what we could be talking about, in emotional bonds and education, more
generally,
is the relation between a subordinate (student, player, trainee,
apprentice, etc) and an authority figure (teacher, coach, trainer, master,
etc);
and there is a fantastic vulnerability in this relationship, of course.
Shoshana Felman's book speaks on this and for some weird reason I became
sidetracked
by her thoughts on "ignorance" (A freudian slip?)...BUT back on the train,
y'all...
this relation obviously manifests differently in contexts of
gender-relations, class-relations, race-relations, and so on.
Boys will bond with the coach (father) wo is not expected to "nurture" but
to train these boys to be "men", which transports a barrage of hegemonic
baggage into the relation, but which doesn't alter the internal dynamic of
attachment and identification. And as Kathie pointed out, women in these
positions are impossibly positoned as the "destructive nurturer", fine for
little kids but when the young folks need more intelligent guidance, gender
privilege takes over.
Whether one is treated "well," or "poorly", by the authority in this
relation, there is a underlying connection, transference, which
rationalizes the relation.
So a person may learn from a teacher she hates because deep down she
identifies with this authority-relation; another student may relate
negatively to this relation suppress the conflict, and appear
"noncooperative" or "resistant",
someone may do very poorly with a very sweet coach because the kid
identifies kindness as "feminine", and thus de-masculinizing...
the complexities of the relation between teacher/student-player/coach is so
critical in the contexts of learning. (oops I'd reckon I just wrote a
"duh.")
in any event, it is not just about "liking" someone, or learning from
someone, but it is about this relation of transference and "love."
if we are agreed that knowledge is not content but relational, if
epistemology is ontologically recognizable (ooo-eee), then the
relationships here are more than situational, they are internally
historical.
diane