[Each fall the Unit for Criticism provides travel grants to select graduate student affiliates, inviting awardees to publish a post on Kritik about their paper. Below Dan Colson, a grad student affiliate in English, writes about conference paper he delivered in fall 2009.]Teaching in the Panopticon
Written by Dan Colson (English)
Last fall I had the opportunity to present a paper on my experiences teaching an upper-division literature course in a medium-high security prison. I used my experiences in this unique teaching environment (defined in part by distinct racial, class, and gender formations) as the starting point for a discussion of my continued efforts to develop an effective pedagogy (for both a prison classroom and a University of Illinois classroom).
I started with some guiding questions that attempted to conceptualize the overlap of the university campus, the prison, and approaches to teaching through the institutional and disciplinary powers that structure both.
Last fall I had the opportunity to present a paper on my experiences teaching an upper-division literature course in a medium-high security prison. I used my experiences in this unique teaching environment (defined in part by distinct racial, class, and gender formations) as the starting point for a discussion of my continued efforts to develop an effective pedagogy (for both a prison classroom and a University of Illinois classroom).
I started with some guiding questions that attempted to conceptualize the overlap of the university campus, the prison, and approaches to teaching through the institutional and disciplinary powers that structure both.
What is the role of transgression in teaching or learning? What do the knowledges we teach transgress against? Is it possible to teach transgression as a skill and how might I teach this skill in different settings? While I recognized that such a position might make some uncomfortable, I argued that transgressing discourses of legality is not entirely distinct from transgression against other knowledge regimes. Put differently, the value placed on “critical” thinking in the university, especially in the humanities, is an effort to teach students to transgress against–and hence transcend–other ideological formations. We encourage the ability to consider multiple ideas beyond provincial and static modes of thought, to weigh them against each other, and to choose the most reasonable, humane, and effective option. In many cases, this requires teaching students to transgress against inherited knowledge or, at the very least, to allow for the possibility that new knowledges can transgress against, and eventually replace, received wisdom.
Understanding power not as emanating from a recognizable monolith, but as a series of overlapping discourses and social relations–that is, exploring Michel Foucault’s concepts of discipline and governmentality–suggests that criminality is only one example of transgressive resistance. The discourse-power dyad that Foucault theorized may be inescapable, but counter-discourse and localized transgression of strategic power formations are still possible.
Understanding power not as emanating from a recognizable monolith, but as a series of overlapping discourses and social relations–that is, exploring Michel Foucault’s concepts of discipline and governmentality–suggests that criminality is only one example of transgressive resistance. The discourse-power dyad that Foucault theorized may be inescapable, but counter-discourse and localized transgression of strategic power formations are still possible.
Though I admit that teaching in a prison is much different from teaching in a university, it raises the question of transgression or disruption as a pedagogical goal. The prison-classroom contains transgressive subjects subsequently inscribed as “criminal,” while the university contains potentially transgressive subjects who wish to be inscribed as “educated persons.” What to do with this lesson in these two settings is a persistent challenge.
In the traditional classroom, issues of politics, academic freedom, and the scope of humanities education all complicate the goal of teaching a nebulous “skill” that cannot be reduced to the apolitical professional knowledge that some advocate. Once we admit that learning and the advance of thought are inherently transgressive--or at least potentially so--we must ask: what knowledges do we want our students to transgress?
In prison, the questions are quite different. Is it appropriate to theorize learning as transgression in a setting where the consequences of criminality are all too visible? How do I teach intellectual transgression within an institution where transgression is met with severe reaction? At the conference, I confessed that I don’t have answers to all of these questions, but I do argue that it is worthwhile to explore the possibilities of what I call a pedagogy of criminality, a politicized orientation to institutional education from which I argue that transgression is valuable as such.