Abstract
This article examines historical imagery of the teacher in relation to a story drawn from ancient Greece: that relating to the teacher of the mythic hero Achilles in The Iliad. The article explores the possibility that this early image of a teacher — the aging warrior Phoenix — could be a source for later representations of the teaching function. In an effort to place this historical image into a larger context of cultural symbolism relating to pedagogy, the article asks, why is this ‘first’ educator a man? By what narrative procedure was a man contrived to assume roles such as nurturing and childrearing that had always been (and continue to be) represented as feminine occupations? Using the work of Luce Irigaray, the article raises issues about the sex of the teacher in order to disrupt the seemingly obvious sex-neutrality of modern images of education, which define teaching and learning as humanistic, as social and cultural practices for which gender is irrelevant, and through which abstract disciplines such as literacy and numeracy are represented as transcending the physicality of the sexed body. It attempts to expose the constant deference modern educators unconsciously pay to patriarchal models of the pedagogical relationship, and to reveal the repression of sexual difference at the core of the mythology from which Western images of education have been generated.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Dunne, J. (1993)Back to the Rough Ground. Practical Judgment and the Lure of Technique. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana.
Fielding, H. (2003) Questioning nature: Irigaray, Heidegger and the potentiality of matter.Continental Philosophy Review, vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 1–26.
Halperin, D. M. (1990) Why is Diotima a woman? Platonic eros and the figurations of gender, in D. M. Halperin, J. J. Winkler, F. I. Zeitlin, eds.,Before Sexuality. The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, Princeton University Press, New Jersey.
Harlow, M. (1998) In the name of the father: procreation, paternity and patriarchy, in L. Foxhall, J. Salmon, eds.,Thinking Men. Masculinity and Its Self Representation in the Classical Tradition, Routledge, London/New York.
Heidegger, M. (1975)Early Greek Thinking, Harper Collins, San Francisco.
Heidegger, M. (1998)Pathmark, in W. McNeill, ed., Cambridge University Press, New York.
Homer (1999)The Iliad Books 1–12, A. T. Murray (Trans.) Revised by W. F. Wyatt, Loeb Classical Library 170–171, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Ma.
Irigaray, L. (1985a)Speculum of the Other Woman, C. Burke (Trans.) Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
Irigaray, L. (1985b)This Sex Which Is Not One, C. Porter (Trans.) Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
Irigaray, L. (1992)Elemental Passions, J. Collie, J. Still (Trans.) Routledge, New York.
Irigaray, L. (1993a)Sexes and Genealogies, G. C. Gill (Trans.) Columbia University Press, New York.
Irigaray, L. (1993b)An Ethics of Sexual Difference, C. Burke, G. C. Gill (Trans.) Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
Irigaray, L. (1999)The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger, M. B. Mader (Trans.) Athlone Press, London.
Irigaray, L. (2002)The Way of Love, H. Bostic, S. Pluhacek, (Trans.) Continuum, London/New York.
Jaeger, W. (1939)Paideia. The Ideals of Greek Culture, Volume One, Oxford University Press, New York.
Lacan, J. (1977)Ecrits. A Selection, A. Sheridan (Trans.) Routledge, London.
Lemaire, A. (1977)Jacques Lacan, Routledge, Kegan and Paul, New York.
Lloyd, G. (1984)The Man of Reason. ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in Western Philosophy, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Marini, M. (1992)Jacques Lacan, The French Context, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Marrou, H. I. (1956)A History of Education in Antiquity, G. Lamb (Trans.) Sheed and Ward, New York.
Monroe, P. (1909)A Brief Course in the History of Education, Macmillan and Co., New York.
Mortensen, E. (1994) Woman’s (Un)truth and le feminin: Reading Luce Irigaray with Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, in C. Burke, N. Schor, M. Whitford, eds.,Engaging with Irigaray, Columbia University Press, New York.
Redfield, J. (1979) Foreword, in G. NagyThe Best of the Achaeans. Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore/London.
Snell, B. (1953)The Discovery of the Mind. The Greek Origins of European Thought, T. G. Rosenmeyer (Trans.) Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
Thalmann, W. G. (1998) Female Slaves in the Odyssey, in S. R. Joshel, S. Murnaghan, eds.,Women and Salves in Greco-Roman Culture, Routledge, London/New York.
Vernant, J-P. (1962/2001) The Spiritual Universe of the Polis, in N. Loraux, G. Nagy, L. Slatkin, eds.,Antiquities, The New Press, New York.
Whitford, M. (1989) Rereading Irigaray, in T. Brennan, ed.,Between Feminism and Psychoanalysis, Routledge, London/New York.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Peers, C. The ‘first’ educator? Rethinking the ‘teacher’ through luce irigaray’s philosophy of sexual difference. Aust. Educ. Res. 32, 83–100 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03216814
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03216814