Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T08:26:27.877Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Passing Our Lives through the Fire of Thought: The Personal Essay in the Political Theory Classroom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2008

Margaret Mott
Margaret Mott
Affiliation:
Marlboro College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Why are teachers afraid of sentences that begin with “I feel …” or that draw on personal experience? When Enid Bloch, a former practitioner of political science, asked her colleagues these questions, she was given the standard answer of “subjectivity” or “when someone brings up personal feelings there is nothing to discuss” (1999, 69–73). That may be true for other subfields of political science but surely the books we teach in political theory are brimming with subjectivity. Aren't they? And surely the essays we assign call for injecting the writing self into the broader political discussion. Don't they? So what gets in the way?

Type
THE TEACHER
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , pp. 207 - 211
Copyright
© 2008 The American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bloch, Enid. 1999. “Fear of the Self in American Academic Life.” Thought and Action: The NEA Higher Education Journal (fall): 69–73.Google Scholar
Egan, Charles. 2006. “Untitled.” Assignment for Anglo-American Political Imagination, Marlboro College, Dec. 13.Google Scholar
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1960. “Divinity School Address.” Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed., Stephen Whicher. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, cited in Bloch, “Fear of Self.”Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1982. The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse of Language. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Griffin, Gail B. 1992. Calling: Essays on Teaching in the Mother Tongue. Pasadena, CA: Trilogy Books.Google Scholar
Griffin, Gail B. 2005. “Teaching Whiteness.” Public lecture, Marlboro College, Feb. 14. Transcript of talk available at: www.marlboro.edu/about/news/pr/2005/02/18/teaching_whiteness_text.Google Scholar
Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negrí. 2000. Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Margaret. 2007. “Implications of Apathy.” Draft. Marlboro College.Google Scholar
Latour, Amée R. 2005. “Criticizing the Critic: The Internal Critic, Foucault, and I.” Assignment for Foucault Tutorial, Marlboro College.Google Scholar
Levy, Ben. 2006. “Marlboro Nihilism as seen through my Experiences with Art and Action.” Assignment for Anglo-American Political Imagination, Marlboro College, Dec. 13.Google Scholar
Montaigne, Michel de. 2003. “Of Repentence.” In The Complete Works, trans. Donald M. Frame. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Montaigne, Michel de. “Of Physiognomy.” 2003. Frame edition. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Montaigne, Michel de. “On Experience.” 1991. Screech edition. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Montaigne, Michel de. “On Experience.” 2003. Frame edition. Knopf.Google Scholar
Raulet, Gérard. 2003. “Structuralism and Post-Structuralism.” In The Essential Foucault, ed. Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose. New York: The New Press, 95.Google Scholar
Screech, M. A. 1991. “Introduction.” In Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays, trans. M. A. Screech. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
West, Cornel. 2005. Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar