The problem of endings in teacher education: interpreting narratives of fictional adolescence

Abstract

This article explores how a reading group of pre-service teachers responded to the endings of three contemporary young adult texts and what such responses may imply about the interpretive preferences of teacher education. Set in the context of a Faculty of Education at a Canadian university, and using the lens of psychoanalytic theory, this article considers the kinds of thoughts that pre-service teachers appear to privilege, and what such privileging – here symbolized through feelings of frustration and satisfaction in the creation of literary meaning – may imply about the structures and desires for authority and certainty in teacher education.

Keywords:

• Reading
• teacher education
• psychoanalytic theory
• narrative endings

Funding

This work was supported by the Fonds Québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC) [grant number 177310].

Notes

1. While it may seem odd to reference our sexual lives in relation to reading experience, for psychoanalytic theory, discussion of sexuality and libidinal energy can never be limited only to the sexual act. As Felman (2007) writes of the Freudian view of sexuality, it “is not to be taken in its literal, popular sense: in its analytical extension, it goes ‘lower and also higher’ than its literal meaning, it extends both beyond and below. The relation between the analytical notion of sexuality and the sexual act is thus not a relation of simple, literal adequation, but rather a relation, so to speak, of inadequation: the psychoanalytical notion of sexuality, says Freud, comprises both more and less than the literal sexual act” (p. 29).

2. For a more detailed account of my strategies of data analysis in this study, see Lewkowich (2016).

3. As an inter/trans-gendered discipline, I am purposely avoiding the term “genre.”

4. What Kingwell (2009) writes of the words “of course” can also apply to “obviously”: that it “has itself a geometrical echo: It means to stay on the expected line” (p. 165).

5. Elsewhere, Megan acknowledged that this uncomfortable sense of disintegration is coupled with a feeling of unwelcome playfulness and flirtation: she felt as if “He” (and whether she was referring to Peck or the character of Sprout is unclear) “keeps teasing us.” Perhaps, then, the dissatisfaction that Sasha and Megan associate with the time of “waiting” can be viewed as an accusation leveled against the text: that – despite its flirtatious gestures toward satisfaction – it does not finally satisfy the reader, nor bring them any sort of pleasurable climax. In this light, Sasha’s unrealized anticipation for “this big chapter, this big page, this big sentence” can be seen to connect with what Brooks (1987) has titled an “erotics of form” in reading experience, including a textual “forepleasure … suggesting a whole rhetoric of advance toward and retreat from the goal or the end” (p. 339).

6. In the USA, an Indian reservation refers to an area of land managed by a Native American tribe under the U.S. Bureau of Indian affairs. In this power sharing agreement, while the tribe does not have full power over the land, they have limited governmental rule. Historically, the reservation system has also been used as a way to subjugate Indigenous populations. Throughout the 1800s, the US Government relocated many tribes to lands to which they had no historical attachment. While some reservations are relatively prosperous, others are home to the country’s poorest citizens. Junior calls the land of his home reservation “the rez,” a colloquial title that refers to the place he was born, the land toward which he feels a deep attachment, and where his family and friends have lived for generations. It is a place he loves. As he tells us, “The reservation is beautiful” (p. 219), with its countless pine trees and familiar spots to be at one with nature. However, it also refers to a place he hates, and in which he feels trapped in an unending cycle of systemic neglect and poverty: “We reservation Indians don’t get to realize our dreams. We don’t get those chances. Or choices. We’re just poor. That’s all we are.” (p. 13). In this novel, Alexie is undoubtedly critical of the reservation system, while also recognizing the value and importance of family and tribe for many Native Americans. As Junior notes, “Reservations were meant to be prisons, you know? Indians were supposed to move onto reservations and die. We were supposed to disappear … reservations were meant to be death camps.” (p. 216).