Putting Theory into Practice in the Contemporary Classroom : Theory Lessons [1 ed.] 9781443868471, 9781443899789

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Putting Theory into Practice in the Contemporary Classroom

Putting Theory into Practice in the Contemporary Classroom: Theory Lessons Edited by

Becky McLaughlin

Putting Theory into Practice in the Contemporary Classroom: Theory Lessons Edited by Becky McLaughlin This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by Becky McLaughlin and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-9978-X ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-9978-9

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

vii

Acknowledgements

viii

Introduction 1 The Wounded Student and the Crisis of Desire in the College Classroom Becky McLaughlin Chapter One Žižek on Ideology as Not Seeing, or, the Eyes (Don’t) Have It Bruce Krajewski

33

Chapter Two 56 Curating the Mystory: Ideology and Invention in the Theory Classroom Barry Mauer Chapter Three Text, Theory, and Things: Towards a Pedagogy of Vital Being Matthew Overstreet

77

Chapter Four Teaching and Learning as Textual Acts: Roland Barthes, Assessment, and the Value of the Writerly Robert Gray

95

Chapter Five Psychoanalysis and the Production of the New Camelia Raghinaru

116

Chapter Six Privileged Space: A Psychoanalytic Paradigm for Pedagogy Tapo Chimbganda

139

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Table of Contents

Chapter Seven Epistemological Trauma and the Primal Pedagogical Scene: Henry James and the Act of (Re)Reading Becky McLaughlin and Patrick Cesarini

162

Chapter Eight A New Pedagogy of Love from Plato to Badiou: Rhetorical Hermeneutics and Evental Teaching Paul Dahlgren

183

Chapter Nine Teaching Dangerously: Assemblages of Canon and Fandom, Michael Drayton, “W. S.,” and Hilary Mantel Laurie Ringer

201

Chapter Ten Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Power, Control, and Authority in the Classroom Charlotte Knox-Williams

226

Chapter Eleven Instituting and the Discursive: Theorizing “Former West” Angeliki Roussou

241

Chapter Twelve Neoliberal Learning and the Specter of Unemployability Russell Bentley

264

Chapter Thirteen The Business of Teaching: “Team-Based LearningTM” and the Limits of Pedagogical Innovation Patrick Cesarini

283

Chapter Fourteen Developing Democracy in Ukraine by Gender Mainstreaming in Education: Challenges and Opportunities Tetiana Matusevych

306

Contributors

326

Index

331

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1-1: Lacan and anamorphosis, Holbein’s The Ambassadors Figure 1-2: Wittgenstein, duck/rabbit Figure 1-3: Young woman/old woman Figure 1-4: Still from The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology Figure 2-1: Graph based on Ulmer’s popcycle Figure 2-2: Graph based on Ulmer’s popcycle

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are a number of people who have helped make this book a reality, and I would like to name and thank them here. First, I wish to thank all of my contributors for the hard work they have put in. As an editor, I was not only a pedant but also a taskmaster, and yet they bore with me without complaint, and for that I am deeply grateful. Next, I wish to thank my dear friend Eric Daffron for encouraging me to attend the 2015 London Conference in Critical Thought for which we organized a series of panels on theory and pedagogy. It was at this conference that Putting Theory Into Practice in the Contemporary Classroom: Theory Lessons began to take shape, and thus I would also like to thank the LCCT organizers for giving us the opportunity to try out our ideas under their friendly and welcoming auspices. Although I do not know the names of the many people who attended those panels, it was their enthusiastic and thoughtful responses that gave me the confidence to move forward with assembling this collection of essays, and thus I heartily thank them despite their anonymity. Back on this side of the Atlantic, thanks are due to my department chair, Steve Trout, who never fails to support his faculty, both intellectually and (when possible) financially, in projects such as this. He is a cheerleader in the best sense of the word. Thanks are also due to my partner, friend, and colleague all-rolled-into-one, Pat Cesarini, for his impossibly kind and generous treatment of me while I was grappling with this manuscript and toiling under a deadline. His willingness to talk through an idea, read a rough draft, water the garden, and/or cook a meal made it possible for me to get my work done with a sense of serenity. He is the best companion someone with my particular work habits could ever have hoped for, and I will always be grateful for his active participation in my life, both academic and otherwise. When I think about the amount and type of work that my graduate assistant Joshua Jones has engaged in, I realize that mere thanks are hardly adequate. He deserves a knighting for his doughty spirit and doggedness. It is certainly the case that I would have only a few tufts of hair left on my head if he had not been on hand to figure out how to deal with spacing issues and to transform MLA footnotes into Chicago. He has been a priceless graduate assistant, and if I could somehow sing his praises and

