ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the tensions and contradictions within feminist pedagogy and feminist work in the academy more generally. It situates this commentary in the midst of the tension betweengood girl and bad girl feminism. The chapter maps out provisionally some of the contradictory dimensions of feminists’ location in the academy, and explores the double-bind feminists face by being in authority and power and yet being politically committed to theoretical positions, particularly those espoused by feminist pedagogy models, that refuse claims of authority and power in pedagogical practice. It begins with some comments on the contradictory experiences of institutionally granted power and intellectual authority, and then discusses how embodiment of power and authority are intimately tied to a politics of performance in pedagogical encounters. One consequence of good-girl feminist pedagogy is that the sexual politics of the feminist classroom (or of desire), whether in single-sex or coed classrooms, have hardly been taken up by feminist educational scholarship.
