumph expressed in this phrase threatens to foreclose the
possibility of any oppositional theory that could effectively organize collective
political action (seeNew York TimesC28; Eagleton 5).Inthiscontextoffailureand
triumph, of despair and euphoria, pedagogy finds the political imperative to
reconceive itselfasaform of radical politics with goalsthat areformulated with asense
of utmost urgency: to reclaim education as a terrain of struggle crucial to the
reconstruction of apublic political culture and to constitute arevolutionary subject
capable of transforming the world.
Ambitious, to saythe least, this project and these goals have been important in
the recent history and development of composition studies, a field that has been
devalued ("feminized" and "proletarianized," it claims) precisely because its labors
have been deemed "unscholarly" -practical, pedagogical, and applied. Apparently
undisturbed by rumors of the failure of theory, composition studies has rapidly
adopted the linguafrancaof theory during the lastfifteenyears asaway of enfranchising
itself as a fully vested member of English studies, while more recently it has
appropriated the political languageof radical pedagogy asaway of claiming akey role
for itself (and writing instruction) asarevolutionary agent of change. The irony for
those of us in composition studies isthat the pedagogical turn in literary and cultural
studies has accomplished what composition has not had the power to achieve on its
own: pedagogy has become not only a legitimate object of intellectual inquiry in
English studies, aboom subject in the humanities, but also amatter of urgent social
and political interest. More sobering isthe factthat composition studies, in an anxious
effort to travel the circuit from "nobodiness" to "somebodiness," ifonly in the culture
of English studies, has continued to pursue arelatively uncritical relation to the boom
subject that has been such aboon to the field. Understandably content to capitalize
on the terms of political vision and to translate them into the more lucrative tokens
of professional self-interest, composition studies generally has asked too few
questions.
One pivotal question that should be asked-and aquestion that givessharp focus
to the nature of the failure of theory-concerns the fact that the spectacleof excessive
violence returns as an all too familiar form of the everyday, while the category of
violence all but disappears in recent theoretical and pedagogical discourse, where the
218]AC
focus ison detailing forms of desire, pleasure, andconsent. TeresaEbert, among
others, alsohasfocusedattentiononthispreoccupationincriticaltheory andinaway
that helpsto situatethe present inquiry. Ebert suggeststhe concept ofthepost-alas
aname for variousnewknowledgesincludingpoststructuralism,Lacanianandpost-
Lacanianpsychoanalysis,postmodernism, post-Marxism,postlesbianandpostgay
queertheory, andalmosteverybrandoffeministtheory. Thesenewpost-al(a.k.a,ludic)
knowledges, andthe pedagogiesthey inspire, arethus differentiatedfromclassical
Marxismandareidentifiedasthe specificforms that failuretakes.
In general, the concept of the post-al designatesdiscoursesandpracticesthat
concentratecriticalattention on the body, that substitutedesirefor labor asthe basic
processoflatecapitalism,that erasethe relationsofproductionandclassstrugglefrom
contemporary analyses,andthat ineffectreducethe scopeofpoliticsto cultural and
discursive(orideological)analysis(Ludic; "RedPedagogy").Reclaimingthepriority
of the categoriesof labor andclass,Ebert seeksto endtheory's longdigressioninto
discursive and cultural materialism by setting it on the proper path of historical
materialism.Acentralpart ofthisprojectisto exposepost-altheory asmerelyaform
of bourgeoisideologyoutfitted inthe latestjargonto appearto be"knowledge"and
thereby to exposeitsroleintheelisionofissuesofexploitationandemancipation. To
this end, Ebert excoriatescultural materialistsfor combattingphraseswith phrases,
for thinking they arecombattingthe realproblemsofthe existingworld andwaging
realpoliticalstrugglewith discourseabout discourse.Her point isnot that ideology,
cultural practices,andsignificationsareperipheralto politicalstruggle. Rather, her
point isthat theyarenot autonomousandmustbelinked,throughmaterialistcritique,
to the nondiscursive,to the '''real existingworld' -whose objectivityisthe factofthe
'working day'" (Ludic45).Post-alknowledgesandpedagogieshavefailedto perform
suchacritiqueandhavesuccessfullyshiftedcriticalattentionfromthe"workingday"
to the "everyday,"to popular culture andconsumption (seealsoKelsh). For Ebert
andher cohorts, goingpost-alisaparticularlyheinousformofviolencebecauseit has
effectivelyparalyzedpoliticalwill andaction. It maynot begoingtoo farto suggest
that, inthis view, goingpost-al intheory istantamount to aformof goingpostal-
that is, post-al theory ismerely aroute for avery fewenterprising" nobodies" to
become"somebodies"intheacademicstarsystembytradingonthemiseryofthemost
exploitedandoppressed;goingpost-alintheoryisnothingmorethanaverbaldisplay,
even a mode of play or entertainment, that servesthe professional and political
interestsof bourgeoisintellectuals(seealsoShumway).
In specificcases,I might agree. I too seek a form of critique that links the
discursiveandthe nondiscursive, the working day andthe everyday, beyond the
mystifying focuson pleasureanddesire. Yet I cannot endorsethe rather sharpline
drawn between (classical) Marxismandallother theoriesgatheredunder the rubric
of post-al or ludic knowledges. Suchstrict categorization, coupled with arather
dogmaticreturn to classicalMarxism,ignoresthe historicalityofMarxismaswell as
the historicality of capitalism. It alsosuggestsarather undialecticalrelation to so-
calledpost-al theories that refusesto recognizethat history alsohappens inthese
theories, that they too mayhavetheir moment of "truth" aswellastheir moment of
"falsehood."At theveryleast,suchstrictcategorizationisarguablyanother instance
ofthekindofdividingpraeticethatisthegeniusofdisciplinarythinking, an"upagainst
the wallrhetoric that historicallyhasbeenusedsoeffectivelyagainstthosewho are
identifiedasothers andenemies. Granted, there isacritical edgegivento though t
whenit canclearlyanddecisivelynametheproblemandidentifytheenemy. Perhaps
this isthe only certain way to achievethe necessarycritical distancethat leadsto
oppositional struggleandchange. Still,it maybeusefulhereto suggestadistinction
betweenenemyandadvmary, aspost-Marxist theoristChantalMouffeurges.Anenemy
isone to be annihilated; anadversaryisrespectedasone to strugglewithandagainst
in the formation of anew hegemony (2-4,84-85).Capitalism-complicated and
abettedby interactingregimesofwhitesupremacy,racism,neocolonialism,patriar-
chy, andheterosexism-is the enemy. On this, Ebert andI agree.But Ebert alsosees
enemiesinallofthevariouspost-alknowledges, whereasIseesomeworthy adversaries
andevenafewfriends. Ebert seeksacorrection inthe courseoftheory through the
substitution oflaborfor desire,through thesubstitutionof onewayofknowing and
itsphrasings(historicalmaterialism)foranotherwayofknowing(post-alknowledge);
I seekintheory's variousphrasingsa"criticalarticulationthat may claimarole in
producing,inthe realexistingworld, adifferentwayoffeeling,adifferentsensibility.
The crucialinsighthereisthat what the working dayproducesandreproduces
asitsprimaryandmostvaluableproductisanaffectiverelationtotheworld,to oneself,
andto others. Thisisinlargepart what ismeantbythesocialrelationsoflabor. Going
postalwillserveasarepresentativeanecdoteandaguideforthe kindofcritiqueI have
inmind, onethat linksthe working dayandthe everyday. Although wemayprefer
to be comforted by the viewthat violence isthe unfortunate result of individual
pathology, wemust rememberthat thephrasegoingpostal originatesinthe objective
conditions of the working dayinU.S. postal facilitiesandshouldtell ussomething
about thoseconditions:conditionsofexploitationanddomination; humiliatingand
alienatingconditionsthat producerage,bitterness,frustration,andindignation. The
violencethat must berememberedthrough thisphraseisoftwo orders:the outrage
of exploitation and domination and the rage such outrage produces. In the
phenomenon of goingpostal,wehaveevidencethat violencebegetsfurther violence;
violencelegitimizedandjustifiedasthe existingeconomicandsocialarrangements
begetsfurther violencethat, withinthesearrangements,must besetapartandtermed
"illegal,""unjustified,"and"unjustifiable."Furthermore, the strangecareerofgoing
postaloffersarecordofthe kind0 fsymbolicviolencethrough whichaphraseor sign
losesits ideologicaledge,its contact with the objectiveconditions that gaveriseto
it, anditspotential to callthose conditions into question andmakethem anobject
ofstruggle.Anoppositionalreadingofgoingpostal anditscareerwouldreturn power
to this phraseby retracingthe path of disarticulation,alienation, andestrangement
andbyreconnectingthedomainsofworkingdayandeveryday,of"productive"labor
and"nonproductive" emotional labor.
I shouldsayfromthe outset that I amnot overlysanguineabout our prospects
for reeducatingemotion giventhe prevailingpathos oftheory(aphrasethat includesa
theoretical discourse on teaching)-in other words, given the role theory and
220JAC
pedagogyplay in reproducing anaffectiverelationto the world. Here my specific
concern isthat the newcommitment to pedagogymay effectivelyredeploy key
distinctionsthat mystifythework of decolonization-in particular,the distinctions
betweenpublicandprivateandbetweenreasonandemotion aswellasthe gendered
andracializedauthority ofthesedistinctions. Amoregeneralworry isthat the turn
toward pedagogymayconstituteatum away fromthefamilyasalocusofcritiqueand
asiteforreconstructingsocialandemotionallife.Althoughthefamilyhascompelled
someofthemost important socialcriticismofthepost-WorldWarITperiod,it israrely
discussed in recent pedagogical discourse, except in the feminist pedagogy of
nurturance, where it isoften treated ahistorically. The argument that advanced
capitalism reduces the role of the family to a minimum (and that the primary
determinants of socialandpsychiclifethereforeareto befoundinformsoutsidethe
family,especiallyinpopular cultureandconsumption)certainlycompelsusto look
elsewhereifwearegoingto makefundamentalsocialchanges."Thedomesticsphere,"
asGayatri Spivakobserves,"isnot the emotion's only workplace." Still,the claims
of anyformofradicalpoliticsmust bequalifiedbythe factthat women ofmost social
locations arestillenlistedto take primary responsibilityfor caretakingandnurtur-
ing-in isolated nuclear families, in single-mother homes, in daycare centers, in
elementary and secondary schools, and, some would argue, in collegewriting
classrooms. Their working dayisalsoaneverydaythat takesshapeinthe objective
conditionsofemotionallabor-largely unpaid,unrecognized,yet sociallynecessary
labor. The educationprovidedby women inanotherwisemale-dominatedsociety
remainsthe primary pedagogyon which allsubsequentlearningismapped; and, as
many feministsbeforemehaveargued,it continuesto affixthe strugglefor identity
andagencytotheemotionalrepudiationofthat whichiscodedfeminineandmaternal.
My question iswhether radical pedagogyiscommitted intheory and practice to
alteringwhat Jon Schillercalls"the socialconditions ofpsychicmatriarchy" setup
by agendered(andracialized)divisionof emotional labor (84).