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make them heard across the universe, I would. Invaluable help was also provided by Vince Carr, who came to the rescue when I was struggling to complete the index. His eye for detail as well as his ability to load a “toter cart” are stellar, and thus if there is anything amiss with the index, it is not Vince’s fault but my own. The last two people I wish to thank are about as different from each other as any two people can be, but both have given me more “theory lessons” than anyone else: my dissertation director, Joan Copjec, and my son, Jazzbo Cartmell. I couple them here because, like any great teacher, each has made a profoundly rich impact on my life and will continue to do so. When I first encountered Joan Copjec in a graduate seminar at SUNYBuffalo, I knew nothing about psychoanalysis, but by the time I was writing my dissertation, I felt as if I could be an analyst. She was one of the most exciting teachers I have ever had, and if all classes could be conducted like hers, no student would ever complain of boredom again. As for my son, he was born the first semester that I began a tenure-track job here at the University of South Alabama, and thus he has been with me and borne with me during the hardest of my academic challenges. While I was thinking, teaching, and writing about psychoanalysis every day at school, he was giving me an opportunity to see Freud’s theories in action every day at home. Jazzbo has given my life, including my work as a teacher and scholar, not only meaning and purpose but also great joy. Without him, Theory Lessons would have no rhyme or reason.

INTRODUCTION THE WOUNDED STUDENT AND THE CRISIS OF DESIRE IN THE COLLEGE CLASSROOM BECKY MCLAUGHLIN

A therapist once said to me, “You gallop along on your horse, and you come to a wall that needs to be jumped. So you stop the horse, hop out of the saddle, build the wall higher, and then try to jump it from a stand still. You make everything harder than it has to be.” I laughed ruefully, partly because I found the image humorous but mostly because I knew she was right. Perhaps it was this habit of making life hard for myself that caused me to accept the task of writing a critical theory textbook. At the time the request came, I was using textbooks in very few of my classes. In fact, I was not a big fan of the textbook as a genre because its aesthetic and pedagogical value seemed dubious to me. But when the managing editor of a major textbook company called to say that I would be perfect for the job of writing one, I succumbed to flattery. Realizing that coupling the unlikely concepts of the everyday and the theoretical in an anthology entitled Everyday Theory was going to be an unusually high wall to jump, I brought my friend and colleague Bob Coleman on board as co-editor. Our first task was to define what we meant by theory, and the lion’s share of this task fell to me as I had agreed to write the introduction. Wanting to draw my critical theory students into collaboration, I asked them to weigh in on the following question: “If you had to define theory in one word, what would that word be?” Their answers, among which were a lens, a formula, an explanation, a hypothesis, a philosophy, a discourse, a doctrine, a dogma, an interpretation, a position or stance, and, finally, intellectual masturbation, helped sharpen my thoughts on how to define theory. As I said then and will say now, when theory becomes nothing more than intellectual masturbation, it loses its relevance for the community. And when it hardens into the formulaic, doctrinal, or dogmatic, it ceases to be theory, for theory is precisely a restless questioning, a space in which unresolved issues can be identified and

2

Introduction

pursued. The term “theory” may suggest a type of specialized discourse or a collection of “isms,” but it is a diverse field that is not simple pluralism. As David Carroll argues in The States of “Theory,” “Even if it is a manifestation of a certain form of plurality or multiplicity, . . . it does not assume or define the peaceful coexistence of positions that are supposedly noncontradictory, self-sufficient or autonomous, each unto itself.”1 In other words, theory is not a cafeteria where formalism and post-colonialism sit pleasantly and silently cheek by jowl like Jell-O and meatloaf, waiting to be selected by the critic who is hungry for this one day and that the next. It may more closely resemble a battlefield on which one theory attacks another, on which theory occasionally attacks itself like a dog nipping at its own tail, and on which theories join together to create hybrids or coalitions in order to strengthen their position vis-à-vis the perceived opposition. A less violent and more fruitful analogue, however, is provided by Gary Snyder in his definition of poetry: “a tool, a net or trap to catch and present; a sharp edge; a medicine, or that little awl that unties knots.”2 The same can be said of theory. It can be the sharp-edged focus we need when our vision has become blurred, our sensibility glib and complacent, or our intellect lazy and vain. In Standing by Words, Wendell Berry argues that “one of the great practical uses of literary disciplines . . . is to resist glibness—to slow language down and make it thoughtful.”3 He is speaking of poetry when he says that “verse checks the merely impulsive flow of speech, subjects it to another pulse, to measure, to extralinguistic considerations; by inducing the hesitations of difficulty, it admits into language the influence of the Muse and of musing.”4 But he might just as well be speaking of theory, for it, too, resists glibness, slows language down and makes it thoughtful, subjects it to another pulse, induces the hesitations of difficulty, and admits into language the influence of musing and the reciprocal need to muse.5 During the time it took us to get the book ready for its publication in 2005, Bob and I engaged in a great deal of discussion about theory— especially regarding its purpose and value—discussion that sometimes 1

