On methods

I subscribe to a pretty straight-forward, uncomplicated pedagogy which you could call “graduate school,” “collaborative,” “communal,” i.e. basically consisting of just two components: material and discussion. You dive headfirst into it and hope you can swim. Obviously, the teacher has strapped on a vest. Starting with a concise, shrewd opening question is a good way to focus attention to a particularly tension-filled, or essential part of the material, which then typically, hopefully, catapults discussion into a life of its own, soon heading in a direction determined by participant interests, dependent upon the material and the guiding presence of the teacher. I consider this approach justifiably ennobled by time since Socrates sensed the Arcadian breeze on his forehead with Plato sitting giggling on the first bench.

Another element in my classes is the student presentation. This puts the student in charge of the material with inputs and inquiries from the rest of us. Obviously, group work – as described by Bean (cpt. 9, e.g., p.167) is a valuable variant in conjunction with the right material and the right instructions. Unfortunately, students are often too concerned with profiling themselves for final grade, resume, and future career purposes, for this method to reach its full potential. Our American cultural emphasis is not on co-operation either, so, you’re heading uphill. Many, probably most, other cultures, are stitched together differently. The pedagogy espoused by my childhood Danish educational system (as the message also was in society) had its emphasis, believe it or not, on communal concerns, so group work was an ingrained ingredient, teachers made sure to integrate individual brilliance into a communal purpose. (In all fairness, group work didn’t look terribly different from what I observe in my classes).

Let’s not leave out the lecture. It doesn’t have to last all fifty minutes. But if (excuse me: when) you really burn for something, you can generate a productive attention. Bean’s chapter 10 is useful in its discussion of many facets and applications of ‘lecture.’ I was surprised at his admittance in the Fishbowl-section on p. 178: “Pressure to perform well in the fishbowl motivates at-home study.” It’s my sense that our undergraduate system is more prone to hand-holding than pressuring. We sort of start already in the freshman year to wave a fond “farewell” to the anticipated alumni on the horizon. Cougar spirit and dressage is our glueful, cultural compensation for the protective shortcomings of society.

The weekly class reading-response blog I have incorporated in this course (and am using in my current UH 300) falls under Bean’s ‘exploratory writing’ (cpt. 6). I think it works very well as a way for students to structure their preparation, and also to think ‘freely’ in an exploratory fashion. It is important that the task is introduced as such: informal, so it doesn’t become a trial or ‘busywork’ (what an awful concept). For one thing, the blog registers the date and exact time of posting, so when a student consistently posts 2 minutes before (or past) the deadline, with, of course, ‘light’ comments, it is pretty telling – as opposed to a 3-paragraph, sophisticated posting three days in advance. I think, one must make a point of telling students that one does not look at the time factor but only gage the reasonable quality of the response; in order not to generate unnecessary stress and anxiety, associating the blog with some sort of public confession.

I have included my previous course write up on ‘learning’ below, please comment and suggest. Embedded in the formulation below is the intention to focus student attention to the necessity of being responsible for own education. I have outlined the ideal kind of preparation for class. Not that I expect of course, students to meticulously throw themselves into the task of procuring #s1-5 having sympathetically digested my gripping vision of pedagogy.


Learning

In my courses we engage in a collaborative learning model. Typically Honors courses are of a size and scope that lend themselves to such a format. It is a very simple and straight-forward pedagogy in respect of you and the individual, personal perspectives that you bring to class. It is a five-step system:

1. The material for a specific date is listed in the syllabus.
2. Please read the material beforehand carefully: write notes of questions and points you would like to make; do some research to expand on the text.
3. Come to class ready and willing to share your thoughts!
4. Go home and digest the class, think about whether or not your understanding of the material changed, was illuminated, expanded, or confirmed.
5. Revisit the issues again in the next or a later class when fitting; and/or discuss the issues with classmates and me outside of class.
   

In this manner our classroom will be full of impulses from different directions. Typically we come from all sorts of majors and backgrounds, while trying to establish an understanding of things that might be outside our normal or projected sphere of operations - and that is precisely the purpose of general education.

Is there any particular way to study the materials? And to engage them in class, pedagogically? I think there is great value in keeping it open, driven by, and occasioned by your questions. One could, formally, call it 'an inductive method': you read the stuff, have questions and reactions, and then together in class we try to pick things apart and reassemble them. We get answers to those questions; bring things together in comprehensive understanding. Beyond this, there are no formal tricks, nor do there need to be. You read the material and react to it: ask questions about any dimension of it! Then we generate knowledge and skills. It is as simple as that.

So, this is not a lecture-format providing you with all the routes, giving you the right answers which you then can retrace and confirm. Here, it is you taking on the text! And in class, your questions, and our discussion, will guide us to an understanding. I, of course, already have an understanding of the subject matters which I will bring to the table.

