Monstrous Generosity: Pedagogical Affirmations of the ‘‘Improper’’ Gregory N. Bourassa 1 • Frank Margonis 2 Published online: 30 January 2017 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2017 Abstract This article focuses upon monstrously generous teaching styles, enacted in neocolonial educational contexts, where the interactions between students and teachers are sometimes tense and mistrustful. The tensions between students and teachers are explained by discussing the ways in which schools—in the theoretical perspective of Roberto Esposito—operate to immunize the society against youth deemed improper. Utilizing the theories of Antonio Negri, James Baldwin, and W.E.B. Du Bois, the characterization of students as monstrous is discussed and an inversion is suggested, whereby students deemed to be monstrous are considered the source of reinvigorating visions of society. The ped- agogical approaches of teachers who seek to welcome and nurture monstrous students are described, relying upon the accounts of great teachers offered by educators and sociolo- gists. In practice, monstrously generous teachers make supererogatory gestures in their interactions with students, as a way of signaling to heavily-armored youth that they are willing to enter reciprocal relationships with them. Once youth drop their armor and begin to share their perspectives, monstrously generous teachers develop multiple means of helping youth develop their worldviews, without surveillance or censor. Keywords Monsters, critical pedagogy, neocolonial Á Educational biopolitics Á Relational pedagogy In Subtractive Schooling, Valenzuela (1999) engagingly departs from the ontological individualism so common in educational discourse to focus our attention on spaces in schools and the intersubjective exchanges that partly define the meaning of those spaces. & Gregory N. Bourassa gregory.bourassa@uni.edu 1 University of Northern Iowa, Schindler Education Center 509, Cedar Falls, IA 50613, USA 2 University of Utah, Sorensen Arts and Education Complex, 1721 E. Campus Center Drive #3289, Salt Lake City, UT 84112-9256, USA 123 Stud Philos Educ (2017) 36:615–632 DOI 10.1007/s11217-017-9566-3