David Carroll, introduction to The States of “Theory”: History, Art, and Critical Discourse, ed. David Carroll (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 7. 2 Quoted in Wendell Berry, Standing by Words: Essays by Wendell Berry (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1983), 28. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 This definition of theory is a slightly-modified version of the one from the introduction to Everyday Theory: A Contemporary Reader, ed. Becky McLaughlin and Bob Coleman (New York: Pearson Longman, 2005), 3.

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erupted in argument. I was interested in French theorists, while Bob was interested in American. He was drawn to theorists who use “plain style,” while I was drawn to those who engage in “écriture féminine.” But the really big difference between us was that I felt as if my life has been changed—no, more accurately, saved—by theory, particularly psychoanalysis, and thus I had the conviction and enthusiasm of one who had undergone something akin to a religious conversion. In retrospect, it is no wonder that we frequently butted heads, for, like a missionary, I wanted to “spread the gospel,” to show that theory mattered and not merely (or even centrally) in the classroom. Was I able to show this, finally, in the textbook’s introduction and in the sections that I wrote on “Reading and Writing,” “Money and Power,” “Culture and Ethnicity,” “Desire and Sexuality,” and “Identity and Spirituality”? I doubt it. This was a textbook, after all, and textbooks belong inside, not outside, of classrooms. Since the publication of that book eleven years ago, however, my thinking about where and why theory matters has changed. The word “crisis” has been applied to the state of education with such frequency and urgency in the intervening years that one would quite literally have to bury one’s head in the sand to avoid noticing. And thus it was not that old habit of making life hard for myself that caused me to want to produce a book coupling theoria and praxis, those long-standing antagonists in Western culture, but a growing sense that school had failed both my own child and the students who were registering for my college classes. As Ruth Evans points out in “Be Critical!,” the word “critical” has its origins in the word “crisis,” and thus it “was originally a medical term: to do with the crisis of a disease.”6 In its origins, says Evans, when one is critical, one occupies a “particular space (the body) and time (of crisis)”7 between life and death. These are critical times for liberal education—will it live or will it die?— and so we need to bring to bear on our pedagogical practices the ideas of our strongest, most critical thinkers, thinkers such as Arendt, Badiou, Deleuze, Foucault, and Lacan, to name but a few. The place we most need theory, the place where it can have the greatest impact, is precisely in the classroom—hence this collection of essays on the relationship between theory and pedagogy.

6

Ruth Evans, “Be Critical!,” in Burn After Reading, Vol. 1, Miniature Manifestos for a Post/Medieval Studies, ed. Eileen A. Joy and Myra Seaman (Brooklyn, NY: punctum books and Washington, DC: Oliphaunt Books, 2014), 20. 7 Ibid.

4

Introduction

I. At eighteen, my son has just finished his high school years, but in the picture taped to my refrigerator door, he is a first-grader dressed in his school uniform. This picture shows him kneeling on the living room floor as he arranges a group of twenty-six Beanie Babies in a circle, one of whom occupies the center. Each Beanie Baby is perched on a “chair,” which is in actuality an upside-down plastic container. Some of the Beanie Babies are sitting up straight, some are slouching, and some are lying down, but no one—certainly not my seven-year-old son—is going to tell them to sit, slouch, or lie otherwise. This is, as my son tells me, a Beanie Baby conference at which the Beanie Babies have gathered to discuss the first seven books of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, which feature the misadventures of the Baudelaire orphans, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny. The Beanie Baby in the center is the smallest but the most important: he is the keynote speaker. Also arranged in a circle, inside the circle of Beanie Babies, are the seven Lemony Snicket books under discussion. When it is time for me to take my son to school, he reluctantly abandons the Beanie Baby Conference but requests that I not interfere by dismantling the conference site. As conference organizer, he will decide when the conference is over. Looking at this picture and recalling that morning eleven years ago, I marvel at two things: one, that he would have been up early enough to play before going to school given how early school starts here in Mobile, Alabama, and, two, that he would have engaged in this particular type of play, which is somewhat akin to the game my siblings and I called “School” back when we were children. But then I recall earlier episodes that should have prepared me for the Beanie Baby Conference. At age three, my son was poring over the instructions for putting together Lego Bionicles while humming snippets of classical music. At age four, after having been steeped in Greek mythology, he asked me who the father of Prometheus was. “Why do you ask?” I inquired. “I need to know who the father of Prometheus is so that I can go to ‘graddy’ school and study psychoanalysis,” he replied. His question regarding paternity suggests knowledge about psychoanalysis already gained—and at a very young age. That same year, when a plastic action figure tumbled down the chute of a gumball machine, he named it Chaucer. At age five, his favorite topics of conversation were black holes and superstring theory, about which he could hold forth with the best of adults. At age six, he was drawing pictures of people drinking wine and viewing paintings at an art gallery. And instead of setting up a lemonade stand in the front yard, he sold pottery he had made using the clay he had gathered from the banks of a

