There is a love story between a teacher and a student in a university that spans a semester. However, it’s a lot in novels, it’s even a cliché with some writers, and who knows if it didn’t contribute to the romantic portrayal of such a relationship. A writer like Marie-Cissi Labreche contributed to its undoing with her novel Violation In 2002, who convinced me to never sleep with a teacher.
Posted yesterday at 7:15 am
When I was studying literature at UQAM, I escaped that my favorite teacher, the guy who went for a drink after class, was gay. Together, we talked for hours about literature (and Marguerite Duras). He was my mentor in the best sense of the word. If he were straight, he wasn’t sure I would have resisted his advances, he had so much influence over me and I wanted to please him, in this short period of my existence, so basic.
But by the 1990s, the cliché was firmly rooted in real life. He was accepted. In 2022, it’s worn out, it seems to me. At that time, we ended up knowing the names of professors who saw the university as a seraglio of fresh meat every year, in a department with a high concentration of female students (but not professors). One of my exes studying biology was almost thinking of changing programs to find a blonde, a huge number of pretty smart girls. I sometimes wonder if, rather than a love of literature, this breeding ground does not decide on certain professions for boys who become professors of literature.
When I read the charges against Professor Samuel Archibald on Wednesday, I was disappointed, but not surprised. His name has been doing the rounds in the condemnation list for some time without knowing the details.
I really like his collection. deserved, released in 2011, which created his media impact, I also liked the way he mixed pop culture and literature, and we shared a passion for horror films in general – I talked to him about this often. But if he crosses the line with his female students, I have no sympathy. Not after #metoo and an evolving reflection on power relations in the university. If a professor seduces or harasses a lecture or thesis he is supervising, he cannot fail to know what he is doing today. the manThat’s your problem.
Seduction is part of teaching. We start studying for many years because we are passionate about something and eager to gain knowledge. Professor and author Yvan Rivard published an article on this subject in Boreal in 2012, Love and teach, he recalls that teaching is about “sharing and awakening desire.” I believe it too. “The more the teacher awakens this desire, the more he exposes himself to be taken and to be taken for God,” he wrote.
When we love the teacher who gives us this knowledge, as well as our awakening, often full of complexes and hopes, we can love him too much, and in this seductive relationship, when the predator prevails if there are students, teachers also face a danger: giving in to temptation.
Because all students want their teachers to come and it’s not sexual in nature. We secretly dream that he can see intelligence, talent, even genius in us. This gives him unlimited power over our vision of ourselves, while the whole class hangs on his lips, he determines the final mark of the work and sometimes even the scholarship or position.
We often hear this argument in university that female students are vaccinated as adults. True, but they are still young and in a very unbalanced power relationship. When a professor sets his sights on one of them, she is under the illusion that she is the “chosen one” among all the others, an intellectual lightning bolt. But these teachers are rarely intelligent and destroy their students when they sleep with them. What about judging their hard and honest work on their research or thesis, not just in the eyes of others, but in their own eyes? How long can a student drag this doubt into her career and into her life, believing that she is loved by a man who, with her career and responsibility, has taken her to her final state, not in his bed?
