The “Shadowy Underside” of Learning History

Bibliographic Data

ID12425326
AuthorsLisa Farley (0000-0002-4907-1120, corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume29
Issue5
Pages423-440
Publication date2007-09-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Review of Education Pedagogy & Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1071-4413 • E-ISSN: 1556-3022
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10714410701566256
OpenAlexW2063368422
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited12

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes All quotations in this opening paragraph are cited from Ross 2005. If the idea of getting to the Acropolis seemed depressing and impossible, it seemed that the alternative option, that is, not to take the trip, would prove just as upsetting. Freud feared that his depressed spirits would be replaced with nagging regret. After all, “it would have been so lovely” (450). Either way, to go or not to go, there was something that obstructed his enjoyment of the trip. Explains Phillips (Citation1998), the Freudian student “...cannot be schooled in the traditional sense because s/he always chooses her/his teachers.... From an unknowable (unconscious) set of criteria a person, unbeknown to himself, picks out and transforms the bits he wants, the bits that can be used in the hidden projects of unconscious desire” (412). One notable exception is Alice J. Pitt. For a psychoanalytic discussion of the definition and role of “the personal” in the context of feminist pedagogy, see her book, The play of the personal: Psychoanalytic narratives of feminist education (2003). Keith C. Barton and Linda S. Levstik (2004) have recently emphasized the emotional grounds of empathy, no matter how persistent the claim—or, pedagogical aim—to separate it out from feeling or affect. Emphasized here are four senses of care that their version of historical empathy enables and contains: 1) “caring about” past events in ways that inform present investigations; 2) “caring that” events and experiences happened before the time of the self; 3) “caring for” others who have been mistreated (to the point of imagining reversing such wrongs); and 4) “caring to” make changes in their thinking, beliefs and actions in the present (2004: 229). I wish to offer additional terms for understanding the role of emotion in historical encounters, but my interest is in emotions that do not always fit into the teacher's empathy checklist. I turn to the work of Freud and Levinas in this effort, for both discourses offer a rich vocabulary for understanding the value of affective (and affected) responses that do not immediately present themselves as pedagogically significant (responses such as “de-realization” or picking up a marble stone). I disagree with Freud's use of the term “primeval”—and the implied notion of prehistoric man as “uncivilized”—and yet still want to give credence to the idea that history may be felt and passed on in ways that are beyond our conscious efforts to teach and learn it. Among these, Edward Said (Citation2003) has taken issue with the discontinuity of the writing and argument, the construction of identity as an “open and shut” (i.e., Larmarkian) matter and its presumption of a European reader (32). Other theorists have read the text biographically as an instance of Freud's identification with Moses and so a working through of his own ambivalent feelings about his father (Yerushalmi Citation1991) and about being a father himself (in particular, the “father” of psychoanalysis). To the extent that the Moses Freud creates in this “historical novel” (as he called it) is eventually murdered by his reluctant followers, the text can also been read as an effort on Freud's part to grapple with his own forthcoming death and the future of psychoanalysis without Freud at the head. The concept of separation from the parent is a central theme in psychoanalysis as well. That is, the ego must break the parental (and paternal) identification (also known as identification with the aggressor) if there is to be hope for autonomy. Freud (Citation1914) writes about a “second half” of childhood marked by separation from the paternal ideal: The boy begins to look out of his nursery into the real world, and now he must make the discoveries that undermine the high esteem in which he originally held for his father, and encourage age to break away from that first ideal.... Everything hopeful, but also everything repellent that distinguishes the new generation, is shaped by this break with the father. (357) What Freud calls a “break away from that first ideal” can be thought of in Levinasian terms as fecundity. In some ways, we can think of psychoanalysis as a therapeutic practice oriented toward the patient's gradual acceptance of a fecund relation with one's past, or parents. Such a relation, as I understand it, would involve establishing a tie with the parents (and the past) as an independent being, without either total separation or feelings of abandonment. The relation between fecundity and therapeutic action, while interesting food for thought, is beyond the scope of this article

Aesthetics · Art · Context (archaeology · Empathy · Feeling · Freudian slip · Literature · Nagging · Narrative · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Quilt · Set (abstract data type · Sociology · Unconscious mind · Visual arts · Adult and Continuing Education Topics · Computer Science · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · History · Psychology · Religious Education and Schools · Social Psychology

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