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nearby creek. Literature, music, astronomy, and art—these were the subjects my son cut his teeth on as well as the lifeblood of the humanities. Once my son left the warm embrace of the Montessori Academy, however, his life in school became a series of unfortunate events resembling those narrated in Lemony Snicket’s Book Five, The Austere Academy. As Vice Principal Nero says to the Baudelaire orphans, “You’ll get an education here if we have to break both your arms to do it.” 8 Although my son’s elementary school years were not as bad as those the Baudelaire orphans endured at Prufrock Preparatory School, it was clear that the policies of No Child Left Behind had already changed his educational landscape for the worse when I got a call from the school principal requesting that my son participate in a cycle of standardized exams despite the fact that both of his arms had just been placed into casts—the result of an unfortunate event on the playground during afterschool hours (recess had been eliminated as part of his standard school day, of course). “Your son always does very well on these exams,” said the principal, “and we need his score in order to boost the school’s score or we’ll lose our funding.” Surely the fate of an elementary school should not rest on, or even be perceived to rest on, the shoulders of a young boy with two broken arms. By the time my son was thirteen, getting him to school was a Herculean task. “I’m too tired,” he would say. “And it’s so boring. I hate school!” This became his everyday mantra and with good reason. In order to get to school on time, he had to be in the car by 6:40 a.m. According to a recent issue of U. S. New and World Report, “the vast majority of high schools in this country start before 8:30 a.m., with 43 percent starting before 8:00 a.m.,” despite the fact that, in order to accommodate the circadian rhythms of teenagers, the “American Academy of Pediatrics recommends school start no earlier than 8:30 a.m.”9 “I’ll tell you who’s being accommodated,” my son said rather cynically, attempting to eat a granola bar while putting on his shoes and socks in the car on the way to school. “Parents and their work schedules!” The older he got, the more cynical he became and the more resistant to school. One of the most distressing aspects of middle and high school, as my son described it to me, was the absolute quashing of curiosity and the spirit of inquiry. When my son questioned the purpose of a particular assignment or activity, he 8 Lemony Snicket, The Austere Academy (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000), 22. 9 See Jerusha Conner, “Sleep to Succeed,” U. S. News and World Report, July 22, 2015, accessed May 14, 2016, http://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledgebank/2015/07/22/teens-need-more-sleep-to-succeed-in-school.

6

Introduction

was immediately perceived as being insubordinate and was punished accordingly. Here at home, however, I had always encouraged him to ask why and had never fallen back on the authoritarian “Because I told you so!” as an answer for anything. What my son was unsuccessfully attempting to engage in was theory if we understand it as Nick Peim does in Critical Theory and the English Teacher: “Theory . . . is the proper process of questioning, of calling to account, or re-examining; a process essential to the health of any cultural practice”—or, I might add, to the health of any pedagogical practice—in its refusal “to be content with what is established simply because it is established . . . .”10 It was a rude awakening for my son to find that in the classroom he could no longer engage in theory and that he was no longer being treated as a rational human being deserving of a reasonable answer to a reasonable question. Ultimately, we opted for homeschooling or—as educational critic and philosopher John Holt calls it—“unschooling.” Now my son devotes his days to playing chess, making films, learning to play cello and keyboard, and following politics. He knows more about the natural world than I will ever know, his writing skills are superior to the vast majority of the students in my composition classes, and his vocabulary is bigger and more robust than that of many of my graduate students. Sadly, my son’s educational biography is both typical and atypical— typical in that many students think school is boring and hate having to go, and atypical in that not all of these disenchanted students have the option of being educated at home. Part of the problem with American education, according to educational consultant Kirsten Olson, is that the kind of teaching and knowledge valued by most schools is hopelessly oldfashioned. The “banking” concept of education is still alive and well with teacher-centered classrooms and students who sit “passively receiving information and answering questions when called on.”11 The kind of work students are required to do is very low-level in terms of cognitive function. In fact, reports Olson, “students in 80% of American schools are typically working at the one or two lowest levels of cognitive demand: knowledge and comprehension.”12 No wonder so many students are bored. But, sadly, that is not all they are. In Olson’s Wounded by School, part one of which is entitled “Broken,” she tells story after story “of lost human capacity, of intense grief, of profound shame” arising out of “emotional and spiritual 10 Nick Peim, Critical Theory and the English Teacher: Transforming the Subject (London: Routledge, 1993), 213. 11 Kirsten Olson, Wounded by School: Recapturing the Joy in Learning and Standing Up to Old School Culture (New York: Teachers College Press, 2009), 61. 12 Ibid., 61.

