Modes of Misbehavior Pedagogy and Affect in the 19th-Century

This dissertation historicizes the contemporary notions of student misbehavior through a critical study of 19th-century teacher manuals. Instead of reading the texts of the manuals as a window into the experiences of the past, I consider the manuals as discursive operations that enacted practices and ideals. In drawing upon historiographical and analytical methods inspired by Michel Foucault and Sara Ahmed, I explore how the intersection of student misbehavior with teacher pedagogy and disciplinary procedures enact “modes of subjection” (Foucault, 1995) and “affective orientations” (Ahmed, 2006) in the modernization of teacher pedagogy and schooling. I argue that the archive of manuals demonstrates the entanglement of student subjectivity and affect with modernizing regimes of governmentality and the marketplace. I equally argue that the modes of student misbehavior present in the archive provide avenues and strategies for thinking outside contemporary developmental and clinical framing of misbehavior. It is in rethinking misbehavior outside of contemporary frameworks that this dissertation provides an opportunity to reconsider how the boundaries of schooling and school participation might radically open up toward more diversity, inclusivity, and equity.