Oral History, Education and Justice: Possibilities and Limitations for Redress and Reconciliation , 2020
In this chapter, we theorize the ethical work of stories as foundational to the teacher’s call to... more In this chapter, we theorize the ethical work of stories as foundational to the teacher’s call to act in a time of reconciliation. We define such pedagogical action as a continual – and endless – call to learn from what is difficult to know about history beyond the protection of childhood innocence and the celebrated promise of teachable moments. Drawing from Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, we offer an account of our learning from Nicola I. Campbell and Kim LaFave's picture books, Shi-shi-etko and Shin-chi’s Canoe. By focusing on the juxtaposition of image and text, we emphasize the ways these books unsettle the fantasy of childhood innocence purposely denied to Indigenous children and how they represent acts of cultural survivance amid legacies of colonial violence. In this time of reconciliation, our chapter cautions against the proclivity of education to reassert a position of mastery, and instead asks what stories can teach us about the teacher’s lack as a position from which to begin the work of reconciliation.
Childhood beyond Pathology offers an account of the ways that psychoanalytic concepts can inform ... more Childhood beyond Pathology offers an account of the ways that psychoanalytic concepts can inform ongoing challenges of representing development, belonging, and relationality, with a focus on debates over how children should be treated, what they might know, and who they should become. Drawing from fiction, clinical studies, and courtroom and classroom contexts, Lisa Farley explores a series of five conceptual figures—the replacement child, the neurodiverse child, the counterfeit child, the child heir of historical trauma, and the gender divergent child—with a keen eye to discussions of social justice and human dignity. The book reveals the emotional situations, social tensions, and political issues that shape the meaning of childhood, and focuses on what happens when a child departs from normative scripts of development. Through thought-provoking analysis, Farley develops themes that include childhood loss, the myth of innocence, the problem of diagnosis, the subject of racial hatred, the meaning of a good fight, and gender embodiment. She draws extensively on psychoanalytic concepts to show how the fantasy of the child advancing through lockstep stages fails to account for the child as symbolic of the conflicts of entering into the social world. Childhood beyond Pathology suggests we reconsider developmental understandings of childhood by honoring the elusive qualities of inner life.
2018 Conference of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education, Feb 17, 2018
The papers of this panel apply psychoanalytic concepts to examine how representations of childhoo... more The papers of this panel apply psychoanalytic concepts to examine how representations of childhood and adolescence may provide insights into the ways that subjectivities are shaped by discourse, fantasy, and memory. A coming-of-age film about an intersex adolescent is analyzed to critique discourses of
Invited authors were told that their pieces did not have to directly reference Jonathan's work; s... more Invited authors were told that their pieces did not have to directly reference Jonathan's work; some did and some did not. Regardless, what followed from the invitation to contribute was nothing less than a profound testament to the spirit of Jonathan's work, leading to inspired acts of support and generosity shown by our contributors to one another, all occurring during the extreme stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic. As will be clear, the senior scholars were deeply moved by the rich and vulnerable offerings of their partners and they responded in kind. Indeed, in one particularly moving act of reciprocity, when the cruel duplicity of Trump-era immigration policies made it impossible for one of our contributors, Ana Carolina Díaz Beltrán, to complete her contribution, her senior partner, Michelle Salazar Pérez, wrapped Ana in loving care, inviting Cinthya Saavedra and Paty Abril-Gonzalez to join in a shared effort to produce a piece that allowed Ana's continuing participation. It was an act that moved us and the Occasional Paper Series board to tears of gratitude and admiration.