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experiences of disconnection, misunderstanding, or intellectual rejection in school . . . .”13 No wonder so many students hate school. When Olson began a research project in which she sought to discover “how extremely motivated, persistent learners had become avid and self-confident,”14 what she found surprised her. Almost everyone she interviewed had stories of educational wounding, and as she began compiling each educational biography, almost all of her interviewees told her that “they felt they had a lot to recover from in their school experiences, and that their learning lives had developed primarily outside of, or in opposition to, their experiences in school”15: My interviewees reported that many of their experiences of formal education actually had the opposite effect on them than intended . . . . Rather than making them more dutiful, more competent, and more disciplined, they grew weary of school and learning. Many said that the long-term effects of schooling may have made them too conventional in their thinking, risk averse, overly intimidated by authority, or too likely to underestimate themselves. For some, receiving many negative messages about their behavior and abilities made them almost toxically rebellious, reflexively contrary, and [prone to] acting on anger and hurts that have not been acknowledged. Finally, some of my interviewees described themselves as simply deadened—less enlivened by the world and its possibilities than they might be, sometimes engulfed by a sense of hopelessness about [their] own futures and the possibilities life seems to offer.16

What Olson reports here is disheartening, but it certainly rings true when I think about my own early classroom experiences. I am seven years old when what I refer to as the “primal pedagogical scene” takes place. It is 1966, and I am a second grader at a school for “mish kids” in the Belgian Congo. I am sitting in English class, a book report on The Cat in the Hat lying on the desk before me. As Mrs. Gorham calls roll, I can hardly contain my excitement. This is my first book report, and I am itching to turn it in to the teacher, certain that I will receive approbation for my creativity. Instead of allowing my sentences to remain trapped on a piece of lined paper, I have released them by cutting out each sentence, carefully moving the scissor blades up around the rabbit ears of the letters “d” and “h” and down around the beaver tails of the letters “p” and “y.” That is 13

Ibid., 25. Ibid., 3. 15 Ibid., 4. 16 Ibid., 28-29. 14

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Introduction

how I think of the letters—as living creatures—and I hate to see them stuck between the lines, which remind me of nothing if not a barbed wire fence. When I hand Mrs. Gorham my stack of sentences, neatly held together with a piece of ribbon, her face takes on a pinched look. “What is this?” she asks as if she smells something that stinks. “My book report,” I reply. Frowning deeply, she says, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Go and stand in the corner.” For the rest of the period, I stand with my eyes traveling up and down the seam where two walls come together. Am I crying? I do not recall. Do I feel ashamed, as I have been told that I should? I do not recall. As is the case in obsessive neurosis, affect and event have become untethered through repression. I can recall the event, and I know what its after-effects were, but I cannot recall how I felt in the moment of rebuke and punishment. From an objective standpoint, it may be the case that this classroom episode was less painful than later ones such as the time I received a paddling in front of my sixth-grade classmates for having forgotten to get a test paper signed by my parents. I am a shy, straight-A student, never one to get into trouble, but rules are rules, and so I have to take my licks. “Are you wearing shorts?” asks the teacher, gripping a wooden paddle with holes drilled in it to cut down on wind resistance. “Yes,” I reply. “Then lift up your skirt and bend over.” Upon returning to my desk, I put my head down and weep in tripartite pain: the pain of being beaten, of being seen being beaten, and then of being seen crying in the aftermath of being beaten and being seen being beaten. Nay, this was pain en abyme. Nevertheless, I continue to think of the book report episode as the primal pedagogical scene because of the broken link between affect and event and because it played a fundamental role in my relationship to the classroom for years to come: I did not cut up (with) a text again until after I began to study psychoanalysis in graduate school. These stories are part of my “institutional autobiography,” a term coined by Richard Miller in Writing at the End of the World.17 Agitating for the importance of institutional autobiography, Miller argues that only by acknowledging the personal dimension and recognizing the role it plays in our scholarly work will academic writing remain meaningful. I could not agree with him more. In fact, long before Miller coined the term, I was attempting to call attention to the fact that scholarship is always ruled by the same ambivalences, misprisions, misrecognitions, and prejudices that govern subjectivity. From both a feminist and a psychoanalytic perspective, 17

Richard Miller, Writing at the End of the World (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), 138.

