Surveillance and techniques of disciplinary selfhood: Notes towards the transmission of anthropological knowledge.

Abstract

In the last two years, during which time I was simultaneously writing up my thesis, I have taught at three different universities. Having not worked as a Teaching Assistant, I launched immediately into being responsible for both the development of course content, lecturing and the running of seminars. During the development of the paper, it was suggested that I might wish to share some of the experiences – before they get lost – of this move to teaching. In this experientially driven (and not particularly theoretically informed) narrative, then, I share my sense of how, and under what conditions, I developed both the contents for the courses for which I was responsible, as well as some of the teaching styles I used. I also sketch some of the forces - not all of which I am fully conscious of - that have assisted in molding these forms of knowledge to be institutionally transmitted to students of the discipline.