occasional paper series farley 17 "INVISIBLE INK"-A PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDY OF SCHOOL MEMORY lisa fa... more occasional paper series farley 17 "INVISIBLE INK"-A PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDY OF SCHOOL MEMORY lisa farley "Although an only child, for many years I had a brother." So begins Phillipe Grimbert's little novel, Memory (2004, p. 3). Previously published under the title Secret, the story suggests something elusive, and unspoken, about history and its passage through the generations. On one level, little Phillipe's "brother" is an imaginary friend who embodies all the qualities that Phillipe lacks, and that he fears his father would prefer: "Stronger and better looking. An older brother, invisible and glorious" (p. 3). Then Phillipe makes a discovery in the attic that reveals the terrible secret of the family's history. When the attic trunk yields a stuffed toy dog, we learn that Phillipe actually did have a brother, Simon, though they could never have met. Simon was, together with his mother, Hannah, murdered the day after the pair was delivered from the Pithiviers transit camp to Auschwitz. The plot of this history becomes more complex when we learn that after the death of his wife and child, Phillipe's father, Maxime, remarried, and that his second wife-Phillipe's mother-is also, (and here is the thick of it), Hannah's beautiful sister-in-law. The excavation of this hidden history-the weight of grief, forbidden love, and wrenching guilt-adds a second layer of meaning to Phillipe's imaginary brother. Phillipe now understands that his invention is no longer just good company (though he is also this), but also a symptom of, or a way of coping with, the affective aftermath of the family's haunting past: "I had put off the moment of knowing for as long as I could, scratching myself on the barbed wire of a prison of silence. To avoid it, I invented myself a brother, unable to recognize the boy imprinted forever in my father's taciturn gaze" (p. 64). When Phillipe turns fifteen, he finds his opportunity to "meet" Simon-not, of course, in actual fact, but in the form of a remembered history. This meeting occurs in part through a series of events, including watching a Holocaust documentary at school, and also through conversations with a family friend, Louise, who helps Phillipe piece together the stray bits of his past into a narrative, a life history. And, of course, Phillipe undertakes the narration of this history once again, in adulthood, in writing his novel. At both times, history is made when Phillipe can see himself as an author of, rather than authored by, his past. Phillipe's narrative raises three big
In this article, we explore how childhood artefacts and memories might help us think retrospectiv... more In this article, we explore how childhood artefacts and memories might help us think retrospectively about children’s agency and its relationship to schooling and teaching. Across four university sites in Canada and the United States, we asked undergraduate students in teacher education and childhood studies programs to choose an artefact or object that encapsulates contemporary conceptions of childhood and to discuss them in a focus group setting at each site. Building on three participants’ descriptions of how they remembered and reflected upon school-oriented objects – a progress report, a notebook, and a pencil sharpener – we explore how participants used their artefacts in ways that allow us to theorize children’s agencies as assemblages, where agency is relational and contingent on multiple social and cultural factors. Drawing on our participants’ interpretations, we consider how a reconceptualized concept of agency may expand our understanding of the possibilities of children...
Handbook of Theory and Research in Cultural Studies and Education, 2020
In this chapter, we speculate about a psychic quality of resistance manifesting in a fantasy form... more In this chapter, we speculate about a psychic quality of resistance manifesting in a fantasy formation that we are calling "never-ending adolescence." Also known as the Peter Pan syndrome, we argue that never-ending adolescence is made from a fantasy of not growing up that takes shape in a longing to dwell forever in "what we imagine as a time before" (Britzman, The very thought of education: psychoanalysis and the impossible professions. State University of New York Press, Albany, 2009, p. 43). We propose that the technologically driven quality of today's adolescence amplifies this archaic fantasy structure, setting into motion the creation of nostalgic objects that have come to be known as "throwback" phenomena signifying fantasied portals into an idealized time of the childhood past. Such phenomena, we suggest, freeze time into "immobile sections" that secure a certainty of experience and resist what Julia Kristeva (Hatred and forgiveness. Columbia University Press, New York, 2013) calls the "mobility of
The papers of this panel apply psychoanalytic concepts to examine how representations of childhoo... more The papers of this panel apply psychoanalytic concepts to examine how representations of childhood and adolescence may provide insights into the ways that subjectivities are shaped by discourse, fantasy, and memory. A coming-of-age film about an intersex adolescent is analyzed to critique discourses of
16 I am not sure that I share this assessment since many scholars have emphasised the interconnec... more 16 I am not sure that I share this assessment since many scholars have emphasised the interconnection of memory to place in the topographical remaking of Israel's landscape involving legal, cartographic, architectural, and discursive erasures.