The Critical thinking guidelines and evaluating papers & essays can also be used as methods for how to ask questions to materials. Analyze, synthesize, contextualize, and form your opinion. The first times out we are probably going to miss a few pointers. But down the road, we will sharpen our tools.

Language, power, and the American West

Focus question for “Language and power”:
If ‘language’ is ‘power’ – examine how the relationship between language and power is established in your text. Compare this constitution to the relationship between the two elements in the other texts.

Taking a look at Hamlet we see a good example of the relationship between language and power in Claudius’s interaction with Hamlet (p. 420) beginning with “’Tis sweet and commendable…:”

Claudius first plays the ‘human experience’ card that youth should listen to the wisdom of elders: it is fine in “filial obligation … to do obsequious sorrow,” but get over it - persevering in grief is “unmanly.” Then he stabs at Hamlet’s self-esteem: “impious stubbornness,” “a heart unfortified,” “a mind impatient,” “unschool’d.” Then he threatens with heaven, nature, reason – and guilt-trips him: “the dead,” and finally a not so discrete threat that he, Hamlet, may end up like his father: “You are the most immediate to our throne,” insultingly he takes such words into his mouth as “dearest father,” “nobility of love … do I impart towards you.” And then, of cause, he finishes it off: “remain here … in … cheer and comfort” – because Hamlet is definitely next, he himself must suspect.

The power of language here lies in its ability to sophisticatedly render a threat on different psychological levels: kindness, reproach, guilt, irony. In a language-less world surely a power relationship between a Claudius and a Hamlet could exist and be sustained, but not with such communicative sophistication. That is what literary language can do, and sensitive readings reveal; we need no other justification for reading literature, and for making it an integral dimension of education.

Units exploring the following texts/images would deepen and contextualize the focus question:

• H. Ibsen: A Doll’s House (1879)
  Notice how Ibsen in the opening scene establishes Nora’s subservient role in the marriage, and socially, through Helmer’s nicknames of her, “chirping lark” etc.
  
• M. Duchamp: Fountain (1917)
  His display of a urinal entitled “Fountain” shook up the art world as it forced upon it the notion that art might be more than a matter for museums. A visual kind of language and power.
  
• P. Picasso: Guernica (1937)
  Likewise, Picasso’s painting in response to the war crime: image as a language of disgust and revolt activating language in its appreciators.
  
• E. Spenser: The Faerie Queene (1590)
  Poetic language offering a dramatic, visually enticing experience.
  

Focus question for “Representing the American West”:
“The American West” – as an idea or concept directly or indirectly invoked in texts – signifies a cultural construction. Give examples of how such cultural construction takes place in your texts. E.g., make a list of what might be called “components of cultural construction,” and organize them in groups based on similarities and differences.

The Spirit of the Bear Walking is a tender story about purity or cleansing of mind, here awarded with a vision. Whenever a representative of one cultural hemisphere reconstructs another culture e.g. by retelling their myths, it is prudent to be cautious. E.g., which connotations do names and idioms have within their original context; which are produced in the particular form of the storytelling? Similarly, when Native American authors express themselves in short stories or novels – are they creating a 3rd culture?

Units on these topics could further explore cultural construction:

• Cowboy poetry
  Organize topics from a selection of poetry.
  
• Dances with Wolves (1990)
  How does the film portray Native Americans?
  
• Mormon history and religious writing
  Does the Mormon experience and description of ‘The West’ differ from non-Mormon depictions? If so, how?
  
• Contemporary Native American literature
  Analyze the text/s for dimensions of cultural construction and determine their difference or similarity to immigrant depictions.
  

Powerlessness of language
The section on “Language and power” (pgs. 397-502), comes to 105 pages, consisting largely of reprinted works of literature, a couple of questions to each piece of literature, very brief, general introductions of the authors, and three images. Thus, outside of the reprinted literature, perhaps 2-3 pages total are from Daniel Anderson’s own hand, very easy. (This is typical of the entire book’s 947 pages). Of this, both the questions and the introductions are entirely average, displaying a less sophisticated spectrum of ideas than if you simply googled the matters. The magnitude of the topic of this section (even if we separate it into its components: language, power) is so daunting, so complex, so fundamental, with such a rich, intellectual history behind it, that it is only fair to expect – to be more than cooperatively diplomatic – slightly more guidance from someone who dares to raise the issue in a textbook, than what we get in the 54 words + 3 words title on p. 397. “Language shapes us,” “language influences our thinking,” “words… have a direct impact on human lives,” “this power of the word and its implications for the decisions we make.” These platitudes force us to seek enlightenment elsewhere.

