SEXUALIZED SPACES IN PUBLIC PLACES: IRIGARAY, LEVINAS, AND AN ETHICS OF THE EROTIC Shaireen Rasheed Department of Curriculum and Instruction Long Island University ABSTRACT. Discourse pertaining to the erotic is absent in our current educational culture. In this essay Shaireen Rasheed elucidates how Luce Irigaray, through her discussion of the erotic, has challenged the conception of language and otherness that underpins modern education. In undertaking a comparative analysis of Irigaray’s work on the erotic and Emmanuel Levinas’s account of Eros, Rasheed emphasizes that the implications of Irigaray’s critique suggest not only a reevaluation of Levinas’s ‘‘Phenomenology of Eros,’’ but a revaluation of the role of the sexualized body in philosophy. Rasheed concludes by urging educators to think ethically about what discourses of difference mean in the classroom. A pedagogy contextualized within an ethics of the erotic attempts to develop pedagogies to link ideas, practices, and values in order to create discursive spaces where the unutterable could be articulated, where so- called marginalized images could be represented, and where efforts could be made to rethink forms of subjectivity and relations within the oppressive confines of the always heterosexualized classroom. INTRODUCTION Discourse pertaining to the erotic is absent in our current educational culture. Concepts of desire and the erotic, if discussed at all, are limited to a narrowly defined notion of sexuality. Mary Doll has explored this missing component of Eros in pedagogy. In her essay ‘‘Teaching as an Erotic Art,’’ she says, ‘‘a classroom with Eros alive creates a Now experience.Eros does not move with the conven- tional forms of deportment; it moves with the flow of life.’’ 1 Similarly, Audre Lorde observes, ‘‘the pleasure of the erotic can operate in every aspect of our lives, whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, or examining an idea,’’ but she claims that the erotic has been rejected pre- cisely because it is so potentially overpowering, empowering, and disruptive. 2 Therefore, we can conclude that ‘‘in every erotic encounter there is an invisible and ever active participant; imagination, desire. In the erotic act it is always two or more — never just one who takes part. Eroticism is first and foremost a thirst for otherness.’’ 3 In this essay, I want to propose a pedagogical theory of otherness that is at the juncture of identity and difference. By exploring the question of how to approach the writings of Luce Irigaray from the point of view of education, I will argue that Irigaray has challenged the conception of language and otherness that underpins modern education. By contextualizing difference within the Eros as the foundation 1. Mary Aswell Doll, To the Lighthouse and Back: Writings on Teaching and Living (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), 50. 2. Audre Lorde, ‘‘Use of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,’’ in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Free- dom, California: Crossing Press, 1984), 57. 3. Octavio Paz, The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993), 9 and 15. EDUCATIONAL THEORY j Volume 57 j Number 3 j 2007 Ó 2007 Board of Trustees j University of Illinois 339