To developthe notion of pedagogicviolencefurther, I return to this primary
pedagogyandits role inthe education of emotion inthe next sectionof this paper.
Then, in the third section, I consider the way in which some versions of radical
pedagogymayaetuallyworkto remystifyviolenceandmasktheir ownambivalence
about the work of decolonization. In general, my effort here might be read asa
reworkingofLouisAlthusser'snotionofthefamily-educationcoupleasour dominant
pedagogyandtherefore asacrucialplaceto struggleforthe politicalreconstruction
of our emotional lives.
Schooling Emotion
Psychoanalysishastaughtthat theindividual'semotionalattitudesto other people
areestablishedat anunexpectedlyearlyage....Thepeopleto whom[thechild]isin
this wayfixedarehisparents....His later acquaintancesare...obligedto take over
akindofemotional heritage.
SigmundFreud
The ideaof pedagogicviolence assumesadistinction between two sensesof pedagogy:
the familiar and specialized sense of pedagogy as a philosophy (or ideology) of
teaching, including classroom practices and instructional methods; and the broad
senseof pedagogy aseducation in general, or what the Greeks once calledpaideia. The
view of pedagogy as the general education appropriate to members of a culture
receives its contemporary formulation, for example, in Althusser' s conception of
ideological state apparatuses and inFoucault' snotion of discipline. Inasmuch asboth
of these formulations emphasize that modern society makes state-sanctioned violence
increasingly unnecessary asamode of social control, I want to begin to rework the
family-education couple along the lines suggested by Bourdieu and Passeron's
Reproduction inEducation, Societyand Culture, wherethe relationshipbetween pedagogy
and violence receives explicit treatment. In the following discussion, I identify two
kinds of pedagogic violence ortwo related domains where it operates and organizes
its effects: first, the pedagogic violence authorized by and implied in education in
general; and, second, the pedagogicviolence that initially organizes the emotional life
of the individual, approached here through Julia Kristeva' s notion of abjection.
Finally, I question whether postmodemism constitutes, in Fredric Jameson's words,
"a whole new emotional ground tone" and as such represents a break with the
dominant pedagogy of emotion.
For Bourdieu andPasseron,pedagogy (inthe general sense, above) refers to the
power held by dominant discoursesto impose the legitimate mode of conception and
perception. Pedagogyrefers to the powerto impose meanings that maintain and
reinforce the reigning social,economic, andpolitical arrangements aslegitimate when
in fact they are entirely arbitrary. The dominant pedagogy in adisciplinary society
consists of the ruling ideas of the ruling class or group-or, the framework of
meanings that most thoroughly, though most indirectly and inconspicuously, ex-
presses and safeguards the material and symbolic interests of the dominant group or
groups (7-9). Dominant pedagogy isastructure that produces individuals and groups
who arerecognized assuch becausethey have internalized the legitimatepoint of view.
Pedagogy retains itsauthority preciselythrough violence, through itspower to impose
the legitimate mode of conception and perception, through its powerto conceal and
mystify relations of domination andexploitation. The specificgoalof pedagogicwork
isthe transmission of knowledges appropriate to the position of an individual in a
hierarchy of social relations that reproduces the authority of the dominant group and
sustains itscontinued legitimacy. Pedagogy isan apparatus for creating, maintaining,
and perpetuating the legitimacy of the interests of the dominant group across many
different kinds of discourse that cultivate "the educated individual" asan ideal type
of pedagogical subject who possesses the propensity to consume the legitimate
products of dominant culture and ispredisposed to be used and consumed according
its interests. Dominant pedagogy depends on the social misrecognition of the
objective truth of pedagogic work.
To ensure its success, dominant pedagogy develops a system of subordinate
educational ideologies that serve to mask its truth: philosophies and practices
that claim to be non-violent and non-repressive are particularly useful in
222]AC
promoting misrecognition, such as pedagogies (Socratic or psychoanalytic or
ludic) that focus on the erotics of teaching and learning; or pedagogies
(deconstructive or collaborative) that are premised on decentered authority in the
classroom; or even pedagogies that emphasize affective understanding (feminist
pedagogies of maternal nurturance) that exert power through asubtle instrument of
coercion, the implied threat of the withdrawal of affection.
Bourdieu and Passeron argue that these pedagogies do not (and cannot)
recognize the extent to which their authority is based in dominant pedagogy and
contributes to its legitimacy. They also argue that blindness to the structure of
domination among classesor groups makes possible and persuasive the "liberating"
and "humanizing" project of "culture forthe masses"that givessubordinated groups
the means of appropriating legitimate culture. It also produces and authorizes the
"democratizing" and "declassing" project that gives legitimacy to the cultures of
others, aproject that begins, asthey point out, with the erasure of the distinction
between high culture and popular or massculture and may extend, it seemsto me, to
include at least some versions of multiculturalism (12).That is, these projects serve
to bind individuals and groups ever more closely to the authority of dominant
pedagogy. In this context, Bourdieu andPasseron's reminder isespecially relevant:
it isonethingto teach the arbitrary nature of allculture to individualswho have already
been educated according to the ideas of the ruling class;it would be quite another to
claim to givethe kind of education that makes an individual anative, asit were, of all
cultures (23-24).Radical pedagogy, asI will suggest later, does not claim to offer the
latter, but the key to itsemancipatory project and itspromise of empowerment isthe
claim to teach the arbitrariness of all culture.
This viewof pedagogy clarifiesthe kind of work that decolonization requires and
suggeststhat the intervention neededto changeahierarchial socialorder canbe nothing
lessthan aradical conversion or complete substitution of one kind of socialformation
foranother. BourdieuandPasseronarguethatpeclagogicworkisnotreversible. Inother
words, wecannotsimplyunleam what dominant pedagogy teaches by mapping anew
regime of meaning onto an old one (31-43).Such a strategy, asI indicated above,
offers an education in the arbitrariness of all culture to individuals who have
already appropriated and who have been appropriated by the prevailing ideasof the
ruling class. This means that the work of decolonization cannot consist simply in a
struggle for the recognition and legitimacy of an alternative pedagogy in terms set by
the do minant pedagogy, for such astruggle would inevitab ly neutralize the radical
change promised by the alternative. Dominant pedagogy isalways ableto accommo-
date (and subordinate) alternatives in away that does not seriously disrupt its own
authority. The work of decolonization requiresthat wechangetheterms of recognition.
Bourdieu writes, "To changethe world, one hasto changetheways of making the world,
that is, the vision of the world and the practical operations by which groups are
produced and reproduced" (Language137).The crucial stakesof political struggle are
the categories of perception and the systems of classificationand conceptualization-
in other words, the words, names, and phrases-that construct the social world, the
real existing world. In this view, we must fight phrases with phrases.
The successof decolonization depends, it seemsto me, on arecognition that the
primary work of pedagogy ismore fundamental than the imposition of adominant
framework of meanings. Its primary work isto organize an emotional world, to
inculcate patterns of feelingthat support the legitimacyof dominant interests, patterns
that are especially appropriate to gender, race, and classlocations. Pedagogy locates
individuals objectively in a hierarchy of power relations; but also, and more
importantly, it organizes their affective relations to that location, to their own
condition of subordination, and to others in that hierarchical structure. Pedagogy
binds each individual to the social world through acomplex and often contradictory
affective life that remains, for the most part, just beyond the horizon of semantic
availability, and its success depends on a mystification or misrecognition of this
primary work. In particular, pedagogy provides and limits avocabulary of emotion
and, especially to those in subordinate positions, it teaches an inability to adequately
apprehend, name, and interpret their affective lives. This is its primary violence.
Primary pedagogic work mystifies emotion as a personal and private matter and
conceals the fact that emotions are prevailing forms of social life, that personal life
always takes shape in social and cultural terms (Ferguson; Rosaldo; Lyman; Bartky,
Femininity 83-98;Foucault 194). Decolonization and the struggle for social change
must therefore take place at the primary level of emotion.
The way in which dominant pedagogy organizes emotion may be under-
stood in terms of Fer gus on's notion of systems of sex/affective production.
Ferguson argues that historically there are diverse ways to organize, structure,
and reproduce what she calls sex/ affective energy (or emotion) as asocial energy
that is bodily lived (77-99). The main task of any society is to create the social
desire to cooperate and unite with others and to organize this social energy by
identifying the appropriate objects, aims, and persons for emotional attachments
and by prohibiting others as legitimate loci of interest. The overall task of the
dominant pedagogy of a given society, then, is to coordinate and maintain a
system of sex/affective production with a regime of meaning and with an
economic system of production. Dominant pedagogy provides acomplex system
for the production of "goods" -that is, forms of recognized and legitimate
affect, meaning, and value. Furthermore, what Alison Jaggar calls outlaw
emotions-women's anger or worker rage, for example-are produced by
dominant pedagogy, which views them as forms of insubordination, subject to
retraining, because they are clues to suppressed social relations and may become
resources for political resistance and social change (145-49). Legitimate and
illegitimate (or appropriate and inappropriate) objects of affective attachment,
in other words, are structurally or systemically related and, in prohibiting
particular objects or persons aslegitimateattachments, asociety automatically invests
them with greatvalueand interest-if only for their disciplinaryvalueinreproducing or
policingauthorizeddistinetions.
I want to focusfor amoment on the dominant pedagogyof emotion for American
middle-class society, which includes an explicit teaching about emotion-in other
words, what it makes availableat the semantic levelinthe way it theorizes the category
224]AC
of emotion-and the more implicit education of emotion itself. Through itsexplicit
teaching, dominant pedagogy historically has held emotion in a relation of
opposition to reason and has masked the fact that emotion is, in Catherine Lutz's
words, "a master cultural category" in the West, fundamental to the way we
organize understanding and experience (54).This pedagogy mystifies emotion
as a natural category and masks its role in a system of power relations that
associates emotion with the irrational, the physical, the particular, the private,
the feminine, and nonwhite others.' In linking emotion to such negatively valued
categories, pedagogy deploys emotion to secure the ideological subordination
of women and minorities. Lutz alsoshows that the pedagogy of emotion is more
complicated than this: it teaches us to define and value the concept of emotion
in a contradictory way-negatively, in terms of its opposition to reason and
rationality (asthe core of the true self);and positively, in terms of its opposition
to estrangement and disengagement from the world (55-59).Here dominant
pedago gy invests emotio n with the autho rity to ensurethe authentic engagement
of the true selfover and against estrangement andto provide motivation for taking
moral positions and making ethical investments (76-80).
6
Pedagogy develops more specific ideologies of emotion that conceal the
ways in which it makes emotion an object of cultivation. The positivist approach
to emotion, for example-or what Elizabeth Spelman calls the" dumb" view
because it silences emotion-restricts emotion to the realm of the body (to
sensation, physical feelings, and involuntary bodily movements) where it re-
mains apurely private and internal event. Positivism makes emotion indepen-
dent of any object or meaning or intention, and it directs attention to the way
in which emotion disrupts rational judgment, thoughts, and perceptions. In
recent years, the cognitivist theory of emotion has provided an alternative to
positivism and has made emotion the explicit and legitimate object of pedagogic
work. Emotion, in this view, can be educated, reeducated, or miseducated
according to what pedagogy expressly establishes asappropriate, reasonable, and
justifiable (Spelman; Jaggar). If emotion is to be alegitimate object of pedagogic
work, it must beprovidedwith cognitivecontent-in other words, itsreasons,objects,
and intentions that can be known and judged. In this way, cognitivism permits
something of arapprochement to occur between reasonandemotion, though it also
maintains their essentialdistinction andresubmitsemotion to the authority of reason
and the body to the direction of mind. The point here isthat cognitivism works
indirectly on emotion, which remains" dumb," through reason {orthrough the
meaning or content to which it is attached}.