The book as a whole is a celebration of the powerlessness of language. Not that there isn’t plenty of language; but jump-skipping from one literary effort to another, never anchoring one’s feet firmly into a literary effort, but subjugating ideas and art to loosely sketched ‘lenses,’ makes WMLA a sort of educational equivalent to the QVC-channel. Hence, as an anthology it spreads its arms too widely; as an instrumental treatise on pedagogy, it doesn’t dig deep enough.

“Of the paintings… which do you prefer? Why?” (p. 891) – Apart from the readymade skill-level needed in order to pose such a question, it is unfortunate in signifying the ultimate capitulation of ideas. It also seems, the overarching purpose of WMLA is not to complicate its users’ sense of self-esteem.

I hope these comments testify to the fact, that what we are doing in a class such as this, belongs to the most laudable and important undertakings possible in educational training.

Applying principles

Just a perspective on something that one might find disturbing:

“Ecofeminism is a movement that makes connections ... Ecofeminism seeks to recognize ... ecofeminism approaches the problems of ... Ecofeminism claims that ... ecofeminism clarifies that ... " (Andrea's blog). In other words, 'Ef' is made up by a group of people who agrees on a certain perspective (on the world?), a certain set of values and proscriptions, congregates, sort of like a church or a colonial power, and hence, in terms of literary criticism, aplly those principles in their reading and interpretation of literature. That must be what Andrea means and intends.

I remember being taught that doing that was a big no-no. I.e., essentially, that if you have already 'made up your mind' before you start reading you are not able to keep your mind open to the dynamics of the text, to the simple fact that, perhaps, it isn't unifiable under a (or your) proscriptive heading. That is, essentially, you would be behaving like the 'psychoanalytical feminist' of my satirical piece on "The Little Mermaid."

Must we accept the notion 'critical lense' in the sense that we have to committ ourselves to one fairly narrowly defined 'set of rules' before reading, most likely to the detriment of the text? Do we have any other options? If we take the satire out of Donna's piece on "The Uggly Duckling" (which of course to a Dane is practically a national anthem), her interpretation rides a similar (here: 'post-colonial') mission: squeeze everything into a pre-conceived, colonial-interpretive framework.

Just to play the Devil's advocate, I wouldn't be surprised if 50 to 100 years from now those people might consider the colonial time-period, of which we still seem to be part, one of the great achievements of human history, as essentially within a couple of hundred years mankind leapt forward from, let's say, the torturous, gut-spilling, public executions Foucault describes, to communicating blissfully on laptops. That wouldn't have happened without the, shall we say: enthusiastic expansion of cultures onto various continents. I have no expectations that any potential, future people will be less inept at empathetically distilling the past than we are now.

It seems, a literary interpretive angle has to formulate itself more broadly, more inclusively, more openly. Otherwise, one might fear we would bind ourselves to an endless amok-run of perspectival exclusivity, which in its parts so easily falls prey to satire.

Found syllabi ~ 'Ready-made art'

After scouring the web for syllabi related to teaching literature, I choose these for their various kinds of approaches and web savy. They have different qualities and possibly shortcomings that ought to be inspirational.

I like the term 'found syllabi.' It reminds me of 'ready-made art' - stuff you find washed up on the beach and hang on your wall. There's so much that gets washed up on the web that we can modify and use. There's no doubt that the structures of the media itself determines the way we - and students - plan, learn, know, and expect to communicate. Just check out the video below.


EN 223: Survey of American Literature
The Conversation of American Literature, History, and Culture: Who is an American? How Should an American Live?
http://www.assumption.edu/users/lknoles/Syllabi/amsurveyfal01.html

• Click on "Literature and the "Conversation of Mankind" and find this sentence: "And whether consciously or unconsciously, each time a person sits down to write, s/he is entering a conversation with his/her future audience and past life." Apart from its underscoring of the lit-crit conundrums: consciousness, communication, future, past - the site displays tremenduous respect for texts and reading. Re. 'goals' it is quite refreshing that they seem so self-evident that all you need is a subtitle; and re. 'Course Methods' that the document is inaccessible.

ENAM 312: AMERICAN LITERATURE SINCE 1865
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/railton/enam312/

• We can always discuss format and content but this syllabus not only fulfills its practical purpose of providing structure for the class but also spurs imagination and creativity by providing images etc. Of course, such a class becomes a sort of 'canon' in its selection of works but (almost) any selection addressing the social, political, cultural etc. themes of the time period in conjunction with a clear, concise understanding of why we read and study literature should do the trick.

