ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the possibility of a shift of emphasis from teaching grounded in a market economy to teaching grounded in a gift economy, where teaching as techne is replaced by an ethos of practice, with deep concerns about the aesthetics or style of practice. It focuses upon the teaching, rather than the research, policy framing, or public liaison, role of the Higher Education practitioner. Teaching is configured as: a gift given freely and an act of hospitality, within a feminist framework of a gift economy as opposed to a commodity exchange economy. An application of Levinas’ model to educational practices would challenge models that configure the teacher student relationship as symmetrical, and focus upon the experience of the learner in a valorising of autonomy. Teaching can be seen as feminine ‘writing’, where it resists return to the selfsame, and comes out of the body, as a style.
