Subjectivity and Contact Zones

I found Jacqueline Jones Royster's article, "When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own" very intriguing. Her argument that subjectivity is the key to helping "deepen, broaden, and enrich our interpretive views in dynamic ways" struck me as obvious, but I realized it was something I hadn't really thought about in depth, at least in terms of ethnic background (29). I remember at the ALANA talk the students spoke of how important it was that students representing minority ethnic backgrounds really evaluate their experiences on a predominantly white campus and try to come to an understanding of them. At the time, I did not think it was vital for ALANA students to represent their group in such a presentation because I always thought that this deliberate "us vs them" dialogue kind of promoted the separation of white and minority cultures, but now I am not so sure. At some point I realized most people I heard talk about race issues at our institution were white, so I read Royster's article thinking this. She says that she has "found it extremely difficult to allow the voices and experiences of people that I care about deeply to be taken and handled so carelessly and without accountability by strangers" and I thought, hm, I'm not sure about that. But I thought further:  isn't it true that we all need to speak from some experience (race included) to avoid our interpretations of such experiences becoming "a type of discourse that serves as a distraction, as noise that drains off energy and sabotages the work of identifying substantive problems within and across cultural boundaries and the work also of finding solutions that have import, not simply for a 'race,' but for human beings whose living conditions, values, and preferences vary" (31)? To me, Royster's article was about breaking down stereotypes to really listen to a person, any person, with a particular experience (race in this case) and being able to RESPOND thoughtfully, and not just carry on a conversation for the sake of it, for the mere necessity of it. Obviously, racism is still an issue and our institution is grappling with diversity and culture incorporation, trying to start up a dialogue with students at the forefront. And now I am confident they are on to something valuable through their subjectivity, inviting us "to understand human history both microscopically and telescopically" from their standpoints (34). She asks, "How do we negotiate the privilege of interpretation?" (36) But I say, ask the ALANA students who are striving to gain awareness of their experiences and start an authentic dialogue about it with those who will listen, and think, and then speak to communicate meaningfully.

As for Mary Louise Pratt's article on contact zones, I was engaged with her discussion of useful cultural literacy in terms of baseball at the beginning. I thought this was a perfect example of how we gain strong subjectivity that provides us with a perspective we can discuss effectively with just about anyone. I thought this was a strong argument that could back up Royster's ideas about the importance of subjectivity in such discussion. She lost me a bit with the historical backtracking, maybe because it was one in the morning, but I think her point was the show that historically we have allowed marginalized groups entrance into the dominant culture through a somewhat predictable and normative series of actions (2). I think she was arguing that subordinated people will challenge that dominant culture by means of parodic language and images, among other methods, in contact zones where the cultures meet. One other argument she made that was interesting to me was that "human communities exist as imagined entities in which people 'will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them or even hear of them, yet in the mind of each lives the image of the communion.'" (4). Thus, she says, these communities are defined by what style they take on in the imaginations of the constituents. I thought this was interesting in this context because most of what we think about anything, in terms of a group, is collectively subjective. This introduces a whole politics of superiority and pride and other virtues -- and allows one in this group to easily adopt assumptions as fact. I think Pratt then makes a valuable connection to these issues in the classroom:  we all can be challenged on our assumptions, on race, on anything, no matter if we are "dominant" or not. That's just an imagined inclusion, so we can all benefit from a collective discussion of reality, comparing perspectives, and like Royster said, listening, analyzing, speaking from the contact zone of the classroom that allows students to do so.

Maxine Hairston, Freshman Writing, English Departments, etc.

I thought that Maxine Hairston made several interesting connections between the field of composition studies and English departments. She made it evident that a culture of power exists within a university, giving more authority to those departments that are politically charged and integrative. She argues that English departments tend to have a bad reputation with administrators, that is unless they craft their curriculum to be more literary criticism-based or transform their writing courses into "vehicles for social reform rather than as student-centered workshops designed to build students' confidence and competence as writers" (180). She discusses the controversial way of leading freshman writing courses, suggesting perhaps it would be better to let students, through liberal guiding on the professor's part, choose their own topics to write about and then workshop them with their peers. She believes that this will get students to really encounter and challenge themselves with their preconceptions and develop new notions of diversity and ideology. If a professor does the opposite, uses the class to establish and promote their own beliefs, she says they would largely be supporting capitalistic ventures by encouraging students to create a niche in the "power structure" (184).

