• Consent Pedagogies:Classroom Lessons from Intimacy Practice
• Lindsay Brandon Hunter (bio)

In 2023, I took part in a conversation gathered under the title "Decarcerating the Field: Building Abolitionist Networks of Care at ATHE" at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education conference in Austin, Texas. Where others entered that conversation from a more explicitly abolitionist perspective, I had proposed to offer something that seemed perhaps less intuitive: I wanted to talk about doing intimacy work in academic theatre, and in particular about how my own training and practice in intimacy choreography for the stage has inflected my pedagogy—including my non-teaching work in helping to administer programs and make policy. Although a connection between intimacy choreography and abolitionist practice may not seem plain at first blush, I wanted to speak about how a sustained focus on consent-based practice in classrooms and rehearsal halls has illuminated for me the extent to which our institutions seek to control students, frequently in ways that uncomfortably resemble policing.

Even as I made this case to the group convening at ATHE, I debated whether it was apt to connect highly professionalized discourses about consent in working and teaching contexts to the fundamental and profound commitments that drive abolition activism. The codification of best practices that has been part of intimacy work's relatively rapid ascendance is quite clearly an investment in progressive reform, and so in some ways is antithetical to an abolitionist mode. To speak more honestly, I was afraid that for some folks who work in theatres and universities, enthusiasm for the reform promised by intimacy and consent work might register primarily as a professional fad, or worse: as itself an exercise in controlling or policing students, in the sense that it could involve drilling them to comply with professional standards. I worried, too, that words like "boundaries" and "consent" might read as liberalist buzzwords, [End Page E-31] or that some audiences might find in them echoes of a carceral feminism aligned with policing even as it co-opts the language of abolition.¹

Still, it remains true that a sustained focus on consent—which I offer here not as a panacea, or a set of rules for disciplining behavior, but specifically as an orientation away from coercion and toward self-determination, one which I continue to interrogate and revise—has quietly remade my teaching in ways that I think resonate with aspects of abolition work. Engagement with intimacy work has catalyzed a significant and continual grappling with the power I wield over students, perhaps similar to the way other developments in the past handful of years have called teachers to contend with and reevaluate the authority they hold in the classroom and the uses to which it is put: a global pandemic and its implications for access and capacity; calls to address structural racism and abolish white supremacy, particularly in the wake of highly visible police killings; and the project of decolonizing syllabi, classrooms, and curricula.² While each of these has affected my teaching, consent work has rendered particularly visible to me how frequently (and how reflexively, as a product of my own training) I have used compliance to mark successful outcomes in the classroom. Working with consent-based practice from within a position of classroom authority has helped to limn how the deeply entrenched interests held by the university and those it empowers—including faculty—manifest themselves in controlling, restricting, monitoring, and disciplining students in ways that can uncomfortably resemble policing. And the practical nature of learning and implementing consent work has helped me adjust my pedagogy to move compliance and control away from its center—at least sometimes, in some ways—in practical, applied ways.

I hope that bringing these two areas of work together serves two purposes: First, to reinforce an understanding of intimacy work itself, particularly when it is put into practice within universities and with students, as invested in disavowing the mechanics and goals of policing and as pointedly disinterested in putting into practice new opportunities to control and surveil others.³ Second, to suggest a way that [End Page E-32] consent-forward practices within our theatres and university departments can inspire...

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  同意教学法：亲密关系实践的课堂经验
• 
  Lindsay Brandon Hunter （生物）

2023 年，我参加了在德克萨斯州奥斯汀举行的高等教育戏剧协会会议上举行的一场题为“Decarcerating the Field： Building Abolitionist Networks of Care”的对话。当其他人从更明确的废奴主义角度进入对话时，我提议提供一些似乎不那么直观的东西：我想谈谈在学术剧院中做亲密关系的工作，特别是我自己在舞台亲密关系编舞方面的训练和实践如何影响了我的教学法——包括我在帮助管理项目和制定政策方面的非教学工作。尽管乍一看，亲密舞蹈和废奴主义实践之间的联系似乎并不简单，但我想谈谈在课堂和排练厅中对基于同意的实践的持续关注如何向我阐明了我们的机构在多大程度上试图控制学生，而且往往以令人不舒服的类似于警察的方式。

即使在我向 ATHE 召开的小组讨论中提出这个案例时，我也在争论是否适合将工作和教学环境中关于同意的高度专业化的话语与推动废奴运动的基本和深刻承诺联系起来。将最佳实践编纂成文是亲密关系工作相对迅速崛起的一部分，这显然是对渐进式改革的投资，因此在某些方面与废奴主义模式背道而驰。老实说，我担心对于一些在剧院和大学工作的人来说，对亲密关系和同意工作所承诺的改革的热情可能主要是一种职业时尚，或者更糟的是：它本身就是一种控制或监管学生的练习，从某种意义上说，它可能涉及训练他们遵守专业标准。我也担心，像“界限”和“同意”这样的词可能会读起来像自由主义的流行语，[结束第 E-31 页]，或者一些观众可能会在它们身上找到与警察一致的囚禁女权主义的回声，即使它采用了废除奴隶制的语言。¹

尽管如此，对同意的持续关注仍然是事实——我在这里不是作为灵丹妙药，也不是一套纪律行为的规则，而是具体地作为一种远离胁迫和走向自决的方向，我继续质疑和修改它——已经悄悄地改变了我的教学，我认为这与废除死刑工作的各个方面产生了共鸣。参与亲密关系工作催化了我对学生所拥有的权力进行重大而持续的斗争，这也许类似于过去几年的其他发展要求教师应对和重新评估他们在课堂上拥有的权威及其用途的方式：全球大流行病及其对访问和能力的影响;呼吁解决结构性种族主义和废除白人至上主义，尤其是在备受瞩目的警察杀人事件之后;以及教学大纲、课堂和课程去殖民化项目。² 虽然这些都影响了我的教学，但同意工作让我特别明显地看到我使用合规性来标记课堂上的成功成果的频率（以及作为我自己培训的产物）的频率。在课堂权威的立场下，与基于同意的实践合作，有助于缓解大学及其授权者（包括教职员工）所持有的根深蒂固的利益如何表现为以令人不安的警务方式控制、限制、监控和管教学生。学习和实施同意工作的实际性质帮助我调整了我的教学法，以实际的、应用的方式将合规性和控制从其中心移开——至少有时，在某些方面。

我希望将这两个工作领域结合起来有两个目的：首先，加强对亲密关系工作本身的理解，特别是当它在大学和学生中付诸实践时，因为它致力于否认警务的机制和目标，并且对实施控制和监视他人的新机会不感兴趣。³ 其次，提出一种方法，让我们的剧院和大学部门内的 [End Page E-32] 同意转发做法可以激发......