This book addresses oral history as a form of education for redress and reconciliation. It provid... more This book addresses oral history as a form of education for redress and reconciliation. It provides scholarship that troubles both the possibilities and limitations of oral history in relation to the pedagogical and curricular redress of historical harms. Contributing authors compel the reader to question what oral history calls them to do, as citizens, activists, teachers, or historians, in moving towards just relations. Highlighting the link between justice and public education through oral history, chapters explore how oral histories question pedagogical and curricular harms, and how they shed light on what is excluded or made invisible in public education. The authors speak to oral history as a hopeful and important pedagogy for addressing difficult knowledge, exploring significant questions such as: How do community-based oral history projects affect historical memory of the public? What do we learn from oral history in government systems of justice versus in the political struggles of non-governmental organizations? What is the burden of collective remembering and how does oral history implicate people in the past? How are oral histories about difficult knowledge represented in curriculum, from digital storytelling and literature to environmental and treaty education? This book presents oral history as a form of education that can facilitate redress and reconciliation in the face of challenges, and bring about an awareness of historical knowledge to support action that addresses legacies of harm. Furthering the field on oral history and education, this work will appeal to academics, researchers, and postgraduate students in the fields of social justice education, oral history, Indigenous education, curriculum studies, history of education, and social studies education.
Childhood innocence is a powerful social construct that, in North American and European contexts,... more Childhood innocence is a powerful social construct that, in North American and European contexts, has for centuries shaped ideas about what childhood 'should' be. The notion that children are born with an unspoiled purity that must be protected to ensure their own welfare and the moral wellbeing of society continues to have a profound presence in public discourse about children and childhood. Born of Enlightenment ideals that promoted the need to protect the innate sanctity of childhood, the child-saving movement of the late 19th century sought to rescue childhood innocence from the ills of industrialisation, fundamentally shaping institutional structures including public schools, hospitals, and social services that have since governed the lives of children (Clapton,
Journal of the Canadian Association For Curriculum Studies, Nov 5, 2010
is on this hill that the Lejac Residential School once stood, though today, most physical traces ... more is on this hill that the Lejac Residential School once stood, though today, most physical traces have been destroyed. While the structure of the school itself is no longer, the collective memory of the school-and the students who attended-persists in the form of an annual pilgrimage to the site. Every July, close to one thousand travelers make their way there. They are seeking after traces of a former student, Rose of the Carrier First Nation, who many believe to be an Aboriginal Saint. Like her peers, Rose entered the residential school and was expected to convert to Catholicism, even though we also know that youth found many creative strategies to resist passive compliance. Unlike her peers, however, Rose chose to remain at the school after her graduation, where she tutored younger generations who entered. In 1949, at the age of thirty-three, she became increasingly weakened by brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies (JCACS)
N A LAZY SUMMER DAY IN JULY, a newspaper headline caught many Canadians by surprise. Splashed acr... more N A LAZY SUMMER DAY IN JULY, a newspaper headline caught many Canadians by surprise. Splashed across the front pages of national and local newspapers were photographs of three teens urinating on the Ottawa War Memorial in the midst of Canada Day festivities. A war veteran, retired Major Michael Pilon, snapped the pictures. In the days following the incidents, the public temperature soared; outraged veterans, citizens, and Canada's Prime Minister expressed their strong disapproval of the flagrant disrespect the actions represent. 1 In addition to calls for increased protection of the Memorial, the press and public evoked education. Questions were raised about why students do not know more about the past and how improved historical literacy might prevent crises of this sort in the future. 