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  • Serious Play: Derrida and Whitman in the Theory Classroom
  • Moshe Gold (bio)

Graduate students and new teachers have a wide variety of resources available to help them teach theory: anthologies, handbooks, “introduction to” series, and “approaches to” textbooks. What is conspicuously absent in these helpful texts—yet very much present as the underlying presupposition of all such publications—is the question of the value of teaching theory. Such texts seem to assume that if theory is taught in the classroom, then the implicit value of theory will somehow be taught as well. The experience of teachers and students suggests otherwise. In fact, teaching theory effectively can mean not only answering students who ask “why does theory matter?” but providing a classroom in which they can start responding themselves to the value of theory.

To create a theory classroom that does not revert, ironically, to positions theorists claim to critique—a monolithic voice, a single center of power, a master of knowledge—I suggest that we take seriously what I will call a pedagogy of play. Such a pedagogy asserts not only the value of theory and the value of play, but the value of teaching theory through play.

It has been nearly two decades since Kenneth Bruffee and Paulo Freire each questioned the teacher as sole-authority in the classroom.1 In the wake of their work, educators teach the political and ethical dimensions of theory; however, how often do teachers ask what role the theory classroom plays in students’ experiences of theory? Students are well aware that their classrooms are part of the conditions of learning in an academic institution. Precisely in a theory classroom—with its syllabus revealing conflicts in thought, juxtapositions of diverse texts, multiple voices, collaboratively written [End Page 216] discourses, dissent, and radical dispute—we might think of the physical classroom in an institution as an existing social space that students know about, live in, question, and critique.

In this essay, I want to argue for teaching theory within the classroom as a process that accentuates the excitement, playfulness, seriousness, and critical environment of the actual classroom situation in which students find themselves. Instead of teaching theory as an objectifiable collection of different methods or applications of general claims, I show how theoretical discourses can be used to question students’ own pedagogical experiences and to invite them to question the ways they are formally taught. In short, I argue for a new attitude to old pedagogical concerns. Teachers should not feel restricted to using a literary text to exemplify a theory, or to reducing the complexity of a theorist’s writing to a repeatable method that can be applied in all situations. Instead, teachers can call attention to the very situation in which students find themselves structured by their theory classroom.

Rather than approach the overall value of theory as a serious realm that exists separately from the realm of play, students can experience their theory classroom as an institutional space in which teachers and students enact the serious pedagogical value of play. If we openly discuss the desire (the teacher’s and the students’) to control and structure classes, students might gain the confidence to question the extent to which they can resist the power of the classroom’s structure. This is not a matter of building solidarity among students or of tearing apart institutional structures that already exist. The relationship between education and play, the role-playing of teachers and texts are classic issues. The question is how honest and explicit we are with our students about the way we try to structure and play with these powerful issues.

A teacher of theory is responsible for ensuring that students can read the language of a text attentively, and therefore the teaching of applicable methodologies can be a beneficial part of pedagogical praxis. The plethora of handbooks does, in fact, address such methods. Yet to understand a text’s values and world, students need to bring their own values and interpretations of their world to the text. If teachers do not value play in their classrooms, students might have an even harder time experiencing any pleasure with theoretical discourse. Moreover, teachers can only expect...