She worries about the future of writing if students are being taught by professors with political agendas rather than professors who can actually teach craft and critical thinking skills specific to writing itself through genuine exploration of a student-chosen topic. I find myself agreeing with her statement: "Authoritarian methods are still authoritarian methods, no matter in what cause they're invoked" (187). I think she is right that students need to learn to critically evaluate the wrongs of the world, rather than have them inculcated by the institution, even if their tendency to challenge injustice is admirable. I know I can't just say "OK, ____ in society sucks and I'm going to say/do ______ to change it." I need to be informed about it through a class structured in the manner Hairston describes in which I evaluate my own knowledge/perspective on the situation, write about it, discuss it with my peers, revise, discuss it with my professor, discuss, discuss, discuss. I find that that's how I do my best learning in terms of political/social issues. Tom Kerr's Arugment class is a good example of this. Otherwise, like Hairston says, we find that incoming students in writing classes just learn how to play the game and use "fake discourse" which "is a kind of silence" and don't actually cultivate critical thinking skills (189). And that's critical. (I feel like that pun was valid because Hairston used a tapestry metaphor.)

Ellen Cushman - Public Intellectual

Cushman believes that the definition of "public" in the term "public intellectual" can be problematic because it is often unrepresentative of an actual public, and is often used to describe a more privileged class of citizens. She holds that using traditional methods of anthropological, observation-based research serves only to inform an already educated and well-off demographic about the problems of the world without actually helping to make any changes for those who need it most. She argues that the best way to remedy this is to switch to a perspective that allows for engagement or interaction within the community requiring assistance. This way, she says, both the community and the public intellectual will benefit from a mutual exchange of knowledge. Through service learning at the university level, as well as activist research, Cushman believes students, professors, and community organizations will see more meaningful socio-political action taking place by learning to "work together to identify and ameliorate local-level social issues" (334). Outreach courses promoting such values will find that they no longer "deepen the schism between universities and communities" to the same degree as those promoting more traditional values.

I have a feeling Tom Kerr is going to be speaking in class about the prison correspondence project he led last spring in our Argument class, so I will add to that during discussion. =)

Chris Anson - Distant Voices

In 1999, I was blissfully learning the joys of computer games while Anson was busy writing this article. It's interesting to me that for so much of my first few years having a computer, the internet played no part in my life, and yet if I go a day without internet in 2011, I miss crucial emails or fail to complete assignments.

All in all, I thought his article was introspective and that he was genuinely concerned for the future of teaching writing, but oftentimes he seemed to get too excited with predictions of the near but strikingly technological future (ooooooh). I think it is very valid to discuss such technological advances though, especially since we are now twelve years past this and so many of his craaaaazy ideas have already been implemented, and we are sure to see just as much in the next decade, I'm sure. He argues that it is so important that writing is never taught online because the benefits of it all occur in the classroom through face-to-face interaction and collaborative workshopping. He says that we must be careful and thoughtful about the decisions we make to move key educational communities online because we sacrifice the "teacher-learner, learner-teacher" relationship and the online teacher as moderator/expert changes that dynamic. He wonders, like I do, if decisions for institutions to move some courses online comes from a financial standpoint, rather than a concern for good education, and fears that teachers will face lower wages with less benefits employed, or "outsourced" on a non-tenure track. He also reiterates the importance of physical spaces for education, such as writing centers and offices, yet does give kudos to email for being a 24/7 ease of access way of communication. Basically, he believes there are good things that can come from technological advances in relation to writing education, but he is primarily skeptical of the intentions for doing so when so much is sacrificed. I enjoyed his discussion of multimedia, particularly because we do not generally use several sources of media anymore in the classroom as he says we did in 1999; most resources are DVD and/or computer-based these days and, in fact, a professor told me IC is trying to phase out of VHS media and projectors. Overall, I think he just wants us to engage in our communities and weigh the positives of negatives, if only to be aware of what we are missing with each choice we make in either direction. Cultivating this awareness will guide us to make better decisions and theoretically receive a more in-depth and cutting-edge education.