Philosophy/Chinese-Japanese 350:Comparative Methodology
http://faculty.vassar.edu/brvannor/Asia350/

• This course is just absolutely fascinating! It deals with fundamental human understanding of which any literary piece provides an example. The content of this class, the aim of these philosophers: "understanding and making judgments," not least in inter-cultural contexts, is the context that spins around our enjoyment of literature. The pedagogy is also so palatable: there's the text in the syllabus: prepare it; we'll discuss it in class! A basic, civilized, respectful approach.

ENL 684/FLL 684 Literary Criticism I: Theory & Practice
http://home.earthlink.net/~blueheeler19/lkcourses/fll684/FLL684.html

• Obviously, the topic is important. The outline and syllabus are a bit terse but hopefully the abilities of the instructor and the energies of the (mixed bag of) students in the collaborative format will accomplish to engage teory with practice.

ENG 203: Introduction to Literature
http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/markport/lit/introlit/introsyl.htm

• Theory is just about the most practical thing there is. We hardly do anything without it. The very act of engaging language is theory which is why grammar is such a marvellous tool for understanding. That is pretty much what the first paragraph ('Objectives') and the following sections express. The syllabus and its clickable items continuously reinforce the purpose of studying literature while providing methods. Informative, supportive, coaching, an exemplary web-overview of a course. We can always discuss content, of course.

'Dream course:'

World Literature in Historical Perspective

1. Develop an historical perspective
2. Develop an analytical and interpretational methodology
3. Select representative works of literature from a spectrum of cultures
4. Find a way to make contrasting and complimentary perspectives relevant
5. Create a gallery of issues, themes, behaviors
6. All of the above in collaboration with student participants (provided the class is small; otherwise lecture brilliantly)
7. Fit it into 15 weeks; although a 2-semester format would be beneficial
8. Make it work!

Issues: plenty.

Psychoanalytical critical theory

Proposition: intellectually, the last couple of hundred years, in particular, up until now, seems, from different angles, to have perfected the notion that man is – and can be – governed by a finite set of rules. There are basically two grand movements of thought: governed from within, and governed from without*. The latter finds it clearest expression in Marxism (and all the angles of prior- and subsequent mediators associated with it): social organization determines consciousness; a model based in economic analysis reveals the power structures of this dynamic promoting a vision of equality and liberation. The former sees the human being made up in a shell of developmental propensities, under the influence of other human beings in its immediate environment, in particular mother and father whose absence or presence looms large over the development.

No wonder these two, often in combination, have constituted a fruitful landscape for literary interpretation, and what naturally follows in a media-dominated age: interpretation of images. As can be seen from the brief identifications of the positions of three psychoanalytical proponents below: model, tool, goal: from Freud’s basic suspicion of the workings of the ‘self,’ to Lacan’s complication of ‘the unconscious,’ to Irigaray’s transplantation of the condition to social, gender-based power structures - the psychoanalytical approach offers method and perspective and is sufficiently open and inviting in terms of promoting the interpreter’s creativity in filling in the particulars derived from the literary text (or image).

The potency of this postmodern condition nourished by psychoanalysis is its suspicion of surface appearance offering an endless, kaleidoscopic catalogue of critique-able motivations. As such, the critical mode has been wildly inspirational for many in the academic (interpretive) professions. They run, of course, the dangers of idiosyncratic irrelevance and arrogance. In some cases, all they need to see is an old photo of a boy saluting and before you know if they have concocted a 400-page long diatribe against French colonialism, to the giddy cheers of their professor.

It was Freud who introduced the toddler’s sexual fascination with its parents (copulating with one, killing the other; on the backdrop of contemporary socio-biological mores this line of thinking should offer plenty of incentive to mix the agents), and in one of his opium-induced stupors, surely, he took the intriguing idea further to suggest that what really confounds and complicates the boy-toddler mentally is his mother’s lack of a penis. Never mind that by the time boys enthusiastically start discovering the alternative function of their member they have had years of plenty of things to do including socio-instinctual training embracing their wealth of parental care, enriching themselves by the formative signals from their dual, complimentary source.

Nevertheless, there are psychoanalytical postmodernists who gladly adopt that particular Freudian contraption, as is, and infuse it as support-bearing argumentation into whatever it is they analytically have in front of them: guns, rodeos, whatever, to the subdued, diplomatic, un-inquisitive, puzzlement of their otherwise healthy graduate students trying to survive in a system dominated by ingrown, ideological sensitivities unwilling to fathom that life will carry on for another thousand years.

The idea that man is ‘governed’ and predictable, and that this condition is evident in literature, is what literary criticism is all about, what makes it possible. How do we determine the nature of this condition? How do we predict it in analytical models?

[*To these, it would be prudent to add a third: the evolutionary-biological paradigm which philosophically, on the one hand, seems to suggest a mind-bogglingly comprehensive ‘governing’ which, on the other hand, only may prove to suggest an as mind-bogglingly open-ended condition. A paradox of incomparably productive tragic and comedic proportions and potential.]