Neither cogniti vism nor positivism, however, unworks that odd bit of
reasoning that historically has made members of subordinate groups allegedly
more emotional (and "dumb" -irrational and therefore "stupid") than mem-
bers of groups that aredominant politically, socially, and economically (Spelman
264). Their increased emotionality does not need reasons; it issimply given and
justified by the structure of subordination. Cognitivism nevertheless capitalizes
on the fact that those in subordinate positions can and must be taught, especially
in school andworkplace, that emotional responses(suchasanger, rage,or bitterness)
are always inappropriate and unjustified personal responses-forms of emotional
stupidity, soto speak, if not psychopathology-rather than suppressed social
responses to the objective conditions of humiliation wrought by structures of
subordination and exploitation. In general, the dominant pedagogy of emotion
refuses the expression of anger by subordinates. More importantly, it schools
anger to turn inward so asto become silent rage or passive bitterness, where the
energy for political action can be derailed in the pathos of the personal (see
Spelman 266; McFall 153; Lyman 68-72). It makes it almost impossible to see
that sometimes and in some contexts activebitterness might be amove away from
self-deception and hence not only a moral achievement but also a form of
political insight because it more accurately apprehends thetrue source of injury
and disappointment.
For much of the twentieth century, anger (oritsprohibition) hasbeenthe target
of workplace training and the effort to inculcate aproper emotional style for work
(Stearns and Stearns; Stearns, "Anger"). Forms of pedagogic violence, developed
through andauthorized by industrialpsychology, havesosuccessfullydisqualifiedthe
legitimacyofworker angerthat by the 1960sit wassaidthat angerhadbeen eliminated
from the workplace and no longer posed aproblem to productivity. Attention then
shifted to the cultivation of empathy, friendliness, and consideration (through T-
groups or sensitivitytraining) asanappropriate emotional styleforthe workplace. Yet
the increasing incidence of workplace violence in the last decadesuggeststhat anger
was not eliminated by the 1960s,asPeter and Carol Stearns contend, but that it has
been driven deeper into silencewhere it festers into rage. The result: the number of
workplace homocides hastripled in the last ten years.
Positivism and cognitivism are two specific pedagogies, then, that support
the general way dominant pedagogy understands emotion and organizes emo-
tion-work by channelling it into appropriate and legitimate objects, aims, modes
of expression, and stages-all of which are socially and historically produced and
organized. While the workplace remains an important site for the education of
emotion, the bourgeois model of the family has been the preferred instrument
for the production and organization of emotion and the production of the kind
of individuals whose affective organization best supports the social order needed
by capitalism. The principal work of the family, in other words, is to transmit
an affective orientation to authority, an orientation that changes with changes
in the economic realm. Although the family has undergone dramatic changes,
especially under the pressures of advanced capitalism, the role assigned to
women in most social positions has not changed: they remain the primary
nurturers and caretakers of men, children, and elders. Ferguson, among other
theorists, argues that what I am calling the dominant pedagogy of capitalist
patriarchy is astructure of exploitation that organizes the unequal exchange of
emotion-work between men and women. The gendered imbalance in the
provision of emotional support (which is a form of pedagogic violence) is a
significant part of the gendered division of labor. This arrangement gives men
226JAC
aprivileged position in the sphere of sex/ affective production, where women are
required to produce more nurturance than they receive. And they are required
to engage in more nurturing labor not only in the home but also in the workplace
(see Schell). Sandra Bartky extends Ferguson's analysis to argue that this
structure of unequal exchange disempowers women at the same time that it binds
women to a conviction that their moral worth and epistemic power consists in
their greater capacity for love and nurturance (Femininity 99-119).The ideology
of nurturance, in short, isa key example of the mystificatoryviolenceofdominant
pedagogy.
More to the point here, the nurturing labor assignedto women arguablysetsthem
up to bethe first objects of pedagogic violence on which all subsequent education is
mapped. Primary pedagogic violence occurs in what Kristeva calls the crisis of
abjection that founds meaning, identity, and value-not only for the individual but
also at the social level. Kristeva regards abj ection as a universal psychological
mechanism that operates to create the distinctions through which self-con-
sciousness and culture (or the social) develop, but I see it as a way of
understanding how social order is organized for the patriarchal domination of
women by men. In Kristeva's view, each individual undergoes the violence of
abjection at the time of his or her earliest attempt to break away from the mother
and to establish boundaries as an autonomous ego. Abjection, she writes, is "a
violent, clumsy breaking away, with the constant risk of falling back under the
sway of apower assecuring asit isstifling" (powers13).That power isthe mother,
and abjection serves to situate a first, fragile sense of place, before full
subjectivity and objectivity emerge, upon which the psyche is built. The psyche
is built on this primordial act of violence, and it is rocked by the ambivalence
of attraction and repulsion, of fascination and terror, in its struggle for separation
from the mother. The first fragileposition the future subject takes, then, isdefensive.
The crisisof abjection isnot, preciselyspeaking, acrisisof identity but of position and
location: the decisivequestion isnot "who amI?"but "where amI?"Beforethe subject
is, it is abject and atopic (7-8).
Through interaction with the mother, which isitsfirst contact with authority,
the future subject learnsabout itsbody inaprocessKristevacallsthe "primal mapping
of the body" (72).This isessentiallyan affectivemapping, or education, inwhich the
future subject learns rudimentary emotional orientations that distinguish between
"inside" and "outside," "clean" and "unclean," "good" and "bad," "proper" and
"improper." Abjection is,then, akind ofemotional boundary-work. It isamechanism
that works affectivelyto create asense of place, orientation, and, ultimately, asense
of self. Abjection knots affect and judgment together and does its boundary-work
especially through what we would call emotions of self-assessment, such aspride,
shame, and guilt. Abjection is aprecondition of oedipalization, or the process of
repudiating the maternal andof internalizing andidentifyingwith paternal authority.
Kristevaargues that abjection and the repudiation of women and maternal authority
arethe precondition for socialorder, the precondition of the subject's entry into the
symbolic and the acquisition of language. Abjection sets in motion aprocess that
oedipalization completes: the primordial estrangement that haunts the future
subject. The experience of emotion will offer the thread leading back to the
maternal, or to the constellation of contradictory emotions the maternal signifies
in apatriarchal symbolic economy: bliss and terror, euphoria and rage, desire and
disgust ("Psychoanalysis" 316-17). Abjection and oedi palization provide a
particular organization and education of emotion; they describe a violent
movement from aworld without shame to aworld of shame and more violence.
Shame, according Thomas Scheff and Suzanne Retzinger, isthe consequence of
estrangement, or the loss of social bonds, and this loss is, in their view, the major
cause of destructive violence of all kinds. They argue that shame leads to violence
when it goes unacknowledged, silenced, and repressed. Silenced shame produces
anger and rage that are then turned inward to destroy the selfor turned outward to
destroy others (alsoseeBartky, "Pedagogy").
Abjection is continually restaged in a kind of psychic drama that maintains
identity; asaconsequence, the subject remains in process and on trial, soto speak,
and is always in danger of falling back into indifferentiation. Dominant
pedagogy works reiteratively from the foundation of this initial affective
mapping to continually educate emotion. It employs a regime of meaning that
affectively identifies the abject with the experience of whatever disturbs identity,
system, order-with whatever does not respect borders, positions, and rules
(Kristeva, Powers4). Dominant pedagogy sets up an equation, at the level of
meaning or signification, among the abject, emotion, the maternal (or the
feminine), and the profane-all of which are made to signify a threat to
established authority and thus are made the legitimate objects of repression,
control, and consumption; or denial, rationalization, and rage. Historically, this
equation isthen extended to include racialized others.
There isnothing necessary, of course, in the organization of emotion through
aprocess that begins with and sustains itself on the pedagogic violence of abjection
and the repudiation of women and the maternal. Nancy Chodorow makes an
important point about the emotional heritageofwomen's mothering asit isorganized
in isolated nuclear familiesand single-mother familiesand inthe context of women's
social and economic inequality. Her point pertains to the organization of emotion
andthe education of gender personalities through adistinction between "positional"
and "personal" identification processes (173-90).Women's mothering sets up an
affectiveorganization in boys that requires that they not only giveup their primary
identificationwith the maternal but that they alsodenythisprimary attachment. Their
emotional education stresses differentiation from others and the repudiation of
relationship and nurturance-and all things feminine. Boys learn proper gender
identification negativelythrough arepudiation ofthe feminine andamovement from
the personal (identification with the mother) to the impersonal and positional
(identification with aspectsof the masculine role, especiallyeconomic power, rather
than specific attributes of the absent or remote father). Gender education through
positional identification breaks the tie between affectiveprocesses and gender role
learning (175).
228]AC
Women's mothering andnurturing labor setsup anaffectiveorganization ingirls
based on personal identification with the mother, with her general personality,
behavior, andvalues. In the processof personal identification, the affectiveprocesses
and gender role learning are not severed. In girls, hostility toward the mother (the
affectivememoryofabjeetion) tendsto bemore personallytiedto anindividual rather
than generalized to all women asit is in masculine development. I want to extend
Chodorow's argument here and saythat women's mothering and nurturing labor
organizes in men anidentification (andpreoccupation) with position, with "where"
asan authoritative answer to the question of "who." It tends to establish in women
an identification (and preoccupation) with the authority of the personal, with the
affective relation of "who" and "where." These preoccupations are reiterated
throughout recent discourse-for example, in] arneson's pedagogy of "cognitive
mapping," which foregrounds the role oftheory inproducingasense of position; and
in Adrienne Rich's "politics of location," which emphasizes the sense of personal
locatedness provided in feelings and the body. I will return to these two kinds of
education below.