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it has always seemed important to me, for reasons of authenticity and transparency, to let the reader know where I am coming from, but I did not have a good name for this generic impulse until Miller came up with one. I would argue, however, that writing institutional autobiography is important not only for our scholarly but also for our pedagogical work. If we are to “address the student as a whole person”18 as Michael Roth and countless others including John Dewey have encouraged us to do, we have to be whole persons. And writing in this genre allows us to be teachers, scholars, and subjects all rolled into one big, messy ball of waxy humanity. For many years, I thought that my classroom experiences were unusual and that most students were able to make their way through school without much epistemological trauma. But the longer I have taught, the more hurt I have either seen or intuited. As Megan Boler states in Feeling Power: Emotions and Education, “Most in the United States undergo twelve compulsory years of schooling. Each of us can recount at least one if not many horror stories about our schooling experience which exemplify humiliation, shame, cruelty, fear, and anger—and sometimes joy, pleasure, and desire.” 19 In this context, the word “sometimes” is heartbreaking. Arguing that it is not only fruitful but necessary to address emotions in the classroom, Boler voices the hope that “educators can consider how their pedagogies are informed by their own emotions, moods, and values; how the inexplicit subtexts of emotion impact students; how curricula that neglect emotion (for example, teaching students never to use the word ‘I’ in writing as it is ‘too personal’—a phobia in part reflecting the fear of emotion in higher education) deny students possibilities of passionate engagement.”20 It is interesting to ponder how my book report might have been received if Mrs. Gorham had been aware that her pedagogy was informed by her own emotions, moods, and values. Did she ever consider the impact that the inexplicit subtext of her emotions would or did have on me? It seems unlikely, given that emotions have been systematically discounted in the classroom and that they are notoriously difficult to define. Where emotions are not discounted but acknowledged, however, is in psychoanalysis, and this, along with its narrative and interpretive practices, is one of the reasons that I am drawn to psychoanalysis as a unique form of pedagogy.

18

Michael S. Roth, Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), xv. 19 Megan Boler, Feeling Power: Emotions and Education (New York: Routledge, 1999), xvii. 20 Ibid., xviii.

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An important difference between Sigmund Freud and his mentor, the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, is that Freud was not merely interested in the etiology of hysteria but in its treatment. (Can it be without significance that the word “hysterical” has come to be defined as “deriving from or affected by uncontrolled extreme emotion”?) Instead of studying the visual oddities of hysteria in a large amphitheater, Freud attended to the aural register in a private office, listening intently to what his hysterical patients had to say and helping them to reestablish the connection between past and present through narrative. In fact, the figure of the storytelling hysteric was central to Freud’s development of psychoanalysis. If Freud is the father of psychoanalysis, the famous hysteric Anna O. is certainly the mother, for she is credited with having discovered the cathartic method and with having given it the name of “chimney sweeping” or “talking cure.” Noting the importance of Anna O.’s case study, Josef Breuer referred to it as “the germ cell of the whole of psychoanalysis.”21 The hysteric cast a long shadow over the founding moments of psychoanalysis, and thus she has also cast a long shadow over my introduction to and immersion in the writings of Freud and his French disciple, Jacques Lacan. Studying Anna O., I learned that at the height of her hysteria, she suffered language disturbances such as an inability to speak her native German accompanied by a sudden fluency in English, French, and Italian followed by a lapse into total aphasia. Many of these linguistic symptoms were relieved once she became Breuer’s patient and was able to speak about her feelings of anger, despair, and fear. But the real cure came when she published a collection of short stories: “It was not until then, until her subjectivity was visibly represented in the world, that she fully recovered.” 22 Like Anna O., Charlotte Perkins Gilman suffered from hysteria, arguing in “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’?” that the purpose of the story was to prevent others from being driven crazy. In Gilman’s view, “A woman who allowed herself to be produced, to become an object, would be a hysteric; but one who produced herself, wrote herself, would become well.”23 When Freud made his famous declaration

21

Josef Breuer to August Forel, November 21, 1907, quoted in George Pollock, “The Possible Significance of Childhood Object Loss in the Josef Breuer-Bertha Pappenheim (Anna O.)-Sigmund Freud Relationship,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 16 (1968): 723. 22 Diane Price Herndl, “The Writing Cure: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Anna O., and ‘Hysterical’ Writing,” NWSA Journal 1.1 (1988): 67. 23 Ibid., 69.