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
” the ego is the conscious self created by the dynamic tensions and interactions between the id and the super-ego, which has the task of reconciling their conflicting demands with the requirements of external reality. It is in this sense that the mind is to be understood as a dynamic energy-system. All objects of consciousness reside in the ego, the contents of the id belong permanently to the unconscious mind, while the super-ego is an unconscious screening-mechanism which seeks to limit the blind pleasure-seeking drives of the id by the imposition of restrictive rules. There is some debate as to how literally Freud intended this model to be taken (he appears to have taken it extremely literally himself), but it is important to note that what is being offered here is indeed a theoretical model,” http://www.iep.utm.edu/f/freud.htm

Jacques Lacan (1901-1981)
“Lacan developed a psychoanalytic conception of how the body is caught in the play of meaning-formation between subjects, and expressive of the subjectivity that 'lives' through it, as well as being an objectificable tool for the performance of instrumental activities. For Lacan, that is, 'the unconscious' does not name only some other part of the mental apparatus than consciousness. It names all that about a subject, including bodily manifestations and identifications with others and 'external' objects that insist beyond his/her conscious control.” http://www.iep.utm.edu/l/lacweb.htm

Luce Irigaray (1932-present)
“Her subsequent texts provide a comprehensive analysis and critique of the exclusion of women from the history of philosophy, psychoanalytic theory and structural linguistics. Irigaray alleges that women have been traditionally associated with matter and nature to the expense of a female subject position. While women can become subjects if they assimilate to male subjectivity, a separate subject position for women does not exist. Irigaray's goal is to uncover the absence of a female subject position, the relegation of all things feminine to nature/matter, and, ultimately, the absence of true sexual difference in Western culture.” http://www.iep.utm.edu/i/irigaray.htm


Satirical psychoanalytical reading of “The Little Mermaids”
““First and foremost I want to thank you all for giving me the opportunity to be here today as a literary-critical-psychoanalytical-feminist to finally, once and for all, set the world-historical, critically interpretive, record straight by providing the ultimate, final, interpretive understanding of Hans Christian Andersen’s (1805-1875) fairy tale: “The Little Mermaid” (1836); briefly, succinctly, as is the founding principle for our SBSNCBLLI (Society for Brief, Succinct, Non-Contradictable, Bottom-Line, Literary Interpretation), the annual meeting of which, thank goodness, this year takes place here in downtown San Francisco, so there’ll be plenty of good things to do when we skip afternoon sessions to shop, chat, visit galleries, go eating, meet up, check out people.

First of all: forget everything you know about extra-textual affairs including socio-economic, historical contexts, biographical informative explanations about the author, weird language-communicative grammars of signs and signifiers and whatever the hell they signify, narrative irony, and solely intra-textual structures: this is ultimately a story about Hans Christian Andersen’s missing vagina. And not only that: it becomes a metaphorical archetypical myth about man-man’s hatred of his penis. He wants to castrate himself because he wants a vagina. Take for instance rodeo queens: biologically speaking they undoubtedly (perhaps not?) have a vagina but they just don’t know they have it. They are “”denying”” it because they have been forced into the male vacuum of the rodeo “”spectacle”” in which men themselves cry out for their lost vaginas. How else do you explain their riding on bulls, broncos, etc. were it not in effect an act of castration, a primal-scream for that which they do not have but want? Why would a man otherwise mount a tortured, wild bronco or spread his legs across vicious bulls to have his balls mashed in the process?

Scientific, audiological studies have proven that after half a year at the rodeo-circuit, male voices actually arrive at a higher pitch. And how would you otherwise explain “Brokeback Mountain.” Yes, it was a bad movie, but that only demonstrates the degree to which the myth has been established in our literary heritage, for example through the traditional, erroneous interpretations of our specific tale. This is not a story about unrequited love, about obtaining a human soul within a Christian universe, about the author’s personal sense of alienation, given universal expression and appeal, no, this is about the main character’s search for her missing vagina.

What is a mermaid? It is half a fish. Fish don’t have vaginas but they want to. Where does she live? She lives deep in the ocean in a gluttonous swamp of repression, by family, by all the wants destined to be so by the fact there are plenty of vaginas above, on land, in the human world. Does she really “”fall in love”” with the prince on the boat whom she sees when it is her time to swim to the surface? Or does she really “”fall in love”” with the image of the prince which symbolically refers to the “”human soul”” which of course is code-word for vagina – the only place of true humanity, also proven by ancient human, fertility rites. Clearly, this is the transformation she undergoes: from fish-body split into human legs revealing her long lost vagina.