2 Whereas discussions in history education tend to focus on the adequacy of historical pedagogy to address the problem of learning (or not learning), there is still the question of how to make sense of the psychical complexities that crop up in encounters with historical representations, and specifically, when youth come into conflict with markers that gesture toward a time before their own. Keeping in mind the importance of improving students' historical literacy, I wish to explore additional terms for understanding why dismissing the past, and toying with its destruction, may be a paradoxical form of engagement, especially where adolescents are concerned. Psychoanalytically, encounters with history's material traces cannot be read as separate from internal traces of psychical conflict that make up the archive of the human mind. Drawing on Sigmund Freud, I explore the first, and arguably most debated conflict of psychoanalytic theory-the Oedipus complex-to highlight both destructive and reparative impulses as central to inter-generational relationships and to the work of becoming a historical subject. The Oedipus complex is how Freud described the childhood wish to do away with one parent and to possess the (m)other all to oneself. These desires set into motion an opposing dynamic, or "incest taboo" that Freud (1905) defined as "a cultural requirement of society" that prohibits the enactment of what is forbidden (p. 202). The Oedipus complex is successfully resolved, Freud argued, when the child internalizes cultural prohibitions represented by the parents in the development of the super-ego, or conscience, and that are upheld by social
Oral History, Education and Justice: Possibilities and Limitations for Redress and Reconciliation , 2020
In this chapter, we theorize the ethical work of stories as foundational to the teacher’s call to... more In this chapter, we theorize the ethical work of stories as foundational to the teacher’s call to act in a time of reconciliation. We define such pedagogical action as a continual – and endless – call to learn from what is difficult to know about history beyond the protection of childhood innocence and the celebrated promise of teachable moments. Drawing from Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, we offer an account of our learning from Nicola I. Campbell and Kim LaFave's picture books, Shi-shi-etko and Shin-chi’s Canoe. By focusing on the juxtaposition of image and text, we emphasize the ways these books unsettle the fantasy of childhood innocence purposely denied to Indigenous children and how they represent acts of cultural survivance amid legacies of colonial violence. In this time of reconciliation, our chapter cautions against the proclivity of education to reassert a position of mastery, and instead asks what stories can teach us about the teacher’s lack as a position from which to begin the work of reconciliation.
Childhood beyond Pathology offers an account of the ways that psychoanalytic concepts can inform ... more Childhood beyond Pathology offers an account of the ways that psychoanalytic concepts can inform ongoing challenges of representing development, belonging, and relationality, with a focus on debates over how children should be treated, what they might know, and who they should become. Drawing from fiction, clinical studies, and courtroom and classroom contexts, Lisa Farley explores a series of five conceptual figures—the replacement child, the neurodiverse child, the counterfeit child, the child heir of historical trauma, and the gender divergent child—with a keen eye to discussions of social justice and human dignity. The book reveals the emotional situations, social tensions, and political issues that shape the meaning of childhood, and focuses on what happens when a child departs from normative scripts of development. Through thought-provoking analysis, Farley develops themes that include childhood loss, the myth of innocence, the problem of diagnosis, the subject of racial hatred, the meaning of a good fight, and gender embodiment. She draws extensively on psychoanalytic concepts to show how the fantasy of the child advancing through lockstep stages fails to account for the child as symbolic of the conflicts of entering into the social world. Childhood beyond Pathology suggests we reconsider developmental understandings of childhood by honoring the elusive qualities of inner life.
2018 Conference of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education, Feb 17, 2018
The papers of this panel apply psychoanalytic concepts to examine how representations of childhoo... more The papers of this panel apply psychoanalytic concepts to examine how representations of childhood and adolescence may provide insights into the ways that subjectivities are shaped by discourse, fantasy, and memory. A coming-of-age film about an intersex adolescent is analyzed to critique discourses of
Invited authors were told that their pieces did not have to directly reference Jonathan's work; s... more Invited authors were told that their pieces did not have to directly reference Jonathan's work; some did and some did not. Regardless, what followed from the invitation to contribute was nothing less than a profound testament to the spirit of Jonathan's work, leading to inspired acts of support and generosity shown by our contributors to one another, all occurring during the extreme stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic. As will be clear, the senior scholars were deeply moved by the rich and vulnerable offerings of their partners and they responded in kind. Indeed, in one particularly moving act of reciprocity, when the cruel duplicity of Trump-era immigration policies made it impossible for one of our contributors, Ana Carolina Díaz Beltrán, to complete her contribution, her senior partner, Michelle Salazar Pérez, wrapped Ana in loving care, inviting Cinthya Saavedra and Paty Abril-Gonzalez to join in a shared effort to produce a piece that allowed Ana's continuing participation. It was an act that moved us and the Occasional Paper Series board to tears of gratitude and admiration.
