Queering Seduction: Eros and the Erotic in the Construction of Gay Teacher Identity

Abstract

This article situates itself in cross-disciplinary work to combine reflection on my own teaching and my own “queer locatedness” (Grace, 2000) with more traditional elements of media studies and critical pedagogy. The circle around this reflection is defined by ruminations on the relationship between eros and the erotic, media representations of teachers, and morality and mortality in male identity and pedagogy. I offer several tentative conclusions: the role of a queer teacher is more conflicted than that of a heterosexual; good teaching may not be possible unless there is an element in it of seduction, but it is teachers who are seduced by their students. Good teaching—ethical teaching—celebrates differences by exploring them. Interrogating Eros in teaching leads to an appreciation of the sweetness of morality and the stench of mortality along the parabola connecting body and mind, and the construction of a queer teaching identity.