'The teaching body': a queer geography of New Zealand secondary school teachers' embodiment

Abstract

Drawing on the work of Foucault - and queer theory - I interrogate the sexuality and desire subtending pedagogy and attempt to articulate a queer politics of sexual embodiment for feminist and cultural geography which moves past re-articulating the positions of heterosexual and homosexual. I employ the metaphor of 'the teaching body' to explore how teachers' bodies are regulated by a mind-body dualism in Western philosophy which elevates rationalism, and is dependent on the mastery of desire, to reproduce an effective and appropriate pedagogy. I explore the implications this has for the articulation of difference and the production and transfer of classroom knowledge. Working cross-disciplinarily, between feminist and cultural geography, and critical education, I employ a discourse analysis approach to examine the contributions made by five New Zealand secondary school teachers in a focus group and interview. I also present an analysis of drawings produced by participants in the research process. In the analysis, I pay close attention to where participants articulate mind and body in opposition to each other, and where this produces untenable contradictions in participants' pedagogy. I am also critical of appeals to a neutral 'personal' agency, and to the democracy of 'private' classrooms, by pointing out how such notions reproduce humanist agency, veil power relations and participate in the heteronormative reconstruction of the classroom and an appropriate pedagogy. Finally, I show how a re-reading of teachers' bodies may suggest moments when a queer geography of sexual embodiment may inform critical pedagogy, and a queer pedagogy may contest the boundaries of geographical thought.