occasional paper series farley 17 "INVISIBLE INK"-A PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDY OF SCHOOL MEMORY lisa fa... more occasional paper series farley 17 "INVISIBLE INK"-A PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDY OF SCHOOL MEMORY lisa farley "Although an only child, for many years I had a brother." So begins Phillipe Grimbert's little novel, Memory (2004, p. 3). Previously published under the title Secret, the story suggests something elusive, and unspoken, about history and its passage through the generations. On one level, little Phillipe's "brother" is an imaginary friend who embodies all the qualities that Phillipe lacks, and that he fears his father would prefer: "Stronger and better looking. An older brother, invisible and glorious" (p. 3). Then Phillipe makes a discovery in the attic that reveals the terrible secret of the family's history. When the attic trunk yields a stuffed toy dog, we learn that Phillipe actually did have a brother, Simon, though they could never have met. Simon was, together with his mother, Hannah, murdered the day after the pair was delivered from the Pithiviers transit camp to Auschwitz. The plot of this history becomes more complex when we learn that after the death of his wife and child, Phillipe's father, Maxime, remarried, and that his second wife-Phillipe's mother-is also, (and here is the thick of it), Hannah's beautiful sister-in-law. The excavation of this hidden history-the weight of grief, forbidden love, and wrenching guilt-adds a second layer of meaning to Phillipe's imaginary brother. Phillipe now understands that his invention is no longer just good company (though he is also this), but also a symptom of, or a way of coping with, the affective aftermath of the family's haunting past: "I had put off the moment of knowing for as long as I could, scratching myself on the barbed wire of a prison of silence. To avoid it, I invented myself a brother, unable to recognize the boy imprinted forever in my father's taciturn gaze" (p. 64). When Phillipe turns fifteen, he finds his opportunity to "meet" Simon-not, of course, in actual fact, but in the form of a remembered history. This meeting occurs in part through a series of events, including watching a Holocaust documentary at school, and also through conversations with a family friend, Louise, who helps Phillipe piece together the stray bits of his past into a narrative, a life history. And, of course, Phillipe undertakes the narration of this history once again, in adulthood, in writing his novel. At both times, history is made when Phillipe can see himself as an author of, rather than authored by, his past. Phillipe's narrative raises three big
In this article, we explore how childhood artefacts and memories might help us think retrospectiv... more In this article, we explore how childhood artefacts and memories might help us think retrospectively about children’s agency and its relationship to schooling and teaching. Across four university sites in Canada and the United States, we asked undergraduate students in teacher education and childhood studies programs to choose an artefact or object that encapsulates contemporary conceptions of childhood and to discuss them in a focus group setting at each site. Building on three participants’ descriptions of how they remembered and reflected upon school-oriented objects – a progress report, a notebook, and a pencil sharpener – we explore how participants used their artefacts in ways that allow us to theorize children’s agencies as assemblages, where agency is relational and contingent on multiple social and cultural factors. Drawing on our participants’ interpretations, we consider how a reconceptualized concept of agency may expand our understanding of the possibilities of children...
