Who Watches Over a Teacher? On Knowing and Honoring a Teacher and Her Third Listener

Abstract

This article introduces a teacher as a being of relations—both internal and external—by exploring the nature of a figure of the internal plane that accompanies a teacher in her pedagogical adventure. This figure is a superaddressee, ¹ a third listener, who, as the author argues, should be expected to enter a classroom together with a teacher. A superaddressee plays at least two roles. First, it serves as a shortcut to a meaningful relationship and, in this role, takes care of a teacher's need to be known, as well as helps further dialogic relationships. Second, it offers a loophole from imperfect understanding and, in this role, addresses a teacher's need for noncoincidence and protection, as well as protects a pedagogical relationship from a proverbial dead end. It is argued that one of the ways for students to honor their teacher as a being of relations is to know and honor his or her superaddressee(s). In turn, a teacher is responsible for honoring her own superaddressees. In the end, both a teacher and students benefit from an enhanced relationship.

Notes

1. “Superaddressee” is one of the notions introduced by Mikhail Bakhtin (1986). The term is treated in “The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in Philosophical Analysis,” alluded to in Valentin Voloshinov (1976), and expanded upon by Frank Farmer (2001).

2. In a banking model of education proposed by Paulo Freire (2000) a teacher–student relationship is hardly reciprocal, the teacher is in charge and will hardly worry about being misunderstood (her relationship with students does not rely heavily on mutual understanding, let alone the revelation of humanity of all involved. It is, by nature, a necrophilic relationship in which humanity of its participants is the victim).

3. Jung's (1968) archetype is a collective figure, which becomes individualized once it resurfaces into consciousness.

4. One explanation for how (someone who turned) a quality may actually guide a dialogue is offered in my earlier article (Bryzzheva 2006), another in the “Honoring a Third Listener” section of this paper. In this section, I remind the reader about the responsibility to continuously revive and rehumanize a superaddressee, in this way It becomes He or She again.

5. Further examination utilizing Bakhtinian lenses shows that complete definition of another person is impossible, yet the imposition of final definition occurs all the time, in which case the person being defined is rendered beyond dialogue, his case closed, his life effectively finished.

6. One can argue whether noncoincidence is a place or a state of mind or both: I think it is both, depending on the way a person constructs the notion of noncoincidence. If one find a home in notcoinciding, then perhaps it is both a state of mind of being comfortable, as well as a place where one can hide.

7. Sasha Sidorkin (2002) convincingly argues that relationships are what students come to school for, their successful learning is a corollary of successful relationships.

8. Perhaps one of the most articulate contributions on the theme of unknowable otherness is offered by Jacques Derrida. The notion of otherness appears in many of his writings, therefore, no particular source is cited here.