I can substantiate this interpretation by analysis of an example from Andersens’s text:

“Presently they came in sight of land; she saw lofty blue mountains, on which the white snow rested as if a flock of swans were lying upon them. Near the coast were beautiful green forests, and close by stood a large building, whether a church or a convent she could not tell. Orange and citron trees grew in the garden, and before the door stood lofty palms. The sea here formed a little bay, in which the water was quite still, but very deep; so she swam with the handsome prince to the beach, which was covered with fine, white sand, and there she laid him in the warm sunshine, taking care to raise his head higher than his body. Then bells sounded in the large white building…”

There’s a lot of unimportant stuff here, especially the one about raising the head higher than the body as if the body isn't important. But this totally reminds me when I was a graduate student running around on the beaches of California with no panties on, smoking pot, sleeping with my professors, finding my own vagina. It was just the grooviest of times.

Sorry if I went a little overboard in this. It has to be kept short, of course, but I’ve got so much to say! It is just so damned important. When you have the right interpretive angle as I have provided it here, you actually don’t have to read the text itself, or you can just browse it quickly. The good thing about SBSNCBLLI is that you can skip all the boring details in texts and contexts and go right to the point which is what I have done here. Is it true there’s an art exhibit on Union Square?””


http://hca.gilead.org.il/li_merma.html

Modern and postmodern critical theory

What lit-crit lens / attitude toward art and culture is being satirized?
Reading the blurps from the Onion: Yes, it is easy to sit there and go along with the cheap laughs, but ultimately it is quite depressing. In the same manner as the Stewart/Colbert Show seriously seems to constitute the political horizon and attitude towards political life for many, the Onion, 'America's Finest News Source,' seems incapable of transcending a kind of locker-room giggling as they cast their satirical eye at academic pursuits.

The topic of the satires: ridicule of modern and postmodern critical theory, ‘being intellectual,’ and their agents, as intellectual activity intersects with some undefined notion of what constitutes ‘real life.’ Truly a sad testament to what probably is a general attitude in society towards rational thinking as it ought to be employed in higher education.

They essentially turn ‘literature’ into a matter of soap-operas. Whether the pieces of literature or authors mentioned are actual or invented becomes a mute point: the interpretive perspective has already locked them into a position of ridicule.


Freshman Term Paper Discovers Something Totally New About Silas Marner
“Durst's three-page work contains a revolutionary insight into a key piece of symbolism in the novel which had previously escaped scholars. “

- Yeah, right. Ridiculing the very act of interpreting literature as well as learning from and appreciating literature, language, words, creation, experience. Pretty sad.

Grad Student Deconstructs Take-Out Menu
“analyzing the menu's content as a text, or 'text,' subjecting it to a rigorous critical reevaluation informed by Derrida, De Man, etc., as a construct, or 'construct,' made up of multi-varied and, in fact, often self-contradictory messages, or 'meanings,' derived from the cultural signifiers”

“the impact of feminism, post-feminism, and current 'queer' theory on received notions of gender and sexual preference/identity. Realizing he hadn't eaten since lunch, the Ph.D candidate picked up the Burrito Bandito menu”

- Phony, populist juxtaposition of ‘real life’ food-need and criticism.

New Roommate Has Elaborate Theory About How Kenny Rogers Is A Genius
“a line-by-line analysis of the lyrics to "Coward Of The County" and once to declare the 1968 First Edition hit "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)" a "true pop-psychedelic classic”

- Perspective: fluffy academics can interpret anything into something it isn’t. Indeed, it would be nice if academics chose their targets carefully. That’s where a theoretical vocabulary comes in.

Radical Socialist Movement Ends After Three Semesters
“its three-semester struggle to smash the bulwarks of slavery and oppression everywhere”

“we have chosen to pursue even more subversive socialist endeavors in the radical Ann Arbor underground while working at a variety of part-time jobs during the day”

“Barlow said she has worked out a similar plan to overthrow the racist, imperialist U.S. government with a series of massive labor strikes and agitation campaigns among urban poor. She was unable to provide specifics, however, as she was late for her shift at Einstein's Bagels.”

- Ridiculing the notion that ‘slavery and oppression’ exists by placing it in the hands of a three semester struggle (before graduation to ‘real life’). The author should also have exploited the student’s desire to obtain credits for their work; and added that at Einstein’s Bagels she worked 20 hours a week for less than minimum wage and not even the shadow of a dental plan for her and her fatherless child. That’s when it gets real funny!

