The Dynamics of Desire in Everyday Classrooms

Abstract

D. H. Lawrence’s evocative phrase from “The Odour of Chrysanthemums” (1911)—“life with its smoky burning”—offers a useful metaphor for the play of desires in everyday classrooms where students fixate on “what the teacher wants,”¹ and where teachers get anxiety hives about covering all the material they have crammed into the syllabus. In this social and academic environment, both students and teachers (in my experience) are generally obtuse about the existence of multiple species of desire that swirl invisibly and powerfully around everyone in the classroom. This obtuseness about classroom desires is a potential danger for teachers the way obtuseness about clues regarding smoke and flame constitutes a danger for fire fighters. Not to pick up on the emotional temperature in one’s own classroom leaves the teacher unprepared to deal with smoldering emotions.