Clocked by the pandemic! On gender and time in Rousseau’s Émile

ABSTRACT

Pandemic disruptions to schooling threw into sharper relief the entanglements of economy, gender norms, and education that had been there, and throughout the modern world, all along. The particular entanglement this paper aims to unravel is the reliance of education on a certain kind of attentiveness, historically provided by a feminized teaching force and mothers, that itself rests on the cultivation of particular sensibilities regarding time.

KEYWORDS:

• Rousseau
• Time
• Mothers
• Women
• Work

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Readers familiar with feminist theory will recognize that integral Sophie line 1 corresponds to liberal feminism, with its rejection of gendered roles for women or men, whereas integral Sophie line 3 corresponds to what can be called care feminism, or maternal feminism, i.e the embrace of virtues associated with femininity alongside the rejection of their ascription to one sex rather than to everyone. Integral Sophie line 2, of course, amounts to male chauvinism, or perhaps fetishism.