Area Girlfriend Still Hasn't Seen Apocalypse Now
“the fact that Jensen is "exactly my idea of the perfect woman for me," making her ignorance of the seminal film all the harder to fathom and forcing him to call into question, at a profound level, the basic foundation of their relationship and future together”

- A few lines into the reading I was just waiting for the moment the angle would become a relationship-matter. I wasn’t disappointed. The truth is, of course, that if you want to have any claim to being intellectual Notting Hill, and When Harry Met Sally etc. – as cute as they are – simply doesn’t cut the mustard. Girlie/Oprah Winfrey/feel-g00d-movies of no consequence. Slap-stick comedy. He should definitely dump her.

Shakespeare Was, Like, The Ultimate Rapper
“In fact, were he alive today, I'm convinced he would be a rapper. Well, I guess he could be a playwright, too.”

“You see, Shakespeare never intended for his works to be read in some dusty old study!”

- Let’s first ignore the shameful stereotype that reading Shakespeare represents “some dusty old study!” Such suggestion is indicative of a mindset in need of serious dusting; of someone who apparently hasn’t been equipped with sufficient means of how to elicit existential interest in literature. Can there be a rapper out there not entirely consumed by the commercial framework of his enterprise regardless of the appearance of his message – I sincerely doubt it! Pop-culture at its worst; the media and its commercial base depletes the message.

Hilarious Hamlet Essay Circulated In Teachers' Lounge
“How else can they be expected to teach sub-literate, mildly retarded kids like Erin Grupman all day long without losing their minds?"

- This one is cynical. But it does manage to posit the generational question: no matter what you do you will feel alienated. Hamlet does seem, however, to possibly be a productive place where difference can be overcome – provided the leader possesses the right interpretive tools to guide those who may feel lost in the mass of historically distinct expression. And then the occasional, necessary ridicule and bitching could be kept among those of like mind.

My Novel Addresses Universal Themes Of Humanity And Has Fucking
“it will be widely appreciated, as it addresses themes that speak to the human condition and, coincidentally, has loads of fucking.”

“but I believe there's something in it for everyone”

“it will inspire them in other ways with a totally hot scene in a convent where Steve has sex with a gorgeous anarchist posing as a nun.

- Satire of novel exploiting the sex-version of what below is the death-version, and what above was the cutie-version (in Notting Hill etc.), i.e. a limited, mindless perspective. Instead: read Homer, something real.

“Is technology dehumanizing us? Are the very items that enable us to function using us as much as we use them?”

- I don’t think so. I think it is the lack of theory, of perspective, of method, of world-view that dehumanizes us, or in teaching: that amplifies the distance between student and teacher, or rather: their distance to their object of study. Hence, there is no pedagogical way of getting around the leader knowing her topic. The necessary banking!

Someday, I Will Copyedit The Great American Novel
“I won't be stuck standardizing verb tenses in business documents my whole life. One day, I will copyedit the Great American Novel.”

“I know how many idealistic young people dream of taking a manuscript that captures the spirit of 21st-century America and removing all of its grammatical and semantic errors.”

"To a writer who didn't strive for perfection, my corrections would seem niggling. But the author of the Great American Novel will understand that I am as essential to his book as the ink that will cover sheaf after sheaf of virgin paper.”

- Again: satire on the confluence of literary idealism (= great American novel) and prosaic reality’s formal nitpicking, especially in the minds of some.

Author Too Much Of A Pussy To Kill Off Characters
“Oprah Winfrey, who was considering featuring the novel in her high-profile Oprah's Book Club, decided to drop it after determining that her viewers would "probably not get anything out of a death-free story."

- Instead of sex being fashioned as the main ingredient in the interpreters narrow focus, here it is death. See My Novel Addresses Universal Themes above.

Girl Moved To Tears By Of Mice And Men Cliffs Notes
“The humanity displayed in the Character Flowchart really stirred something in me.”Added Weaver: "I never wanted the synopsis to end."

“Weaver was assigned Of Mice And Men—a novel scholars have called "a masterpiece of austere prose" and "the most skillful example of American naturalism under 110 pages"—as part of her early twentieth-century fiction course, and purchased the Cliffs Notes from a cardboard rack at her local Barnes & Noble”

- This one is quite funny. It is comedy because it targets stupid individuals and not the literary object or the act of interpretation. Barnes & Noble, of course, brings it home. Sad too, as it shows us the barbarians who are only interested in the bottom line.

Nation's Teens Disappointed By Banned Books
“there is no reason to read Stephen King's Cujo when you can see it on cable 24 hours a day; plus, it's not that good, anyway.”

- Historical context and a critical vocabulary would lend meaning to those works. For our time, unfortunately, Stephen King, un-banned, may well be all that will be remembered.

* * *
WLMA, Chapter 13: If this chapter satisfies one’s quest for literary critical knowledge, one should consider engaging in broad, existential revision. Unless one knows intimately what is referred to by Saussure, Derrida, Foucault, Althusser (did we find any of their books annotated or just referenced?), one is only scratching the surface, and one might wonder: why scratch it at all, since surely even less would filter down to one’s subjects in the classroom (I guess, ‘subjects’ here could refer to both literature and human beings).