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of “Wo Es war, soll Ich werden,”24 he was saying something along the same lines that Gilman was saying and that the early existentialist philosopher Kierkegaard had proposed in Either/Or, namely that the ethical person is editor of her/his own life: “the ethical individual dares to employ the expression that he is his own editor, but he is also fully aware that he is responsible, responsible for himself personally, inasmuch as what he chooses will have a decisive influence on himself . . . . To a certain degree, the person who lives ethically cancels the distinction between the accidental and the essential, for he takes responsibility for all of himself as equally essential.” 25 This may have been the single most important lesson I learned as a graduate student, after which writing became not merely an intellectual exercise but a form of self-healing. In writing about the primal pedagogical scene, for example, I was able to transform punishment into punctuation. I was able to take responsibility for the “accident” of having been subjected to Mrs. Gorham’s unjust pedagogical practices. Much later I would discover Paul Ricoeur’s concept of narrative identity, whereby one comes to be through narration: “the subject is never given at the beginning” of a narrative, for if it were, it would “run the risk of reducing itself to a narcissistic ego, self-centered and avaricious.” 26 Ricoeur’s narrator is like Freud’s or Kierkegaard’s ethical subject, but with Ricoeur, there is an added pedagogical dimension. Nothing would be learned if the subject were a given, i.e., were already known at the beginning of the narrative: “In place of an ego enchanted by itself a self is born” through stories.27 This has important implications for the classroom, especially for those who enter it weary, conventional, risk-averse, toxically rebellious, reflexively contrary, and/or deadened—in short, already having been hurt. Thousands of eighteen-year-olds arrive in our classrooms with psychic wounds that may not always be easy to spot, for these wounds are what grief and loss researchers Nini Leick and Marianne Davidsen-Nielsen might call “ambiguous” wounds: wounds whose effects are hard to 24 This statement has been incorrectly translated by ego psychologists as “Where Id was, there Ego must come to be.” Freud was not an ego psychologist; nor was Lacan. Thus, the more accurate translation is “Where it was, there I must come to be.” 25 Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part II, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 260-261. 26 Paul Ricoeur, “Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator,” in Facts and Values, ed. M. C. Doeser and J. N. Kraay (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1986), 132. Emphasis added. 27 Ibid. Emphasis added.

12

Introduction

articulate and generally go unrecognized both by the surrounding culture and by the individual her- or himself. 28 As long as these wounds go unrecognized, however, there is no possibility of healing them. In fact, argues psychotherapist David Stoop, founder of the Center for Family Therapy in Newport Beach, California, “denial of wounding actually intensifies our psychic hurts and impedes our ability to let go of our inner resentments, forgive, and move on with equanimity and resolution.”29 I feel sure that a large number of the students I have had in my classes, especially at the undergraduate level, have failed to recognize the ways in which school has hurt them, and thus they have not been able to shed their resentments, forgive, and move on to embrace higher education with equanimity and resolution. If the desire to learn is one of life’s most fundamental desires, then what I am seeing are students arriving in my classes with a full-blown crisis of desire. After twelve years of immersion in a compulsory educational system that John Holt compares to the meat packing industry—a system in which learning is considered a product, not a process, in which learning must be assessed in easily measurable and quantifiable ways, and in which students are seen as “unformed products” to be shaped, stamped, graded, and sent off to market—students have reacted defensively by developing symptoms of resistance to learning. A symptom is, as Freud describes it in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, “a sign of, and a substitute for, an instinctual satisfaction which has remained in abeyance; it is a consequence of the process of repression.”30 It may be the case that the way contemporary schools operate represses the “epistemophilic instinct” or the “instinct for knowledge” (as Freud conceptualizes it), replacing it with what Lacan refers to as “a will not to know (a ne rien vouloir savoir).”31 In other words, this “will not to know” is a reaction to and defense against having one’s desire to know stymied. Ignorance, then, becomes a “passion greater than love or hate[,]” 32 a passion that can only be overcome through the teacher’s desire. Although education is not therapy, it does have a therapeutic dimension just as therapy has a pedagogical. In fact, there are many parallels between the classroom and the clinic, teacher and analyst, student and analysand. The 28

Ibid., 84-85. Ibid., 84. 30 Sigmund Freud, Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, trans. Alix Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1989), 9. 31 Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 7. 32 Ibid. 29