Handbook of Theory and Research in Cultural Studies and Education, 2020
In this chapter, we speculate about a psychic quality of resistance manifesting in a fantasy form... more In this chapter, we speculate about a psychic quality of resistance manifesting in a fantasy formation that we are calling "never-ending adolescence." Also known as the Peter Pan syndrome, we argue that never-ending adolescence is made from a fantasy of not growing up that takes shape in a longing to dwell forever in "what we imagine as a time before" (Britzman, The very thought of education: psychoanalysis and the impossible professions. State University of New York Press, Albany, 2009, p. 43). We propose that the technologically driven quality of today's adolescence amplifies this archaic fantasy structure, setting into motion the creation of nostalgic objects that have come to be known as "throwback" phenomena signifying fantasied portals into an idealized time of the childhood past. Such phenomena, we suggest, freeze time into "immobile sections" that secure a certainty of experience and resist what Julia Kristeva (Hatred and forgiveness. Columbia University Press, New York, 2013) calls the "mobility of
The papers of this panel apply psychoanalytic concepts to examine how representations of childhoo... more The papers of this panel apply psychoanalytic concepts to examine how representations of childhood and adolescence may provide insights into the ways that subjectivities are shaped by discourse, fantasy, and memory. A coming-of-age film about an intersex adolescent is analyzed to critique discourses of
16 I am not sure that I share this assessment since many scholars have emphasised the interconnec... more 16 I am not sure that I share this assessment since many scholars have emphasised the interconnection of memory to place in the topographical remaking of Israel's landscape involving legal, cartographic, architectural, and discursive erasures.
This book addresses oral history as a form of education for redress and reconciliation. It provid... more This book addresses oral history as a form of education for redress and reconciliation. It provides scholarship that troubles both the possibilities and limitations of oral history in relation to the pedagogical and curricular redress of historical harms. Contributing authors compel the reader to question what oral history calls them to do, as citizens, activists, teachers, or historians, in moving towards just relations. Highlighting the link between justice and public education through oral history, chapters explore how oral histories question pedagogical and curricular harms, and how they shed light on what is excluded or made invisible in public education. The authors speak to oral history as a hopeful and important pedagogy for addressing difficult knowledge, exploring significant questions such as: How do community-based oral history projects affect historical memory of the public? What do we learn from oral history in government systems of justice versus in the political struggles of non-governmental organizations? What is the burden of collective remembering and how does oral history implicate people in the past? How are oral histories about difficult knowledge represented in curriculum, from digital storytelling and literature to environmental and treaty education? This book presents oral history as a form of education that can facilitate redress and reconciliation in the face of challenges, and bring about an awareness of historical knowledge to support action that addresses legacies of harm. Furthering the field on oral history and education, this work will appeal to academics, researchers, and postgraduate students in the fields of social justice education, oral history, Indigenous education, curriculum studies, history of education, and social studies education.
Childhood innocence is a powerful social construct that, in North American and European contexts,... more Childhood innocence is a powerful social construct that, in North American and European contexts, has for centuries shaped ideas about what childhood 'should' be. The notion that children are born with an unspoiled purity that must be protected to ensure their own welfare and the moral wellbeing of society continues to have a profound presence in public discourse about children and childhood. Born of Enlightenment ideals that promoted the need to protect the innate sanctity of childhood, the child-saving movement of the late 19th century sought to rescue childhood innocence from the ills of industrialisation, fundamentally shaping institutional structures including public schools, hospitals, and social services that have since governed the lives of children (Clapton,
Journal of the Canadian Association For Curriculum Studies, Nov 5, 2010
is on this hill that the Lejac Residential School once stood, though today, most physical traces ... more is on this hill that the Lejac Residential School once stood, though today, most physical traces have been destroyed. While the structure of the school itself is no longer, the collective memory of the school-and the students who attended-persists in the form of an annual pilgrimage to the site. Every July, close to one thousand travelers make their way there. They are seeking after traces of a former student, Rose of the Carrier First Nation, who many believe to be an Aboriginal Saint. Like her peers, Rose entered the residential school and was expected to convert to Catholicism, even though we also know that youth found many creative strategies to resist passive compliance. Unlike her peers, however, Rose chose to remain at the school after her graduation, where she tutored younger generations who entered. In 1949, at the age of thirty-three, she became increasingly weakened by brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies (JCACS)
