Embodied Learning Through Pedagogical Promiscuity

Abstract

Promiscuous pedagogy is an embodied approach to learning that invites students to bring their whole-messy selves into conversation with their academic work. Drawing on bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress, Laura Rendón’s Sentipensante (Sensing/Thinking) Pedagogy, and the corporeal and erotic dimensions of knowledge recognized by Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde, the author asserts that promiscuous pedagogical interventions are needed more than ever at a time when connections between sexuality and systems of power are being exposed, denied, and contested in societies worldwide. Bringing sexuality and spirituality into dialogue, promiscuous pedagogy risks the chaos of not knowing what will happen when students are encouraged to think critically about their own embodied experiences, to explore the relevance of what they are learning for their everyday lives, and to consider its implications for an interdependent world. This approach welcomes students’ embodied knowledge into the classroom, not because it is an unquestionable source of truth but because it is a rich resource for exploring how bodily desires become caught up in systems of power—including religious systems—whether or not we know or intend it and whether or not we are religious. The chapter presents several classroom strategies, illustrating this mode of transformative teaching about sexuality, religion, and power and encouraging instructors to stay attuned to different ways of knowing and different kinds of knowledge.