Oedipalization-or the internalization and identification with an authority
figure to which one isattached emotionally-is the specificway the patriarchal and
bourgeois family produces individuals whose affective orientation to authority
best supports the early period of capitalist development. With the development
of capitalism and the corresponding changes in the social and cultural realm that
are identified with postmodernism, the process of oedipalization is disrupted
and it is argued that our affective lives are organized differently. InJ arneson's
view, postmodernism constitutes "a whole new emotional ground tone"; in
Pfeil's view, it isanew "structure of feeling." More specifically, postmodernism
produces a subject who is variously described as de-oedipalized, narcissistic,
feminized, lost, fragmented, and schizophrenic. The de-oedipalized subject is
deeply ambivalent because it is locked in aperpetual crisis of abjection in which
it oscillates between self-exaltation and dejection, between euphoria and hostil-
ity or rage. With the loss of paternal authority in home and workplace and the
consequent loss of oedipal struggle to fortify ego boundaries, the postmodern
subject is also narcissistic, bored and apathetic, isolated by its possessive
individualism, incapable of feeling solidarity with any social or cultural group,
unable to feel truly connected in love or work or to make lasting emotional
commitments (Lasch). Both de-oedipalization and narcissism are said to
represent the feminization of the postmodern subject, achange that is described
both positively and negatively. On the positive side, de-oedipalization produces
achange in the social organization of emotion allowing for what MikeFeatherstone
calls"controlled de-control," orthe greater range of emotional expression for both
men and women (81).It alsoloosens the bonds of male domination and allows for
the expressionoftheepistemic andethicalvisionofwomen, especiallyfiguredinterms
of nurturance andreciprocity (pfeil,"Postmodernism"). De-oedipalizationcoincides
with, and indeed authorizes, some of the progressive social movements of the last
thirty years-in addition to feminism, the environmental movement, civilrights, and
gay rights. On the negative side, feminization isthe sentimental education of the
postmodern subject who, on the other sideof boredom and apathy (asthe total defeat
of alldesire),feelsitspower only infeelingtoo much or infeelingforthe sakeof feeling,
in the absenceof the possibility of anything more significant. "It isnot that nothing
matters," Lawrence Grossberg saysof the postmodern condition, "but that it doesn't
matter what matters" ("Pedagogy" 108).
To the extent that postmodernism constitutes awhole new emotional ground
tone or a new structure of feeling, we would expect it to constitute a new
pedagogy, one that breaks with the one I have discussed thus far. Yet
postmodernism as historical reality and cultural dominant is arguably not a
pedagogy at all, for it produces a mutation in the disposition of the subject and
in the external world that makes impossible the kind of pedagogic work I have
outlined above. In other words, this pedagogy, if we can call it that, does not
bind the subject to its place in the social order through the organization of
emotion. If it can be said to be a pedagogy, then postmodernism is a wild
pedagogy; the subject it educates, awild subject. As such, it inculcates a kind
of ultimate estrangement or dissolution from the structures that traditionally
have supported both self and world. More specifically, the "waning of affect"
isone of the defining features of this new epoch, afeature that Jameson correlates
with the condition of alienation that coincides with the extension of commodity
fetishism to the human subject. The waning of affect is the liberation from the
structures of recognition that bind meaning to feeling. Jameson explains, "This
is not to say that the cultural products of the postmodern era are utterly devoid
of feeling, but rather that such feelings ... are now free-floating and impersonal,
and tend to be dominated by a peculiar kind of euphoria" (64).Jameson's view
suggests that the pedagogy of postmodernism offers an extreme version of the
dumb view of emotion, where emotion no longer can have any appropriate
objects, aims, or interests. Indeed, postmodernism would seem to provide for
the decolonization of all feeling. For Jarneson, even the term emotion has lost all
relevanceand has become obsolete with thedeconstruetion of the bourgeois egoand
the modernist ideology of expression. Futhermore, a whole range of cultural
experiencescorresponding to suchconceptsasanxietyandestrangement areno longer
appropriate to the post modern world sincethere isno longer any selfto feelanxious,
estranged, or even neurotic.
This mutation in the subject corresponds to changes in the external world asa
consequence of the penetration of capital into hitherto uncommodified areas-
specifically,nature andthe unconscious. This latestdevelopment ofcapitalismcreates
an utterly alienand alienatedobject world inwhich the subject cannot recognize the
results of its own activity in the world and, asaconsequence, isunable to recognize
the subjectivity of the other. The inability to recognize the subjectivity of the other,
asJessicaBenjaminexplains, isanother aspect of the inability to recognize one's own
subjectivity ("Authority" 41). Subjectivity and agencyaredenied to the other at the
sametime they aredeniedto the self. Hence, the collapseof the demarcation between
human and non-human in diverse forms of explicit violence isthe final lesson in the
230jAC
pedagogyof postmodernism, whose symbolic violenceleavesnothing andno one
exemptfromcommodification.
8
Thelogicthat sortspeopleintotwo legitimateforms,
consumer andconsumed, isascrude asit appears:"eator beeaten," "commodify or
die" (alsoseeBourdieu andPasseron 34-39).
This wildpostmodern spacetranscendsthe capacitiesofthe individualhuman
bodyto locateitself,to organizeitsimmediatesurroundingsperceptually,andto map
itsposition cognitively.Jarnesonidentifiesthiswildpostmodern spacewiththe great
globalmultinational anddecenteredcommunicational network. This isthe otherin
the postmodern era,orthe postmodern experienceofthesublime. Confronting"the
impossibletotalityofthecontemporaryworldsystem"-confronting an0 bjeetworld
that rendersthe subjectwhollyinadequatepsychically,cognitively,perceptually,and
physically-the postmodern subjectexperiencesthe intensitiesof euphoria, exhila-
ration, apathy, andterror. For Jameson,thesechangesinthe subjectandobjectworld
are both the moment of truth of postmodernism and the "demoralizing and
depressing"situation of this newglobalspace. Driven by aneed to both affirmand
intervene in this situation, he calls for a radical cultural politics, a pedagogy of
cognitivemappingthat would return authority andagencyto the subject. Through
the pedagogyofcognitivemapping,Jamesonclaims,"wemayagainbeginto graspour
positioning asindividual and collective subjects and regain acapacity to act and
strugglewhich isatpresent neutralizedby our spatialaswellasour socialconfusion"
(92).Cognitivemappingprovidesspecificallyfor "thepracticalreconquest ofasenseof
place,andthe constructionor reconstructionofanarticulatedensemblewhichcanbe
retainedinmemory" (89;emphasisadded).Inother words,it providesaninternalized
authority that allowsthe individualsubjectto locatehim-or herselfinrelationtowhat
isradicallyother, inrelationto what disturbsidentity, position, andrule. Asaprocess
ofintemalizingacritical orientation,itworkstotransformthesubjectintoarevolutionary
agentwho willonceagainbeableto actandto struggletotransformthe world.
Although postmodemistn mayconstituteawholenewemotional groundtone,
much of] ameson'smappingofthe postmodern conditionseemsalltoo familiar.His
postmodem subjectisauniversalsubject,apparentlyunmarkedby class,gender,and
race(91).Thosewho havebeenotheredarelesslikelyto recognizethemselvesinthis
post modern subject, for they are lesslikely to be lost in postmodern spacebut
continually locatedandorientedaffectively bythe organizationof gender,race,and
class.In my view.]ameson'spostmodern subjectismost likelyade-oedipalizedbut
nonethelesspatriarchalsubject,amarginalizedwhite manwho haslosthiseconomic
position andcultural authority andisrelativelydissatisfiedwith (or canbemadeto
feeldissatisfiedwith) amore feminizedidentityasconsumer andconsumed. Forthis
subject, emotion does not offer a resource for critical positioning or coalition-
buildingbecause,giventhe power ofdominant pedagogy,emotion remainsreason's
other. The pedagogyof cognitivemapping repressesanddiminishesemotion asan
effectof alienationandasourceofpostmodern estrangement.Fromthisperspective,
the reeducation of emotion will be achievedonly indirectly through the return of
substantive reason andcritical consciousnessthat aloneofferthe capacityto hold a
position in relation to the only ultimate object that remains-the maternal, figured
here asthe postmodern sublime, afiguremore terrifying than ever in its ability to
disturb, confuse, andneutralize asenseof selfandagency.Jameson's revolutionary
project provides for are-oedipalization (andaremasculinization) of the subject's
relationto the symbolic(seePfeil,"Postmodernism" 395).Through the pedagogyof
cognitivemapping, the postmodern subject ismeant to internalize the authority it
needsto recapture aposition fromwhich to actandstrugglein aworld it once again
recognizes and reconquers asits own. In this context, multiculturalist reforms to
pedagogyappear to intervene inthe postmodern situation to recognizethe other's
subjectivity and agencyhut may servemore effectivelyto reclaim agency for the
historically privilegedsubject (white, male)who has most recently undergone an
erosion of authority and lost asenseof placeandposition. Again, the danger isthat
thesereformswillcommodifydifferenceinawaythat safeguardsthe privilegeofthose
historically constituted assubjects(andaslegitimateconsumers).
If ours isan agebesotted with asense of loss (ofauthority and position), then
wilding should be remembered asauniquely postmodern expressionof pedagogic
violence, one that may bestructurally linkedto the cult ofemotional restraint that
Stearnscalls"Americancool"(American). Conceivedinboredom andapathy, which
isthe utter defeatof alldesire,wildingmay bethe ultimate expressionof "cool" and
the consequenceofthe kind ofpostmodern alienationthat marks the absolutelimit
of meaning and feeling,the limit of the human. If it isdefinedby its lackof motive,
then wilding would seemto possessno content to its message-no reason to it, no
justice for it. From akind of post-positivist but nonetheless dumb view, wilding is
perhaps the predictable formviolencetakeswhen meaningiscut loosefrom affect:
free-floatingviolence,soto speak,anditsapparent randomnessmakesit seempurely
anonymous and impersonal, evenunintentional in the senseof having no proper
objector aim. Inthe waythe phenomenon isrepresentedanddefined,asecond, more
symbolic violenceiscommitted. In other words, much ofthe lessonofwilding can
bereadinthe gestureof abstractioncommittedinthewayit istakenup into discourse
andcirculated. Assymbol or figure,wildingpositsadisjuncture betweenthe realand
the symbolic,suggestingthat violencegonewildachievesapure or sublimeformthat
ismadeespeciallyhorrificby itsrefusalto beunderstoodor explained.The definition
ofwildingmasksthe originofthe phenomenoninthe othering practicesthat wecall
gender,race,class,andsexualitythat stillmapthe postmodern topography. Gender,
race,class,andsexualityarethe authorizedtropes that nameandmaskthe disfigured
facesof hatred, bitterness, and ragethat the definition of wilding further mystifies.
The symbolic transformation of wilding into arandom and unmotivated act of
violence mystifies the fact that the phenomenon itself confirms the dominant
pedagogyof emotion inwhich violencealwaysfindsits"appropriate" object in any
audacious and insubordinate refusalof pedagogicwork, such asawoman jogging
alone at night in apublic park or aVietnamesechildin carefreeplay at last. Kristeva
reminds us that those besotted with archaicconflicts are alwaysvulnerable to the
paranoid rageto dominate, to transform, andto annihilatewhat threatens position
andrule iPouers 4).The questionthat haunts the wildsubjectisnot "who amI?"but
"where amI?"
232JAC
Rethinking Pedagogy
[D]ecolonization is always a violent phenomenon. At whatever level we study it
... decolonization is quite simply the replacing of a certain "species" of men by
another "species" of men.
