The Unconscious and the Teaching Body

Nancy Barton

I learned to speak when I started teaching. Having been largely silent throughout my youth, when that first group of slightly bored yet expectant students fixed me in their gaze some 30 years ago, I was surprised when a switch flipped and my body began talking profusely. Crossing to the front of the classroom or the lecture hall provided a cloak of invisibility: fathers, masters, authorities were held at bay and I was permitted to tell my stories. At the same time I was an authorized agent for these jaded kids, who see the teacher as a set of answers they will be expected to know. Facing them, you suddenly understand that there is no time to tell everything, and that no one does, but, amazingly, the choices are yours to make. You are the arbiter of history. A new physiology of knowledge comes into being as you move from the servant of a system of information, to a speaker on the stage. Gesture, laughter, irreverence, insight; all become possible because these others are present, ready for you to lead them somewhere. Because they listen, you find you have words.[...]