Mike Rose - Language of Exclusion

Rose writes about the all too common mistake many American university affiliates make, that of not only defining all writing in terms of their utilitarian "skill/tool" bias, but more importantly that of assigning students a "remedial" role they become boxed into. He worries for the future of students in universities across the nation, which are continuously accepting more and more students from varied educational backgrounds. His primary concern is that attitudes, shaped over the past two centuries of American history, toward writing as a product, rather than a process, lead teachers to grade students based on surface correctness. They consequently promote, he argues, a trap for students who cannot meet unrealistic academic standards and label them as deficient, in need of a "remedy" of sorts. I found his medical allegory appropriate because we do kind of treat our "remedial" students in the same way as patients: test, diagnose, dose, repeat. It is fundamentally crucial, he says, that we must stray from this superficial regard of writing in order to evaluate and understand where actual issues stem from and try to genuinely work with them on a case by case basis, rather than cast aside those judged incompetent. This is a political problem, since those judged "inadequate" are given less power in the system, leading me back to Delpit's article on inequality resulting from our culture of power. Rather than condemn students of any background who fail to meet these rigorous standards to "scholastic quarantine until their disease can be diagnosed and remedied," I suggest we implement Rose's idea to redetermine what illiteracy is and use the term more wisely where it belongs, and never by the academics feeling "frustration and disappointment in teaching students who do not share one's passions" in the university environment (352, 354).

I think he is right that "the ways society determines what it means to be educated change" and that "the story of American education has been and will in all likelihood continue to be a story of increasing access" (356). We must follow his advice and act to make an equitable present, rather than push the issue under the rug of the past or future. And because writing does lead us to engage more deeply in a discipline, even if, as Barbara Apstein says, we may read writing that does this and yet not write it ourselves, it is an ideal way to attempt to do so (I guess that's why he wrote the article!). I just wonder "if we gave it full status, championed its rich relationship with inquiry, insisted on the importance of craft and grace, incorporated it into the heart of our curriculum," if this would be enough to really make any significant changes for students deemed remedial for the simple fact that the education system is complex, public and private, well-funded and not, etc. (359).

Underlife and The Silenced Dialogue

Robert Brooke arrived at a concept regarding the self more similar to my own view, compared to those of Peter Elbow and Walter Ong, in his essay discussing the sociological theory of the "underlife" in relation to the classroom. According to this theory, one's underlife comprises "those behaviors which undercut the roles expected of participants in a situation" (141). He goes on to discuss how both students and teachers engage in a game-like series of actions that "show that their identities are different from or more complex than the identities assigned them by organizational roles" (142). People, he argues, generally try to make new roles conform to part of their present identity and work only to shape it through rejection or acceptance of these new roles in new contexts. These individual stances, exhibited through observable behaviors, set one's identity apart from the rest and in this way, "the self is formed" (144). He provides examples, the one in particular about the lesson on fermentation resounding for my experience in a bar tending class; I set myself apart by trying to learn the basics of alcohol production and understand it as a process while others only memorized what was necessary to pass the exam and be able to bar tend (the product). Yet I did notice those who had tried to only memorize the information were able to apply that knowledge to what interested them, just as I had, but by a very different path. Anyhow, I thought his argument about the self was valid in that he implies both conscious and unconscious showing and hiding of facets of our identity. We judge what fits in a situation and we put it forth; this does not mean we aren't anyone else, but rather that we have a visibly selective identity. Thus I also think it's appropriate to say that students need to think of themselves as writers in order to write better; this brings them in closer proximity to their voices and allows them to say what they have to say. Teaching writing as a "disruptive form of underlife" would therefore lead to an even closer proximity to one's identity for simply increasing informed awareness of it.

