The Erotics of Instruction

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Edited by Regina Barreca and Deborah Denenholz Morse

University Press of New England

Due/Published April 1997, 240 pages, paper

ISBN 0874518067

Maybe this and Jane Gallop's book (see Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment) could be sold as a set. The editors begin this collection of essays about the personal dynamics that shape the exchange of knowledge and understanding by saying, "Whether it is perceived as an instrument of dominance or a mode of revelation, the educational process involves an emotionally suffused link between human beings." The teachers, writers, and critics represented here contend that the student as intellectual aspirant and the teacher as unattainable object of desire inevitably engage in a dance, a complex ritualized relation that, far from being cold and detached, is instead imbued with problematic intimacy and complex passion. In essays that combine serious scholarship with informal and highly revealing anecdotes, these authors confront issues of pedagogy, gender relationships, mentoring, and academic professionalism. They focus on the ways the strong emotions involved in learning and discovery can create "an extraordinary relationship between the possessor of seemingly arcane knowledge and the one who years to possess this seeming wisdom." the paradigm, several essays point out, can be found in literary texts from Vilette, to Middlemarch to The Turn of the Screw to Educating Rita, but it also occurs in real life. By examining topics like lesbian themes in literature, student objections to discussing sexuality in texts, the need for reform of pedagogical discourse, and the politics of instruction, these thirteen essays offer a range of responses that recognize and celebrate the process of teaching as an act of joint creation and reinvention.