Franz Fanon
IntheU.S.,teachinghasbeenwomen'swork sinceatleastthelate-nineteenthcentury
when agendereddivisionof labor wasestablishedto securehigher status adminis-
trativepositionsfor menandto placewomeninlow-paying,labor-intensiveteaching
jobs (Gorelick). This gendered division of labor is reiterated in the distinction
betweenscholarshipandteaching,adistinctionthat associatesscholarshipandtheory
with productivelabor andassignsit amasculinepositionandthat associatesteaching
with reproductivelaborandassignsit afeminineposition(seeScholes;Watkins).This
division of labor also correlates with the distinction between the two sensesof
pedagogythat investsone formofpedagogywith the productivepower to organize
awayoflifeandgivestheother (intheformofeducationalideologiesor instructional
methods)onlyareproductiverole. Thisseriesofdistinctionslocatessomeofthekinds
of questions that need to be asked of the recent pedagogical turn which, not
incidentally,hasbeendriveninlargepart bymaleintellectuals.Willradicalpedagogy
unwittinglysustainthegenderingofthesecategoriesbysymbolicallyremasculinizing
pedagogyandmateriallyremarginalizingwomenintraditionalroles?Willit work to
produce anewaffectivelifeforthecontemporaryperiodor extendthedominanceof
an old one and thereby remystify pedagogicviolence? Isthe euphoriaof some of
radicalpedagogy'scentral claims-to enlighten,empower, andemancipate-struc-
turally related to the rageexpressedin pedagogicviolence? In other words, are
euphoria inthe classroomandrageinthe streetsproducts ofthe samepedagogyand,
ifso, isradicalpedagogy(orat leastsomeinstancesof it) asymptom rather than the
cure for our cultural pathology? These questions, though they cannot be fully
answeredhere, aremotivatedby aconcernthat radicalpedagogywilltakeaposition
inthe reconstructionofpoliticallifethat willwork againstitsexplicitclaimsandgoals,"
To considersomeofthesequestions,Ifirstneedto maptheterritory to whichI refer.
Radical pedagogy referstoanynumberofdifferent kindsofoppositional pedagogies-
poststructuralist,psychoanalytic,Marxist,critical,feminist,postmodernist, andeven
sub-categorieswithin eachof these-that areofferedasalternativesto the dominant
pedagogy. Giventhisvariety,Iwant to quicklyorganizethe fieldwith adistinction,
borrowed from Morton and Zavarzadeh, between two approaches: pedagogies
alignedwith criticalculturalstudiesandpedagogiesalignedwith experientialcultural
studies.to In reconceiving pedagogy in the broadest terms available, these two
approacheshavemuchincommon, but the distinctionbetweenthemturns onwhat
each identifies asits principal object of critique: critical cultural studies seeksto
unwork the power Iknowledge relation that producesthe objectiveconditions of
domination andexploitation; experientialcultural studiesfocuseson experienceas
the medium through which the conditions of domination andsubordination are
articulatedandresisted. Bothseekto empower the pedagogicalsubjectby creating
in students acritical position in relation to the authority of those objective conditions
and to the authority of experience. In other words, they both emphasize and authorize
the political importance of positional identification and thus may be said to be
remasculinizing the pedagogical subject. For the sake of clarity, and to use the term
each employs to identify itself, I will refer to the former as"postmodern" pedagogy
and to the latter as "critical pedagogy" in the following very general, and all too
cursory, observations. 11
Through the languageof critique and the rhetoric of empowerment, both critical
pedagogy and postmodern pedagogy arguably seekto change the emotional consti-
tution of the postmodern subject so asto produce either ademocratic citizen who
participates fully in public life or, more radically, a revolutionary subject who is
capable of the kind of political struggle that will transform the world. Yet, in both
discourses, emotion isavague figure, present but alsoabsent in some substantial sense.
Emotion appears asaphantom limb, soto speak, more nearly felt than precisely seen,
and thus it remains undertheorized and mystified in many important respects. More
to the point, its mode of existence inpedagogical discourse (asaphantom limb) isitself
an effect of the phenomenon I seek to describe in this paper. That the vocabulary of
emotion in pedagogical discourse might be rather limited should not be particularly
surprising, but it should be read asasign that critical and postmodern pedagogies still
operate within the closure set by dominant pedagogy.
Critical pedagogy, unlike post modern pedagogy, develops an explicit discourse
on emotion where it refashions but does not break significantly with the dominant
pedagogy of emotion." Critical pedagogy approaches emotion along the lines
suggested by both the cognitivist and the positivist view, though necessarily politi-
cized (sort of) forthe contemporary context. Critical educators placeemotion within
an economy of meaning that contrasts emotion and meaning (or reason) and emotion
anddisempowerment, which arguably isthe postmodern figure for alienation and
estrangement. They separate emotion from meaning, empty it of content, and relate
it specifically to the body. In other words, they smuggle in a rather traditional
pedagogy of emotion, though one that is more closely tuned to the postmodern
situation. Their discomfort with the category of emotion and its potential reception
in theoretical discourse isevident in this statement from Giroux and Simon: "[W]e
are not trying to privilege the body or apolitics of affectiveinvestments over discourse
somuch aswe aretrying to emphasize their absencein previous theorizing for acritical
pedagogy" ("Popular" 16). Following Grossberg, critical educators distinguish
between the affectiveand semantic planes of experience and discourse, where emotion
pertains to the intensity or desire with which we invest the world and our relations
to it with meaning ("Postmodernity"). The distinction between affect and meaning
(or ideology) simply reformulates the distinction between emotion and reason, and
while emotion is not negatively valued in an explicit way, it retains its subordinate
status. From this perspective, the pedagogical problem in the era of the postmodern
isto place emotion, which has been severedfrom meaning, at the disposal of meaning
once again and thereby produce affectiveinvestments in forms of knowledge that will
leadto empowerment and emancipation. If, asGrossberg says, it isnot that nothing
234JAC
matters but that it does not matter what matters, then the pedagogical problem isto
link emotion and meaning in a way that provides orientation and a sense of
commitment to social change.
In developing a discourse on emotion, critical pedagogy has focused almost
exclusive attention on pleasure and desire. This focus isafunction of the attention
given to popular culture and its manufacture of pleasure. It is also part of the
affirmative stance that critical pedagogy takes in relation to students who "not only
unwittingly consent to domination but sometimes find pleasurable the form and
content through which such domination ismanifested" (Giroux and McLaren 169).
With attention focused on knowledge and its relation to "the politics of pleasure, the
typography of the body, and the production of desire," the discourse of critical
pedagogy moves constantly from making a general claim about emotion to a
specific reference to pleasure or desire, as if the emotional constitution of the
student were described entirely by these two figures (also see Ebert, "Red
Pedagogy"). This interest may be explained by the focus on popular culture and
the everyday, but the overall effect isto seriously limit the discourse of emotion.
A similar limitation occurs in the way that critical pedagogy understands the
nature of what Giroux and Grossberg call affective struggle. For example, critical
pedagogy sees affective struggle in terms of empowerment rather than resistance.
Giroux and McLaren quote Grossbergto make the point: "Affectivestrugglescannot
be conceptualized within the terms of theories of resistance, for their oppositional
quality isconstituted, not in anegative dialectics, but by aproject of or struggle over
empowerment, an empowerment which energizes and connects specific social
moments, practices and subject positions" (170).Giroux and McLaren goon to say
that resistance must be understood asaway of gaining power. Resistance, asasign
of affective investment, isread positively asasign of engagement with other forms
of knowledge outside school culture as well as a sign of political and social
disempowerment. This viewof the affectivestrugglefor empowerment expressesthe
affirmative stance of critical pedagogy, astancethat recognizes in students' resistance
their affective investments in popular cultural experience and know ledges. The job
of the educator isto understand this investment, evenbetter than students understand
it, and to harness itspotential for engagingstudents in andempowering them through
self-criticism and cultural critique. Yet this view of the nature of affective struggle
isnot sufficiently nuanced, it seemsto me, and it may be reductive in two ways. First,
it does not recognize, or perhaps it misrecognizes, the fact that the work of the
dominant pedagogy of emotion has given affective struggle anegative moment, its
moment of pure resistance and repudiation. Our earliest affectivestruggle requires
that we pass through a negative moment (actually, a series of such moments) of
resistance and repudiation in which resistance clears the ground, so to speak, for an
initial defensiveposition from which to beginto constitute identity and existence. In
ignoring this moment, critical educators misrecognize the dynamics of struggle
imposed by dominant pedagogyand arelikelyto misreadtheir students' affectivelives.
Without wanting to sound glib, I would suggestthat in the pedagogical relationship
what sounds like "no" may in fact constitute a"no." It might alsosound like anger,
hostility, or apathy-not pleasureandinvestment inpopular cultural forms. Also
noteworthy here isthe factthat the affectivestrugglefor empowerment placesthe
teacherinthe rather traditional patriarchalroleasthe signofpower andthe agentof
empowerment,astheonewhohasthepowerto knowstudentsbetterthantheyknow
themselvesandto transform their relationto the world (seealsoGore; Weiler).
Second,initsdevelopmentofanaffirmativepedagogyofempowerment, critical
pedagogy does not seem to require a particularly nuanced understanding of
disempowermentbeyonditsoriginandperpetuationintheideological mystifications
ofrace,class,andgender. (Thisistrue ofpostmodernpedagogyaswelL)Specifically,
it does not read the many different faces of disempowerment-in particular,
disempowerment asboredom, apathy, bitterness, hatred, anger, rage,generosity,
nostalgia,euphoria,sorrow,humiliation,guilt,andshame,orthe waystheseemotions
areorgannizedandpracticeddifferentlyacrossdifferencesof race,class,gender,age,
andsexuality. Beyondaconsideration of afewof the familiartropes (particularly
pleasureanddesire),criticaldiscoursedoesnot apprehenditsown limitation of the
discourse of emotion-that is, what it places beyond the horizon of semantic
availability.Inthisrespect,criticalpedagogyfailsto besufficientlycritical;it doesnot
carefullyconsider,through asubtlyarticulateddiscourseofemotion, how students
havebeentaught to nametheir affectivelives,howthey might beginthe processof
renamingandrephrasing.Criticalpedagogydoesnot makeemotionandaffectivelife
the crucial stakes in political struggle. With its rhetoric focusedon pleasure and
empowerment, critical pedagogyworks against itself to remystify not only the
objectiveconditions ofhuman sufferingbut alsothe variedexperienceof suffering.
From the perspective of postmodern pedagogy, critical pedagogy reduces
exploitation to the experienceof exploitation andrepressesthe objectivelogicof
domination by privilegingthe localsiteoftheexperienceofthe dominated. Morton
and Zavarzadeh suggest that a focus on experience depoliticizes cultural work
preciselyat atimewhenweneedto depersonalizeexperienceto analyzedomination
asaglobalstrategy. In contrast to criticalpedagogy,postmodern pedagogypursues
what it considersto be arigorous critique anddemystification of the structures of
authority,includingtheauthorityofexperience.Inparticular,thispedagogyexamines
dominant discourseandthe way it situatespeople at "posts of intelligibility from
which the reigning economic, political, and ideological social arrangements are
deemedto beuncontestablytrue"(MortonandZavarzedeh,"Preface"vii).Dominant
discourseheremeansliberalhumanism,andpostmodempedagogy,atleastasMorton
andZavarzadehdevelopit, focusesitseffort on the displacementof the traditional
humanisticsubjectanditsposture ofunthinking 0 bedienceto authority-whether
that authority isthe text, the tradition, orthe teacher (seeStrickland).
