This article discusses two well-known texts that respectively describe learning and teaching, drawn from the work of Freud and Plato. These texts are considered in psychoanalytic terms using a methodology drawn from the philosophy of Luce Irigaray. In particular the article addresses Irigaray's approach to the analysis of speech and utterance as a "cohesion between the source of the utterance and the utterance itself" (Hass, 2000). I apply this approach to ask whether educational tradition has fractured the relationship between pedagogy and the body of the teacher/pupil. Teaching and learning are re-addressed in ways that challenge the gender-neutral representation of pedagogy as a systematic technique. (Contains 21 notes.)