Audrey's Reviews > Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

I get the impression that academics sometimes forget that the world is not, in fact, one large metaphor. I got that impression very, very frequently while reading this book. To bell hooks and the people she dialogues with, everything is a symbol, and every symbol is part of a cohesive narrative. In this world, professors don't sit behind their desks because they're tired, old, lazy, or even because their professors had always stayed behind their desks. They sit behind their desks, because it emphasizes their intellectual separation from their students and thus gives their words an aura of invulnerability. This conclusion is far-fetched enough, but, as is the norm with this kind of analysis, the speaker doesn't stop there. He goes on to add that moving around among students highlights the fact that the professor is working, when, apparently, "there is a desire to enjoy the privilege of appearing not to work in the classroom." It's a sweeping conclusion--and a fascinating one. But there's no evidence to support it. Indeed, the speaker goes on to say that this desire to seem not to work is "ironic since faculty members congregate outside the classroom and talk endlessly about how hard they're working." And that's the problem with this type of writing. It's full of fascinating, thought-provoking, and symbolically beautiful assertions that have no basis in fact. Unfortunately, the entire book was full of exactly this kind of analysis.

The sad thing about all of this is that I agree with many of hooks' premises. I have read (and really liked) Paolo Freire, whose work hooks claims as a basis. I agree that effective teaching problematizes the idea of absolute truth and invites the idea that teacher and textbook are neither all-knowing nor unbiased. I started reading this book in large part because I thought that this common ground between myself and bell hooks would allow me to see what she has to offer as a thinker. All I got was the vaguely postmodern, vaguely postdeconstructionist tripe that has been in vogue in academia for the past couple of decades. On the upside, no one can tell me anymore that I would be less frustrated with contemporary feminists if I would read bell hooks.