N A LAZY SUMMER DAY IN JULY, a newspaper headline caught many Canadians by surprise. Splashed acr... more N A LAZY SUMMER DAY IN JULY, a newspaper headline caught many Canadians by surprise. Splashed across the front pages of national and local newspapers were photographs of three teens urinating on the Ottawa War Memorial in the midst of Canada Day festivities. A war veteran, retired Major Michael Pilon, snapped the pictures. In the days following the incidents, the public temperature soared; outraged veterans, citizens, and Canada's Prime Minister expressed their strong disapproval of the flagrant disrespect the actions represent. 1 In addition to calls for increased protection of the Memorial, the press and public evoked education. Questions were raised about why students do not know more about the past and how improved historical literacy might prevent crises of this sort in the future. 2 Whereas discussions in history education tend to focus on the adequacy of historical pedagogy to address the problem of learning (or not learning), there is still the question of how to make sense of the psychical complexities that crop up in encounters with historical representations, and specifically, when youth come into conflict with markers that gesture toward a time before their own. Keeping in mind the importance of improving students' historical literacy, I wish to explore additional terms for understanding why dismissing the past, and toying with its destruction, may be a paradoxical form of engagement, especially where adolescents are concerned. Psychoanalytically, encounters with history's material traces cannot be read as separate from internal traces of psychical conflict that make up the archive of the human mind. Drawing on Sigmund Freud, I explore the first, and arguably most debated conflict of psychoanalytic theory-the Oedipus complex-to highlight both destructive and reparative impulses as central to inter-generational relationships and to the work of becoming a historical subject. The Oedipus complex is how Freud described the childhood wish to do away with one parent and to possess the (m)other all to oneself. These desires set into motion an opposing dynamic, or "incest taboo" that Freud (1905) defined as "a cultural requirement of society" that prohibits the enactment of what is forbidden (p. 202). The Oedipus complex is successfully resolved, Freud argued, when the child internalizes cultural prohibitions represented by the parents in the development of the super-ego, or conscience, and that are upheld by social
Canadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de l'éducation, 2006
In this article, I offer a reading of the psychoanalytic concept of identification, with specific... more In this article, I offer a reading of the psychoanalytic concept of identification, with specific attention to its meaning in the context of children's historical learning. In educational contexts, it is not identification but historical empathy that teachers and researchers typically regard as holding pedagogical status. Using examples from my visit to Historica's 2004 Heritage Fair, I argue that identification is important for the way it marks the young subject's ambivalent entry into a world of historical relations. A study of identification cannot advance historical consciousness, but it does highlight the senses of vulnerability and emotional conflict in trying to orient the self to a very old world and the losses this implies.
This paper takes up the question of risk by examining childhood memories of nuisance-making and p... more This paper takes up the question of risk by examining childhood memories of nuisance-making and punishment shared by 26 participants enrolled in teacher education and/or childhood studies programs. Our analysis surfaces a tension that, on the one hand, idealizes the child as innocent instigator of playful antics and, on the other, produces a child who is guilty of punishable acts. We read these memories as an invitation to theorize a middle ground of the teacher's role as one of introducing children to a world of limits, while also limiting the force of this very effort.
In this special issue, we gather a range of thought-provoking articles that examine the shifting ... more In this special issue, we gather a range of thought-provoking articles that examine the shifting meanings of childhood as they are produced through contemporary laws, educational policy, print and visual media, and cultural contexts. The child figures that hasten across the pages of this issue offer clues about the preoccupations, anxieties, desires, and disavowals of the specific social landscapes they traverse. As much as the papers of this special issue examine the ways in which the child is figured by the social world, they also remind us that the child is an active, embodied, inquiring agent engaged in figuring a relationship to that inheritance. Key themes include third world girlhood, social difference, anti-black racism, neoliberalism, nationalism, imagination, disability, and relationally.
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Books by Lisa Farley
Papers by Lisa Farley