Lisa Delpit brings attention to the issue of inequality in the classroom environment due to the culture of power enacted in our society. She places blame on white academics for establishing a discriminatory (with or without intention she does not specify) educational system which favors primarily white, middle-class students in terms of established societal norms for success. She argues that current classroom practices treat poor or minority students unfairly, labeling them as remedial or misbehaved, and that solutions to help these students succeed often are too indirect and useless for real improvement to occur. Arguing that this stems in part from cultural differences between white and black educational practices (for example, the issue of authority she presents), she also suggests that in the U.S. "students will be judged on their product regardless of the process they utilized to achieve it" (287); this makes the learning process more difficult for non-white students because they are expected to understand the process when in reality they have, she argues, never been properly taught that process to begin with. I am not sure how widely correct her observations are when applied to the American population as a whole, especially back in the 80s, but I expect her results are probably still quite shocking today in a society that claims to be racially transcendent. While we may have passed laws making discrimination illegal, education still suffers in that teachers, like she argues, do not always know how to deal with students from different backgrounds with different experiences, from any culture, since the educational system still tailors to that same white, middle-class demographic. I think it's true when she says that we all are experts at what we know best and thus we all need to approach education on a more personal level in order to really learn anything. This goes beyond class and race, and right to the foundations of human connection. How can we learn anything, she asks, if we don't listen and hear from our hearts? This speaks to all inequalities, all differences in conviction, not just the plight of the teacher and student misunderstanding and miscommunication related to race and socioeconomic standing.

My Thought Paper

Dimensions of the Writer: 

    Evaluating Insinuations of Psychosis and Schizophrenia

         As an early writer, I always had it in my head that I had to solidify my identity through my writing, rather than lose it. I had learned about enough writers gone psychotic to know I had to be careful, but careful about what exactly? I wasn’t sure then, and I still am not certain. I was taught in school to become a simplified, definable person, easily categorized and placed into society where I was fit, and I despised this sentencing to a basic identity. I knew that I, like all others, had potential within in me to become something more than just that.
        Writing taught me that “I” was far more complex than I could imagine. Few of my thoughts strewn on paper were visibly connected, yet I knew they were all part of me and could make sense to myself and others if they were reordered or elaborated on; I wondered if I was crazy since I could not seem to forge these thoughts and perceptions into clean-cut pieces of writing. I decided that I probably wasn’t and started to think more carefully about the nature of these thoughts and perceptions, where I guessed they had originated and why they had anything to do with the rest of them. Eventually, I began to note the connections and, in various stages of revision, learned to make my writing more coherent and cohesive as my understanding of the ideas became apparent. I was improving as both a writer and a thinker, made evident by the results of my academic labor. I did not have multiple personalities, I concluded much to my relief, but rather access to a multitude of ideas I could consider outside of my own tunnel vision.
         I realized that my identity, along with everyone else’s, was fluid because of this possibility of differing perceptions and experiences within my own point of view. I was unaware at the time that this idea of a single identity was stifling my ability to process the stimuli the world presented to me. Breaking it down through my explorations in writing and revision started to reveal the wealth of “selves” I had been denying breathing room. In fact, I believe the need for revision signifies that there is no one true all-knowing self, but rather a self contingent upon the selves of all the people one interacts with and accumulates knowledge and ideas from over the course of the writing process. With this in mind, one can imagine how impossible it must be to pinpoint just exactly “who” they are.

        Theorists Walter Ong and Peter Elbow discuss this idea of a complicated collection of identities harbored within one human being. While Ong suggests that these other selves are fictionalized, thereby implying there is one true or base self, Elbow seems to hold that these selves are simply complex social and private dimensions of one’s being. I side primarily with Elbow because I dislike the notion of a fictionalized self; it perpetuates the stereotype of the crazy writer and boxes the writer into an overly simplified, unrealistic identity. Exposure to such investigation of the self was limited for me in my education, as I suspect it has been for most Westerners. The books of my schooling tended to emphasize the negative aspects of writers’ lives, presenting them as neurotic or depressed. We had few exercises allowing us access to other dimensions of the solitary self we assumed ourselves to be, and no explicit lesson that we had this potential to begin with. I think this is the type of education Ong hails from.
        Both Ong and Elbow are skeptical of personal diary-style writing as a solution to discovering one’s identity. They argue that one can be writing to an imagined self, an idealized self, a false self, a self he was, a self he will be, a self others believe him to be, and so on. Thus, the reader, oneself, is asked to “play the role in which the author has cast him, which seldom coincides with his role in the rest of actual life” (Ong 12). These conflicting identities, discovered particularly through diary writing, suggest a life of constantly altered being rather than a life of stagnant being. One writes to a self that is constantly changing, yet retaining much of its basic components. Therefore our skewed sense of the self, a term used by the Dalai Lama, is what is at fault for the negative stigma surrounding the mental state of the writer, and this lies in our cultural and educational exposure and experience.