Cpt. 13 asks us to read “The Yellow Wallpaper” through five theories to “open up avenues for interpretation” (346) but the Gilman-intro (347-348) seems to give it all away rendering any of the five irrelevant. The intro is a fine example of 19th century biographical criticism in which the author's personal existential characteristics and events subsequently were identified in his/her literature, and vice versa, based in little more than common sense.

Content is king?

As I set up my blog, I started out with the question below (1/8/08), on the one hand to become familiar with the posting-bit, on the other, I picked up on Julie’s statement from class: “Content is king!” - “Content is king!” - as she instructed us in how to set up and manage a blog. I think there was a sarcastic touch to her voice as she made the statement. Sarcasm is good because you simultaneously embrace and distance yourself from your statement, so I look forward to have my understanding of the nature and pedagogical relevance of ‘content’ clarified.

Before commenting on Freire’s text I salute and take comfort in our instructions: write a ‘personal, informal narrative of 500 words’ on his text/own classroom experience/best teacher you ever had. The great thing about ‘personal narratives’ is that you just can’t go wrong no matter how wrong you go. Should be the case, at least, inasmuch as ‘personal’ places more demand upon the reader’s ability to keep her idiosyncrasies in check. So, I’ll enjoy (at least in this writing) informally to jab a little right and left according to my personal humor, and thus leave whatever opinions I might have irreverently shrouded.

I’ll get straight to the point with Freire in a couple of related questions:

(1) Isn’t there something fundamentally awkward and false about pretending that there isn’t, or shouldn’t be, distance between teacher and student?
(2) How does his pedestrian, elementary-political, repetitive-redundant diatribe on oppression and liberation based in his false dichotomy of “banking education” vs. “problem-posing education” translate into teaching 1st graders the alphabet, 3rd graders geography, 6th graders German, and English graduate students literary theory?

If it indeed is true (which I subscribe to) that “the unfinished character of human beings and the transformational character of reality necessitate that education be an ongoing activity” (65) must we not rather celebrate the fact that we are 'distant' than goofily suggest that difference is bad? Genghis Khan and I both had our first organized, educational experiences before the invention of the laptop and the cell phone – does that not make us fundamentally different from those generations who received these items in the crib? You ask your undergrads if they’ve seen Terminator 2 or Jaws and you’re lucky if one or two nod. Throw in a handful of foreign languages and cultures and you seem to miss out on something important if you systematically ignore multifaceted difference. In this sense his text is the educational equivalent of a Jehovah’s Witnesses-brochure depicting lambs gently and lovingly embraced by lions in their religious-utopian la-la land: both have little clue about reality. But he likes to pretend he does: “Authentic reflection considers neither abstract man nor the world without people, but people in their relations with the world.” (62) What brilliant statement of the obvious! This can only be a revelation to gullible educators thirsting for theory to lean on. Do we breathe as well? That might constitute the next pseudo-theoretical project for Freire. In this sense his approach constitutes the pedagogical equivalent of confirming that Nazi-Germany was bad. “The banking-concept of education” (e.g. 52-53) = ‘regurgitation’/’rote memorization’ vs. collaborative, participatory learning is something we – at least in some parts of the world – have been familiar with since the 19th century and certainly was turned into effective social practice since World War II.

Finally, did French existentialism not arrive upon the Copacabana until very recently? What’s the deal with Sartre and de Beauvoir? Surely, if you want to go philosophical on educational practice, things have happened since then? Another good trick in scaring your audience into submission is to nonchalantly, without further ado, drop the names of scary philosophers: Hegel (53), Jasper (60), and Husserl (64). Scary shit unless you are already well-versed, especially if you don’t offer any further explanation of their relevance.

So, I look forward to Julie telling us about content being king. Somewhere in the above lies ‘my own’ ‘classroom experience’; but I have run out of words, so I may elaborate later. ‘The best teacher I have ever had’ – I’ll go with Noam Chomsky giving a talk at WSU a couple of years ago: a splendid orator whose economy of diction and pedagogical approach in explaining his position and guiding his listener exemplifies a learning strategy which Freire – had he any wit – would give his right arm to be able to emulate, both in terms of theoretical lucidity and message. And Chomsky did leave time for critical questions.

Question for 'pedagogy on teaching literature': does content matter? I.e, if the literary object is 16th century protestant poetry, or a short story on motor bike repair from the 60s, or an Icelandic saga - does the content have an effect on/guide/define/confine the conversation? How do we identify the boundaries between the content and the way we engage it?