The notion of desire in theorizing pedagogical relations has a long tradition within foundations of education. Contemporary scholarship on desire in educational theory is informed by sexuality studies and queer theory. This article both builds and expands contemporary dialogue on desire as informed by some of the debates within sexuality studies, and feminist and queer theory. In this article, I investigate elements of desire that are considered dangerous in pedagogical contexts such as ?excess? and ?devotion.? I then provide an interpretation (...) of the productive nature of conflict and desire in pedagogical encounters. Finally, I explore the pleasure and pain of desires, tension, and conflict as necessarily dangerous and dangerously necessary elements of learning and pedagogical encounters. (shrink)

This article identifies and analyses the dominant stories that academics tell about the development of Western second wave feminist theory. Through an examination of recent production of interdisciplinary feminist and cultural theory journals, I suggest that despite a rhetorical insistence on multiple feminisms, Western feminist trajectories emerge as startlingly singular. In particular, I am critical of an insistent narrative that sees the development of feminist thought as a relentless march of progress or loss. This dominant approach oversimplifies the complex history (...) of Western feminisms, fixes writers and perspectives within a particular decade, and repeatedly (and erroneously) positions poststructuralist feminists as ‘the first’ to challenge the category ‘woman’ as the subject and object of feminist knowledge. Rather than provide a corrective history of Western feminist theory, the article interrogates the techniques through which this dominant story is secured, despite the fact that we (feminist theorists) know better. My focus, therefore, is on citation patterns, discursive framings and some of their textual, theoretical and political effects. As an alternative, I suggest a realignment of key theorists purported to provide a critical break in feminist theory with their feminist citational traces, to force a concomitant re-imagining of our historical legacy and our place within it. (shrink)