Planteamiento de la Propuesta

The scene depicts a conversation between Monica and Ross following Ross’s first date with Elizabeth. During the date, Ross has bumped into a colleague. He pushes Elizabeth down a side alley to avoid being seen with her.The conversation with Monica refers to this event.

M:So…it’s OK to date a student?

R: Well…not really. I mean, technically it’s not against the rules or anything, but it is frowned upon, especially by that professor we ran into last night, ‘Judgey von Holier- than-thou’. [laughter]

M: Well Ross you just be careful, OK? I mean…you don’t wanna get a reputation as, you know, ‘Professor McNails-the-students’. [Laughter]

R:[looks worried] Yeah…what should I do?

In the extract, Ross responds to Monica’s question about the acceptability of dating students by contrasting rules with institutional norms, stating that such conduct is ‘frowned upon’ rather than proscribed at NYU. So, the norm of not dating students constructs dating them as abnormal. Monica then makes a joke which is underpinned by the predatory male lecturer cliché, as she warns Ross that he might be labelled ‘Professor McNails-the-students’ if he dates Elizabeth. This comment parodies Ross’s earlier naming of a sanctimonious colleague as ‘Judgey von Holier-than-thou’ - a nod, perhaps, towards the quasi-religious connotations of discourses on relationships, which I return to in Chapter 9. This act of naming works to undermine the legitimacy of the norm, by deriding Ross’s colleague and extremizing his attitude.

Despite this, Monica’s joke alerts Ross to the problem of being perceived as predatory. She also frames the relationship as potentially impacting his ‘reputation’, thus marking Ross himself as somehow wrong, and not only his behaviour. Ross’s response - ‘Yeah – what should I do?” reveals the gravity of this implication. That this was already a concern for Ross has been made clear through his unwillingness to be seen with

Elizabeth when they are out on their first date. As such, the regulation of F-S relationships is presented as operating, at least in part, through the ‘gaze’ of others (Foucault, 1991a: 96), who judge and inscribe academic bodies. These others include colleagues, and also students who are presented as measuring academics’ conduct against institutional norms; indeed, this particular episode opens with a discussion about students’ evaluations of their professors. Ross’s actions are portrayed, in part, as attempting to avert this gaze.

Despite Ross’s suggestion that dating students is subject to informal censure, he continues to date Elizabeth. However, he also continues to conceal the relationship. Later in the episode, upon confronting a group of colleagues in a café and publicly declaring that he is dating Elizabeth - perhaps in an act of ‘confession’ (see Chapter 9) - Ross learns that dating studentsis, in fact, against the university rules; ‘You’re so fired!’ his colleague tells him. This news recasts the relationship as transgression of a formal and hierarchically imposed code.

The shift from a perceived disciplinary power relation based on normalizing judgement to one based on a formal university imposed code represents a turning point in the trajectory of Ross and Elizabeth’s relationship. It is transformed from something that might, from Ross’s perspective at least, be unreasonably constructed by others as harassment, to something that becomes, as Ross comments later in the same episode, ‘wrong’ or ‘taboo’. This ‘wrongness’ has important implications. Having worked F-S relationships up as wrong, the couple go on to evince the productive capacity of mechanisms that have ‘the apparent objective of saying no to all unproductive or wayward sexualities’ (Foucault, 1978b: 45). In this way they take up one of the criticisms levied at harassment knowledge: its tendency to ‘produce the very desire which it forbids’ (Taylor, 2011: 204).

The second quote used to introduce this chapter (p 135) is taken from a scene in the same episode of Friends. It further illuminates one of the theoretically drawn criticisms of harassment knowledge made by academics working within a post-structural and/or Foucauldian tradition (e.g. Bauman, 1998; Brewis, 2001; Taylor, 2011). This hinges on its limitations as a vehicle for constraint by highlighting how vigilance towards F-S sex imbues pedagogical relationships with sexual connotations. Thus it may end up producing more, rather than fewer, F-S relationships. Although Foucault appears to link this paradoxical consequence primarily to disciplinary mechanisms, such as constant surveillance, his assertion that the ‘scandalizing’ (1978b: 45) nature of confrontation and resistance may kindle pleasure, much as attempts to evade surveillance fan the flames of desire, suggests that both sovereign and disciplinary power relations are productive as well as repressive. As we see from the dialogue set out on p 135, Elizabeth’s response to Ross’s announcement that there is a written rule in the university’s handbook forbidding relationships is that this discovery is ‘hot’ or sexy.

Evading harassment knowledge

Despite the differences in how the texts referred to above orient to harassment knowledge, one recurrent theme is their understanding of harassment as a phenomenon regulated by codes. Both of the quotations on page 135 refer to codes or rules, as do extracts 3, 4, and 6. Meanwhile, extracts 1 and 2 are extracts from codes.

Before closing this chapter I turn my attention to a further invocation of rules taken fromThe Dying Animal,by Philip Roth. In Extract 7, the novel’s protagonist, Professor David Kepesh, provides an account of his ‘one set rule’ on relationships with students. This reveals complexities that are belied by the extracts examined thus far. My analysis emphasises two particular features: a tension between framing rules as both other and self-imposed; and Kepesh’s hybridization of harassment knowledge with other

discursive resources located in my study. These features are elaborated further in subsequent chapters of analysis, where I consider texts in which the tensions and complementarities hinted at here are more visible.