Feminist Pedagogy – A ‘slave’ morality?

I am one of those who reacts to the very mention of ‘feminism.’ It is not because I envision a ‘feminazi’ or any other scary image. In fact, I agree with many of the theory’s positions. Susan C. Jarratt tells us that feminism involves, “the decentering or sharing of authority, the recognition of students as sources of knowledge, [and] a focus on process over products.” She goes on, though, to the area of the pedagogy that I find exceedingly troublesome: “investment in a view of contemporary society as sexist and patriarchal, and of the complicity of reading, writing, and teaching in those conditions” (115). It thus defines itself as a reaction and opposition to the structure in which it works and strives to recreate the teaching process from inside of it. This posture, which I could never articulate so clearly until now, has always bothered me, and I finally understand why. It closely resembles Nietzsche’s conception of the ‘slave morality’ which he describes in Thus Spake Zarathusra:

There … is an oppressed, suffering, unemancipated, and weary one [to whom] all THAT will be held to be good [is that] which alleviates the state of suffering. Pity, the obliging hand, the warm heart, patience, industry, and humility--these are unquestionably the qualities we shall here find flooded with the light of approval and admiration; because they are the most USEFUL qualities--; … they are of assistance in the "struggle for existence" which is the motive force behind the people practicing this morality…. Strength, health, … and power are regarded with hate, suspicion, and fear by the subordinate class.

Feminists view social structures as built to suit men, and so as masculine. In the classroom, this translates to the belief that “male students gain advantages from the gender inequities built into everyday conversational practice” (119). Apparently, men tend to think and speak one way, and this is the same way of the academy. Jarratt offers Paula Treichler’s summary of a study on communication differences between genders (120), but I find that it does not represent me as a woman correctly. I wonder how many men would say that it represents them correctly.

Feminist pedagogy, as a young body of theories, is still defining itself. Because it grows out of oppression and arguably still exists within one, it very naturally adopts a ‘slave morality’-oriented perception of its situation and possible solutions, and so these are not independent, strong theories – they, like that which they fight, are born of the patriarchy. In order to develop a ‘master morality, a pedagogy that stands apart from what these pedagogues perceive as a male-centered world, they must find their own values and build from desire, and not from reaction.