Thespecificwaythisdisplacementoccursisthroughthefigureoftheteacherwho
takesanadversarialroleinrelationto the student. Theconfrontational teacherseeks
to depersonalize the student' sunderstanding of him- or herself andthe world by
showinghowthe student's "ideasandpositionsarethe effectsoflargerdiscourses{of
class,race,andgender,forexample),ratherthansimple,naturalmanifestationsofthis
consicousnessor mind" (MortonandZavarzadeh,"Theory" 11-12).The goalofsuch
236JAC
anadversarialrelationisto developinthe student acriticalpositionthat neverdefers
obliginglyto anyauthority and,most immediately,the authority oftheteacherand
other students. Practically,this maytakethe formofthe polarization ofclassroom
dynamicswhere students andteacher alikewrite position papersthat argueagainst
(even"attack") other positions presented inthe course (Strickland). Morton and
Zavarzadehcontinue:"Havingdenaturalizedhimself,suchapartisansubjectwillsee
the arbitrariness of allthe seeminglynatural meaningsandcultural organizations
basedon them" (12).The ideahereisto createanalternativepedagogythat doesnot
consolidateinto anewnorm becauseit isarelentlesscritiqueofauthority andinvites
students into the gameof power/knowledge. What this approach doesnot fully
acknowledgeisthat students havealreadylearnedthe dominant pedagogy,which
radical pedagogy then suggestsispurely arbitrary. It alsodoes not consider the
distinction between the demystification of authority and the dispossession (or
decolonization) of its effects. Demystification operates at the levelof meaning;
dispossessionor decolonization, at the levelof both meaningandaffect. Through
demystification,the postmodern pedagogicalsubjectmayintellectuallyunderstand
the arbitrarinessofdominant culture-for example,the arbitrarinessoftheteacher's
authority or of the patriarchal or racist psyche-but intellectually graspingthe
arbitrariness of away of lifedoesnot then leadnaturally or simplyto the power to
changeit (seeBartky,Femininity45-62).
In demandingaconfrontational andadversarialrelation betweenteacher and
student, especiallyas"theonlywayto achieveanintellectually responsiblepedagogy,"
postmodern pedagogymaysuccessfullydemystifyauthority andgivestudentsaway
to achieveapractical reconquest of asenseof placeandposition (Strickland294;
emphasis added). But it alsotriangulates the pedagogicalsituation and givesthe
teacherthe authoritytostagethekindofoedipalconflictthat thede-oedipalizedfamily
andpostmodernsocietynolongerprovide.Theauthoritythat hasbecomedisembod-
iedandabstractasaconsequenceofthe bureaucratizationofpostmodern spaceisre-
embodied inthe (impersonal)figureofthe teacher. The teacher activelyconfronts
the student who isrequiredto takeapositionanddefendit. Inwhat criticaltheorists
havecalledaworld without fathers, postmodern pedagogyoffersthe conflict and
critiqueneededfor internalizingauthority which, accordingto classicalpsychoana-
lytic theory and critical theory, is the only basisfor the subsequent rejection of
authority andfor politicalaction(Benjamin,"Authority"). Thisagonisticpedagogy
offersare-oedipalizationofemotionthat requiresaconsciousdenialoftheexperience
offearinthepresenceoftheteacherwho is,allposturingaside,stillanauthorityfigure.
It requires areassertion of the dominance of emotions of self-assessment,such as
pride, guilt, andshame,andit requiressubmissionto the constant examinationand
assessmentofindividualadequacy. Shameisakeyinstrument ofthispedagogy,asit
isinwhat I havecalleddominant pedagogy,for asthe student strugglesto articulate
acriticaloppositionalpositionanddefendit, thestudentwillmeethisor her "betters"
inthe figureoftheteacher,ifnot inother students(alsoseeBartky, "Pedagogy").The
demoralizedpostmodern subjectis,ineffect,re-moralizedandcapableof differen-
tiatingthe goodfromthe bad. In general,theturn to pedagogymight beread,at least
in part, as aform of crisis intervention and management in the postmodern age; it
suggests that what isneeded isakind of psychodrama in which the radical educato r
stagesan affectiverelation to the wildness of postmodernism. In my view, the recent
fascination with the pedagogical, at least in some quarters, may have asmuch to do
with meeting the needs of (white, male) intellectuals for a sense of position and
authority aswith addressing the needs of students.
Statedplainly, I readthe recent interest in pedagogy inliterary andcultural studies
at least in part as an expression of a crisis of (white) masculinity that coincides with
postmodernity and late capitalism. In TheHeartso/Men,Barbara Ehrenreich offers
ahistory of this crisis, which begins in the 1960sand 70s with amale revolt against
what has been calledthe breadwinner ethic. Shereads this revolt ambivalently (asdo
I) as a childish flight from responsibility, as an effort to legitimate a consumerist
personality for men, and as a libertarian movement that parallels the women's
movement and other progressive social movements associated with the New Left
(171). The pedagogical turn in the academic humanities may be part of this history.
It may be an expression of a (white) masculinist subject's recommitment to the social
order, of his effort to reconquerthesocialorder and replacethe breadwinner ethic and
consumerist personality with arevolutionary ethos. And ifthis pedagogical subject
reconquers a sense of place and position, the question remains whether or not the
reinvestment in pedagogy will significantly alter prevailing patterns of feeling
organized by gender, race, and class.
In this context of crisis and management, feminist pedagogies of maternal
nurturance offer no escapefrom the recolonization of the postmodern imaginary and
little hope for real resistance to the process of re-oedipalization. Feminist pedagogies
of nurturance, we must remember, receivetheir pedagogicauthority from adominant
discourse that sets up the ideology of nurturance and its gender duality. Pedagogies
of nurturancework alongside (often cheerfully) radical pedagogies of critique and
confrontation to reproduce and reauthorize the affective relations typical of the
middle-class nuclear family and thus constitute the latest version of the family-
education couple. Here the feminist mother-teacher provides apersonal education,
and the postmodern teacher triangulates the pedagogical relation to produce a
positional education. This new situation, still charged with archaic conflicts,
resubmits women to the disempowering effectsof nurturing and to the hostility of
pedagogical subjects who are schooled to recognize the prevailing authority of
position in ahighly stratified society.
This view runs contrary, of course, to the claims made by feminists engaged in
developing the political significanceof nurturance. In "The Politics ofN urturance,"
for example, Margo Culley andher coauthors join with many other feministsworking
in the areas of epistemology and ethics to make broad claims forthe importance of
the maternal (idealized asmetaphor and experience) not only in reconstructing the
pedagogical relation inthe classroom but alsoin replacing the fundamental structures
of patriarchy with a new pedagogy that protects and promotes the welfare of all.
Specifically, the authors of "The Politics ofNurturance" argue that nurturance
isthe topos that will alter the fundamental construction of gender in our culture, that
238]AC
it will "heal" the cultural split between mother and father (or, more accurately,
maternal authority and paternal authority), and that it will "heal" the existential,
ethical, and epistemic fragmentation causedby capitalism and patriarchy . Women
intellectuals in the academy do this important work, they argue, by virtue of their
contradictory position in aculture that separates the role of nurturer from the role
of intellectual and makes these roles gender-specific. They argue that the fusion of
these roles in the woman intellectual produces the powerto create changes in what
I have calleddominant pedagogy . Yet this ismore nearly adualism than afusion, for
the pedagogic authority of women intellectuals devolves from their role as the
"fathers," who are the "word-givers" and "truth-sayers," at the same time that they
bring to the classroom their inscription in the symbolic as"mothers," asnurturers
and caretakers. This contradictory position elicits a "highly charged" affective
response from students, andwhile these authors focuson women students for whom
this pedagogical relation isareturn to the pre-oedipal mother/daughter configura-
tion, psychoanalytic theory suggests (and my own experience confirms) that this
pedagogy can elicit an equally volatile affective response from male students.
"Powerlessness, rage, and guilt conflate with longing, love, and dependency," these
authors write, "just when our students are confronted by a woman professor,
purveying at the sametime the maternal breast and the authoritative word" (16).The
classroom becomes a transferential space for reliving pre-oedipal and oedipal
emotions but, asthese authors seeit, in away that allows new patterns to emerge (17;
seealsoGrumet). Furthermore, this "intrusion/infusion of emotionality" into the
classroom provides the occasion for the reconstruction of knowledge and ethics
through the fusion of affect and intellect.
From this perspective, the feminist classroomisthe locusdesperatusfor reenacting
and transforming, through the emotional labor of the feminist teacher, "threatening
and joyous psychic events" and thus offers the best chance to reformulate our
relationship to others, to knowledge, and to the world (17).Feminism, accordingly,
must "assert that itsproject isnotto abandon thefemininestandpoint, but to insert its
best qualities into history" (18;emphasis added). Again, maternal nurturance and care
are considered the best qualities of this standpoint, and akey placeto insert them into
history isthe feminist classroom. From my perspective, however, nurturance is, at
this time, animpossible toposfor the feminist teacher, onethat simplyresubmits women
intellectuals to the pedagogic authority of dominant discourses that sets up the
ideology of nurturance forthe benefit of men and at the expenseof women. This kind
of feminist classroom makes women responsible in their professional lives forthe
emotional labor of "tending wounds and feedingegos,"to useBartky' sapt phrase for
describing women's traditional role, andwe must remember that this isunpaid labor
that isexpropriated from women. 13 For nurturance to operate politically toward the
ends outlined above, it must be entirely reconstructed and, along with it, somust the
sex/ affective system that sustains and justifies pedagogic violence of all kinds.
The symbolic reconstruction of nurturance will require, at minimum, an
understanding that the development of individual identity need not require (or posit)
an originary oneness with the mother (or caretaker) and abjection asthe mechanism
for creating and sustaining boundaries-for defendingagainstthe overwhelming
desirefor andfearof reabsorption into astateof indifferentiationassociatedwith the
maternal. Neither willit focussoexclusivelyon theintrapsychicworldofthe subject
and the way in which the subject incorporates and expels, identifies with and
repudiatesthe caretaker-as-other,not asarealbeing,but asamental 0 bject. Nor will
it privilegeautonomy, separateness,andpositionasthe principal goalsofthe psychic
strugglefor identity andauthority. In TheBondsofl.ooe,JessicaBenjaminsuggestsa
differentconceptualizationofthe formation of individualidentity basedon the idea
ofintersubjectivityandtheprocessofmutualrecognition.Shearguesthat subjectivity
emergesinaninteraction with significantothers andthrough aparadoxicalprocess
of balancingthe needfor self-assertionandautonomy with the needfor connection
andrecognition. In her view,theories (suchasKristeva's)that posit anoriginal state
ofonenessandsymbiosisthat must beresistedandrepudiateddistort our understand-
ingof individuation. Earlyinfancystudiesshowthat fromthe beginningthe child's
interestinthe externalworld alternateswith absorption ininternal rhythms. Before
consciousnessof difference,andbecauseofprevailingwoman-centered parenting/
caretakingstyles,the childaffictivelyassociatesthe excitement anddifferenceof the
externalworldwiththefatherandthesafebut dangerousinnerworldwiththe mother
who regulatesthe emotional lifeof the childby satisfyingor thwarting basicneeds.
