Ethische aspecten

Een abstract van een conferentie waarop het thema van de ethische verantwoordelijkheid wordt uitgediept.

Ethical Politics in Creative Representations

The Invisible Line: Ethical Responsibility Between Professor and Student in the Academic Play: Butley (1971), Educating Rita (1980) and Oleanna (1992)
Matt Fullerty , George Washington University

This paper asks how to locate the "invisible line" of ethical responsibility between professor and student with regard to three plays, Simon Gray’s Butley (1971), Willy Russell’s Educating Rita (1980) and David Mamet’s Oleanna (1992), including a final note regarding Alan Bennett’s The History Boys (2004).

First performed respectively in the early seventies (Butley), early eighties (Educating Rita) and early nineties (Oleanna), the plays are set on university campuses and are representative of the idea of the academic play; they also comment on the state of sexual politics at "serious play" in education during each preceding decade. This paper looks closely at the student-professor relationship, less defined than a lawyer-client confidentiality agreement, less certain than doctor-patient understanding, but nevertheless a relationship of mutual regard, respect, responsibility, promise and delivery. A line, based around Platonic values of mentor and mentee is widely accepted but not always acknowledged. Yet other roles ? innocent and dangerous ? are adopted behind academic doors such as master and apprentice, boss and employee, intellectual nurturer and intellectually curious, adult and child, middle age and youth, with degrees of mutual friendship, if not sexual attraction and repulsion.

All three "academic plays" demonstrate scenarios that occur when professors and students become too personally caring or abusive both with destructive outcomes. Eve n so a shared power of language, free thought, poetry and friendship is achieved in the classroom of all three fictionalized universities. Finally Alan Bennett’s The History Boys (2004) raises the question of ethical and sexual responsibility, promoting the idea that teachers personally lose to more fully publicly educate. A full picture emerges: professor and student can both be freed and/or damaged in the academic plays curious exploration of both sides of the "invisible" professor-student line.