The Play of the Personal considers everyday dramas of learning and refusing to learn, the force of meaning in moments of breakdown and in moments of repair or creativity, and the struggles of teachers and students in classrooms informed by the hopes and imperatives of critical and feminist pedagogies. The book begins with the author’s autobiography of learning to think psychoanalytically about education and goes on to take up such familiar notions as resistance, the personal, and autobiography. Drawing upon a range of psychoanalytic thinkers and concepts, The Play of the Personal explores questions of desire and fantasy as both the grounds of learning and as a site of conflict for teachers, students, and the curriculum.

The Author: Alice J. Pitt is Associate Professor of Education and Associate Dean of Pre-Service Programmes at York University, Toronto, Canada. Her published work focuses on the implications of psychoanalytic theory for teaching and learning in feminist classrooms and in teacher education, curriculum theory, and educational research.