Thefatherisidealizedandhisauthority internalizedbecauseherepresentsthe external
world andthewayintothat world. What the childwantsaboveallisrecognitionthat
he or she is an agent who can make things happen in the external world. The
recognition necessaryfor individuation canonly come from one whom the child
recognizesassubjectandagent. Benjaminstressesthat mutual recognition asaform
of emotional attunernent, andthe basicform of socialbonding on which allother
bonding isbuilt, isagoalthat isasimportant to the formation of selfasseparation
andautonomy. Ideally,theworld"recognizes"thechildassubjectandagent;thechild
becomessubjectandagentinaworldthat isresponsiveto hisor her needsandactions.
Whileindividuationmayideallyrequiretwo subjectsininteractionwith oneanother,
therealexistingworlddoesnot offeraneconomybasedon recognitionandmutuality.
Women areenlistedandexploited asnurturers in asocietythat does not recognize
this labor aslabor, asthe most necessarylabor ifthe socialisto exist. Moreover, it
doesnot confer onwomen andracializedothersthe statusoffullpsychic,economic,
social,or politicalsubjectsandagents.Dominant pedagogyrequiresthat women seek
recognitionofthemselvesassubjectsandagentsthrough emotion-work andnurtur-
inglabor but inasystemthat withholds recognitionofthe necessityandvalueof this
work. Maria Miescallsthis situation "superexploitation" (48).It isasystemthat
calculatedto ensurethat women arethe" appropriate"targetsoffurther violence,real
andsymbolic.
The failureof mutual recognition-the lossof socialbonds that leadsto shame
{understoodasasenseof personal inadequacy)-promotes apremature formation
of adefensiveboundary between insideandoutside. It fostersanintensification of
the desirefor omnipotence andof the expressionof narcissisticrage. At the social
level,the failureof mutual recognitiontakesthe formofrelationsofexploitation and
240jAC
domination. Ahierarchicalsocialorder isnothingmorethan anefficientarrangement
for doling out what Sennett and Cobb call badges of recognition and unequally
distributingtokensofhumandignity.WhenPatrickPurdy walkedontothat Stockton
schoolyard at midday recess,aschoolyard he himself played on asachild, he was
arguablyactingout the kind ofomnipotence andragethat resultsfromthe failureof
mutual recognition and athwarted senseof agency(seeBenjamin70;Miller 30-48).
Likewise,the survivingchildren alsosought to reclaimasenseof agencyby revising
the event through a make-believe game that restored their power. That Purdy
misrecognized the children asthe enemy, asthe source of injury to his dignity, is
significant.NewsreportscomparedPurdytoRamboandremarkedthat becausemany
of the children were Vietnamese, his actions should be read asan effort to settle
America's political scorewith Vietnam (seealsoSchneiderman59-99).Perhaps his
wasanother dementedexpressionofrugged(white)masculinityattemptingto reclaim
a sense of position and agency and thereby to remasculinize the postmodern
wild(er)nessandreassertdominanceoverwomen, children,andracializedothers (see
Jeffords). Ifso,then surelyit must betime, asPfeilsuggests,to endacollectivesilence
and"togetupthe strengthandwisdomto call[our]foremostenemyby itsright name,
corporate capitalism,the enclaveofthose(largely) whitemenwho reallyown the field
and call the shots" ("Sympathy" 124). Yet the odds areagainst any successhere, if
for no other reasonthan that too many anonymous (white)menwant to maintain a
beliefinasystemthat givesthemthe advantage.The sex!affectiveproduction system
ofcorporate capitalism(orthe dominant pedagogyofemotion)ensuresthecontinued
misrecognition of the enemy, the source of injury andcauseof violence. It ensures
the continuedmisrecognitionofincidentsofgoingpostalasthepathologicalor purely
criminal behavior of isolated and disaffectedindividuals. And yet the dramatic
increaseinthe number ofincidentsofworkplaceandschoolviolenceinthe lastdecade
(eveninthe lastyear) demands another explanation.
The challengeforradicaleducators(feminist,critical,postmodem) isto offerthat
explanation. The intersubjectivemodel givesrecent pedagogicaldiscourseawayto
begin to rethink its goalsof returning agencyto the subject andof recognizing the
other assubject and agent-that is, an alternative to the postmodern pedagogyfor
the reconquestoftheexternalworld, orwhat isradicallyother. Without afundamental
revision in our conception of subjectivity and of our affectiverelationship to the
world, theradicalpotentialofrecentpedagogyto reconstituteour emotionallivesmay
be re-contained, in spite of its best intentions and the euphoria of its claims, as a
strategy of condescension. Bourdieu points out that condescension occurs in
situations inwhich agentsoccupying ahigher symbolic position (byvirtue of race,
class,gender,or education, for example)denythe social(and,Iwould say,emotional)
distancebetween them andthose to whom andforwhom they speak(InOther127-
28). This distance does not ceaseto exist simply becauseit issymbolically denied
through claims of identification and recognition. Rather, the purely symbolic
negationofdistanceensuresthat the profitsofrecognitionanddistinctionwill confer
the status of somebodiness on self-styledradical agents but without necessarily
producing significant structural change inthe social conditions of those who are
subordinated. If radical pedagogy operates in this manner, its condescension might
be the unfortunate result of a misrecognition of the kind of work required for
decolonization, or it might be symptomatic of apredictable (andperhaps historically
inescapable) ambivalence toward decolonization. In any event, strategies of conde-
scension always appear otherwise than asinstances of pedagogicviolence concealing
the power relations that are the condition of possibility for so-called radical
alternatives and fortheir alleged success."
UniversityofWlSConsin,Milwaukee
Milwaukee, Wzsconsin
Notes
'See Time(Dec. 1989}and NewYorkTimes(9Dec. 1989}for typical reports of this incident. See
also Cameron and Frazer on gender issues in mass murder.
2See Newsweek(30Jan. 1989)for a typical report of the Stockton assault. Goleman discusses
Purdy, the rage that led to such violence, and the game the children created in its aftermath (200-01,
208-09).
3After the initial news report on the Central Park rape, which tended to downplay the issue of
gender and race, anumber of editorials called into question the mystification around the phenomenon
of wilding. See,for example, Pogrebin, Krauthammer, and Zuckerman.
"Foramore global perspective on domestic violence and an illuminating discussion ofthe political
economy of dowry murder in India, seeMies.
5Dyeris particularly helpful inclarifyingthe ways inwhich emotion andemotional expression have
been racialized.
'Feminist work on morality and ethics often focuses on the role of emotion. N oddings, for
example, basesan ethic of caring on the priority of what she callssentiment or feeling, and distinguishes
natural sentiment (which isexperienced in the caring relationship established between mother-child)
and ethical sentiment (which isthe memory of natural feeling and the basis for ethical action) (see79-
103). The ethical ideal driving this view is not an abstract principle or rule of right action but
maintenance of the caring relation, both care forthe other and care for the self. Ethics, in her view, does
not focus on the problem of justification and justified action but on the issue of our obligation to
maintain caring relations.
7Interestingly, this shift to amore personal style coincides with the entrance of many more women
into the labor force. Perhaps sexual harassment, which surfaced finally, asan issue, in the 1980s,should
be understood in the context of this history of workplace emotion . Specifically, I am suggesting that
dominant pedagogy authorizes a style of work emotion that cultivates the conditions for sexual
harassment to occur with greater frequency and for harrassment to be misrecognized and tolerated by
training women workers to accept amore personal and friendly style. Tothe extent that anger has been
eliminated from the workp lace,the victim of sexual harassment issubject to asecondary violence that
may short-circuit or censor her anger as alegitimate response to violation.
8The pervasiveness of commodification does not nullify the hierarchy that renders women,
children, and people of color the preferred objects ofconsumption. Here the filmTheSilencecftbe Lambs
is especially instructive as a parable of the patriarchal psyche of postmodern America and illustrates
many of the issuesI deal with in this essay. Of particular interest isthe pedagogical relation established,
on the one hand, between F.B.I. trainee Clarice Starling and her mentor.] ack Crawford, and on the
other, between Clarice and the serial killer, Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter. Clarice is positioned
between two fathers, the good father and the bad, both of whom feed off the emotion she is made to
confess. This film is also relevant in the way it treats skin as asignifier of difference and a commodity
in postmodern America. A reading of the film appears in my article "Reading Wild, Seriously."
"Gore also focuses on the "overly optimistic" claims of recent pedagogical discourse, especially
its claim to empower students. On the subject of violence and pedagogy, seeLewis.
10Morton and Zavarzadeh identify Jameson with critical cultural studies, and Raymond Williams
and E.P. Thompson with experiential cultural studies ("Theory" 23-29). They also associate Janice
242]AC
Radway and Teresa de Lauretis with the experientialists. They want to suggest, through this distinction,
that a focus on personal experience depoliticizes cultural work precisely at a time when we need to
depersonalize experience to analyze the objective conditions of existence. Morton and Zavarzadeh say
these two approaches to cultural studies and to pedagogy are necessarily in competition. My own
treatment of pedagogic violence in the second section of this paper recognizes that we need both a
critique of the objective conditions of domination and aphenomenology of the forms in which we live
and experience domination and oppression. Merged in this manner, these two approaches to cultural
analysis and pedagogy constitute what I call a political phenomenology. See Bartky (Femininity)and
Lyman who also recommend apolitical phenomenology of emotion.
1"This nomenclature is bound to be confusing in light of the fact that critical pedagogy has begun
to engage the discourse on postmodernism and to move away from its commitment to a modernist
agenda and consequently has begun to call itself a postmodern pedagogy. See Giroux and Simon;
Aronowitz and Giroux; and Giroux.
12Morton and Zavarzadeh recognize that emotion constitutes a "frame of intelligibility" on apar
with ideas and texts, but they make no specific effort to develop a discourse on emotion. I see their
relative inattention to emotion asa participation in the dominant tradition that continues to marginalize
this category of existence and instead privileges reason.
"This highly charged classroom sets women up to be the targets of violence and harassment. For
example, several years ago a student offered this crude assessment of my teaching: "A good teacher but
she has invisible tits." The hostility expressed in this statement, the way in which it retaliates against
(perhaps even repudiates) authority through objectification, suggeststhat women teachers always labor
under the obligation to provide the (maternal) breast. Nurturance, in other words, is an obligation for
women who live and labor in an economy that recognizes them only as providers of an all too often
sexualized nurturance.
"This paper is a revised and expanded version of "Emotion and Pedagogic Violence," which
appears in Discourse15.2 (1993): 119-48. Research for the earlier article was supported by a fellowship
at the Center for Twentieth Century Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I thank Shelley Circle
and Gary Olson fortheir careful reading of this revision.
Works Cited
Aronowitz, Stanley, and Henry A. Giroux. PostmodernEducation: Politics, Culture, andSocial Criticism.
Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1991.
Bartky, Sandra. "The Pedagogy of Shame. " FeminismsandPedagogies o/Everyday Lift. Ed. Carmen Luke.
New York: State U of New York P, 1996.225-41.
-. FemininityandDomination: StudiesinthePhenomenology o/Oppression. London: Routledge, 1990.
Benjamin.]essica. TheBondso/Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, andtheProblemofDomination. New York:
Pantheon, 1988.
-. "Authority and the Family Revisited; or, A World Without Fathers?" NewGermanCritique13
(1978): 35-78.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Languageand SymbolicPower. Trans. Gino Raymond and Mathew Adamson.
Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1991.
-.In OtherWords: Essays TowardsaReflexive Sociology. Trans. Mathew Adamson. Stanford: Stanford UP,
1990.
Bourdieu, Pierre, andJean-Claude Passeron. Reproduction inEducation, Society andCulture. Trans. Richard
Nice. London: Sage, 1977. .
Cameron, De borah, and Elizabeth Frazer. TheLusttoKill:A FeministInvestigationofSexualMurder.
Oxford: Polity, 1987.
Chodorow, N aney. Tbekeproduction ofMothering:PsychoanalysisandtheSociology o/Gender. Berkeley:U of
CaliforniaP, 1978.
Culley,Margo,etal. "The Politics of Nurturance." GenderedSubjects: TheDynamicso/Feminist Teaching.
Pedagogic Violenceand the Schoolingof Emotion 243
Ed. MargoCulleyandCatherine Portuges. New York: Routledge, 1985. 11-20.
Dyer, Richard. "White." Screen29.4(1988):44-64.
Eagleton,Terry. "Introduction."MarxistLiterary Theory. Ed.TerryEagletonandDrewMilne.London:
Blackwell, 1996. 1-15.
Ebert,TeresaL.LudicFeminismandAfier:Postmodernism, Desire, andLaborinLateCapitalism. AnnArbor:
U of MichiganP, 1996.
-. "For aRedPedagogy:Feminism, Desire, andNeed." CollegeEnglish58(1996):795-819.
Ehrenreich,Barbara. TheHearts ofMen:TbeAmericanDreamandtheFlightFromCommitment.NewYork:
Anchor, 1983.
Ferguson,Ann. BloodattheRoot:Motherhood, SexualityandMaleDominance.London:Pandora, 1989.
Featherstone,Mike.ConsumerCultureandPostmodernism. London:Sage,1991.
Foucault,Michel.DisciplineandPunish: TheBirthofthePrison. Trans.AlanSheridan.NewYork:Vintage,
1979.
Giroux,HenryA.Postmodernism, Feminism,andCulturalPolitics:RedrawingEducationalBoundari es.New
York: StateU of New York P, 1991.
Giroux,Henry A.,andRogerI. Simon."PopularCultureasPedagogyofPleasureandMeaning."Popular
Culture, Schooling&EverydayLife.Ed.HenryA.GirouxandRogerI. Simon.Granby, MA:Bergin,
1989. 1-30.
Goleman,Daniel.Emotionallntelligence. NewYork:Bantarn,1995.
Gore, Jennifer. "What We Can Do for You! What Can 'We' Do for 'You'P: Struggling over
EmpowermentinCriticalandFeministPedagogy."Feminisms andCritical Pedagogy. Ea.Carmen
LUKeandJennifer Gore. New York: Routredge, 1992. 54-73.
Gorelick, Sherry. "ClassRelationsandthe DevelopmentoftheTeachingProfession." ClassandSocial
Developrnent:ANewTheoryoftheMiddleClass. Ed.DaleL.Johnson.BeverlyHills:Sage,1982.203-
23.
Graff, Gerald. "ThePedagogicalTurn." MidwestModemLanguageAssociation Bulletin27.1(1994):65-
69.
Grossberg,Lawrence. "Postmodernity andAffect:AllDressedUp With No PlacetoGo." Communi-
cation10(1988):271-93.
-. "Pedagogyinthe Present:Politics,Postmodernity, andthe Popular." PopularCulture,Schooling&
EverydayLife.Ed. Henry A. GirouxandRogerL Simon. Granby, MA: Bergin, 1989.91-116.
Grumet, MadeleineR. BitterMilk:WomenandTeaching. Amherst:UofMassachusettsP, 1988.
Jaggar,AlisonM."LoveandKnowledge:EmotioninFeministEpistemology."Women,Knowledge,and
Reality:Explorations inFeministPhilosophy. Ed.Ann GarryandManlynPearsall.Boston:Unwin
Hyman, 1989. 129-55.
] arneson,Fredric. "Postmodernism, orthe Cultural Logicof LateCapitalism." NewLeftReview146
(1984): 53-92.
Jeffords,Susan.Thekemasculinizationcf. America: GenderandtheVietnamWar.Bloomington:IndianaUP,
1989.
Kelsh,Deborah. "Critiquingthe 'Culture' ofFeminismandComposition: Toward aRedFeminism."
FeminismandCompositionStudies:lnOtherWords.Ed.SusanC.] arratt andLynnWorsharn.New
York: MLA, 1998. 100-07.
Krauthammer,Charles. "Crime andResponsibility." Time8May 1989:104.
244]AC
Kristeva,Julia.PowersofHorror:AnEssayonAbjection. Trans.LeonS.Roudiez.NewYork: Columbia
UP, 1982.
-. "PsychoanalysisandthePolis."Trans.MargaretWaller.TheKristevaReader. Ed.TorilMoi. New
York: Columbia UP, 1986.301-20.
Lasch,Christopher. TheCultureofNarcissism:A mericanLifeinAnAgeofDiminishingExpectations. New
York: Warner, 1979.
Lewis, Magda. "Interrupting Patriarchy: Politics, Resistanceand Transformation in the Feminist
Classroom."FeminismsandCnticalPedagogy. Ed.CarmenLukeandJenniferGore. NewYork:
Routledge, 1992. 167-91.
Lutz,Catherine. Unnatural Emotions: EverydaySentimentsonaMicronesianAtoll andTbeirChallenge to
WesternTheory.Chicago:UofChicagoP, 1988.
Lyman,Peter. "ThePoliticsofAnger:On Silence, Ressentiment,andPoliticalSpeech."Socialist Review
May-June (1981):55-74.
McFall,Lynne. "What'sWrongwithBitterness?"FeministEthics. Ed.ClaudiaCard. Lawrence:UP of
Kansas, 1991. 146-60.
Mies,Maria.Patriarcby andAccumulationonaWorldScale: WomenintheInternationalDivision ofLabour.
London: Zed, 1986.
Miller.Alice,TheDramaoftheGiftedChild.Trans. Ruth Ward.NewYork: BasicBooks, 1981.
Morton, DonaldandMas'udZavarzadeh."Preface."Theory/Pedagogy/Politics: TextsforChange. Ed.
Donald Morton andMas'udZavarzadeh. Urbana: UofIllinoisP, 1991.vii-x,
-"Theory PedagogyPolitics:TheCrisisof'TheSubject' intheHumanities."Theory/Pedagogy/Politics:
TextsforChange.Ed.DonaldMorton andMas'udZavarzadeh. Urbana: UofIllinoisP, 1991.1-
32.
Mouffe,Chantal. TheReturnofthePolitical.London:Verso,1993.
Neu.jerome. '''A Tear IsanIntellectualThing.'" Representations19(1987):35-61.
Newsweek.30Jan. 1989:35.
NewYorkTimes.25Sept., 1997:C28.
NewYork Times.9 Dec. 1989:A6.
Noddings,Nel. Caring:AFeminineApproachtoEthicsandMoralEducation. Berkeley: UofCalifomiaP,
1984.
Pfeil,Fred. "Postmodernismasa'StructureofFeeling," MarxismandtheInterpretationofCulture.Ed.
Cary Nelson and LawrenceGrossberg.Urbana: Uof IllinoisP, 1988.381-403.
-. "Sympathyforthe Devils:Notes on SomeWhiteGuysandthe RidiculousClassWar." NewLeft
Reuieio213(1995):115-24.
Pogrebin, Letty Cortin. "BoysWill BeBoys?"Ms.Sept. 1989:24.
Rich, Adrienne. "NotestowardaPoliticsof Location."Blood, Bread, andPoetry.NewYork:Norton,
1986. 210-31.
Rosaldo,Michelle."TowardanAnthropologyofSelfandFeeling." CultureTheory: Essays onMind,Self,
andEmotion. Ed.RichardA.ShwederandRobert A.leVine.Cambridge: CambridgeUP, 1984.137-57.
Scheff,ThomasJ.,andSuzanneM. Retzinger. Emotionsand Violence: ShameandRageinDestructive
Conflicts.Lexington,MA.:Lexington,1991.
Schell,EileenE. "TheCostsofCaring:'Femininism'andContingentWomenWorkersinComposition
Studies."FeminismandComposition Studies: InOtherWonk.Ed SusanC.JarrattandLynnWorsham.
New York: MLA, 1998.74-93.
Pedagogic Violenceand the Schoolingof Emotion 245
Schiller.jon R. "The New 'Family Romance." Triquarterly52(1981):64-84.
Schneiderman.Stuart, Sa'VingPace:Americaand thePoliticsofShame.NewYork: AlfredA.Knopf, 1995.
Scholes,Robert. Textual Power: Literary7heoryandtheTeachingofEnglish. NewHaven:YaleUP, 1985.
Sennett, Richard, andjonathan Cobb. TheHiddenInjuriesofClass.NewYork: Vintage, 1972.
Shumway, David R. "The Star Systemin Literary Studies." PMLA112(1997):85-100.
Spelman,ElizabethV. "Anger andInsubordination." Women,Knowledge, andReality:Explorations in
PeministPhilosophy. Ed. AnnGarry andMarilynPearsall.Boston:UnwinHyman, 1989.263-73.
Spivak,Gayatri C. In OtherWorlds: Essays inCulturalPolitics. NewYork: Methuen, 1987.
Stearns,CarolZisowitz,andPeterN. Stearns. Anger: TheStrugglefor Emotional ControlinAmericanHistory.
Chicago: U of ChicagoP, 1986.
Stearns,PeterN. AmericanCool'Constructing aTwentieth-Century Emotional Style.NewYork:NewYork
UP, 1994.
Stearns,PeterN. "AngerandAmericanWork:ATwentiethCenturyTurningPoint." EmotionandSocial
Change: TotoardaNetoI'sychohistory. NewYork: Holmes&Meier, 1988.123-49.
Strickland, Ronald. "Confrontational PedagogyandTraditional Literary Studies." CollegeEnglish52
(1990): 291-99.
Time. 8Dec. 1989:A9.
Watkins,Evan. WorkTime:EnglishDepartmentsandthe CirculationofCulturalValue. Stanford:Stanford
UP, 1989.
Weiler,Kathleen. WomenTeachingforChange. Gender, Class, andPower.NewYork: Bergin,1988.
Worsham, Lynn. "ReadingWild, Seriously: Confessions of an Epistemophiliac." RhetoricSociety
Quarterly22.1(1992):39-62.
-. "WritingAgainstWriting:EcritureFeminineesui Composition Studies."ContendingWithWords:
CompositioninaPostmodemAge.Eds.PatriciaHarkinandJohnSchilb.NewYork:MLA, 1991.82-
104
Zuckerman, Mortimer B. "Meltdown in our Cities." U.S.News& WorldReport.29May 1980:74.

Going Postal: Pedagogic Violence and The Schooling of Emotion

Transféré par

Informations du document

Titre original

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Going Postal: Pedagogic Violence and The Schooling of Emotion

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Going Postal: Pedagogic Violence and

the Schooling of Emotion

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi