ABSTRACT
There is an old joke about teaching that tries hard to be off-color. It concerns a brothel in which teachers are the most successful prostitutes. When a potential client listens in at the keyhole to discover the secret of their allure, he hears a very no-nonsense instruction: “I don’t care how often we have to do this. You’re going to stay here until you get it right!” For many, the joke is offensive at a time when teaching is increasingly feminized, and in the context of heightened tension about abusive pedagogy, when it is assumed that the relationship between teacher and student needs to be more regulated and disciplined. Nevertheless, I want to insist on what the joke offers as a transgressive entrée into viewing all pedagogical work, including radical pedagogy, as a desiring production. 1 In the classroom-as-brothel, no one is disembodied, innocent, or safe from infection.