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teacher’s desire, for example, is quite similar to the analyst’s desire, which Bruce Fink refers to as a “purified desire” that has nothing to do with the analyst as feeling human being but with the analyst as a function or role. This “purified desire” is “an enigmatic desire that does not tell the patient what the analyst wants him or her to say or do,”33 for neurotics are not really engaged in analysis when they attempt to fulfill or frustrate the analyst’s desire. Nor, would I argue, are students engaged in learning when they attempt to fulfill or frustrate the teacher’s desire. Like the analyst, what the teacher wants her/his students to do is to adopt a certain practice of reading or thinking, not a particular content. Instead of stating a desire for this or that outcome, the analyst’s job, like the teacher’s, is to get the analysand to engage in the work of analysis, i.e., “to come to therapy, to put his or her experience, thoughts, fantasies, and dreams into words, and to associate to them.”34 Until recently, I believed that only the student’s desire mattered and that mine was completely out of place in the classroom. In this respect, I was a good deal like many of the therapists and therapists-in-training with whom Fink has worked. According to Fink, they think that expressing any desire at all to their analysands is inappropriate, even when an analysand misses an appointment or stops therapy altogether. Like these “nondesiring” therapists, I believed that if my students wanted to come to class, they would and that if they did not want to and thus were absent, it was not my responsibility (or my right) to encourage them to do otherwise. What Fink points out, however, is that it is not the analysand’s flagging desire that drives analysis but the analyst’s unflagging one. The same, I would argue, is true of the classroom. It is the teacher’s desire, not the student’s crisis of desire, that ignites conversation, debate, and discussion—in short, participation. Having made this recognition, I realize that, as Fink argues, even subtle expressions of desire may keep students in class when they have no will, much less desire, to continue attending. Now I say, “I look forward to seeing you at our next class session,” and if students are absent, I let them know that their presence in class matters to me, that I want them to attend and that I consider them an important part of our classroom community. This new approach is more in keeping with Bill Readings’ understanding of pedagogy as “a relation, a network of obligation.”35 In The University in Ruins, he speaks of the teacher as a rhetor rather than a magister, for “[t]he rhetor is a speaker who takes account of the audience, 33

Ibid., 6. Ibid., 7. 35 Bill Readings, The University in Ruins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 158. Emphasis added. 34

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Introduction

while the magister is indifferent to the specificity of his or her addressees.” 36 Believing as I now do that my students come to me wounded and that this may account for their apparent reluctance to learn, it is no longer possible for me to be indifferent to the specificity of those whom I address. Thus, when my students demand a dumbed-down version of something complex, a study guide for easy memorization, a passing grade, or, ultimately, a degree, I force myself to remember what Lacan said: “Just because people ask you for something doesn’t mean that’s what they really want you to give them.”37 To take at face value a demand that is merely expedient is to miss an opportunity to try “to hear that which cannot be said but that which tries to make itself heard.”38 What cannot be said but nevertheless tries to make itself heard is the unconscious. At some deeply (or maybe not so deeply) repressed level, what my students really want but no longer know how to ask for, I would wager, is passionate engagement and not “a customized playlist of knowledge.”39 I am not alone in this wager. In “The ‘Good-Enough’ Teacher and the Authentic Student,” a title which plays on British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott’s concept of the “good-enough mother,” Guy Allen describes the positive shift that occurred in his students’ writing when they stopped wanting merely to please him and traded in their compliant, defensive voices for personal, expressive ones. In teaching an expository writing class at the University of Toronto, Allen found that although his students had been capable of meeting rigorous admissions requirements, they were unable to write expository essays that could pass muster. As Allen admits, “I read them and despaired. Clauses tangled, modifiers danged, clichés governed, subjects and verbs disagreed, and premises masqueraded as conclusions. Worse, few of these essays had any meaning. These essays faked the making of meaning.”40 In trying to understand what appeared to be a cognitive disconnect, Allen turned to theory, and he found Winnicott’s concepts of the True and False Self useful. 41 Through Winnicott, what Allen began to recognize was that his students were creating a False Self in order to defend themselves against what they 36

Ibid. Emphasis added. Fink, A Clinical Introduction, 20. Emphasis added. 38 Ibid., 165. 39 Roth, Beyond the University, xi. 40 Guy Allen, “The ‘Good-Enough’ Teacher and the Authentic Student,” in A Pedagogy of Becoming, ed. Jon Mills (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002), 143. 41 Although I do not like the binarism implied by Winnicott’s concepts of True and False Self, I nevertheless find something fruitful in Allen’s use of the concepts to describe student writing at the university level. 37

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perceived to be a hostile environment, and this was negatively affecting their writing. According to Allen, because the university is relentless in its focus on evaluation and judgment, it creates defensive behavior on the part of the students, and thus the “poor writing our students produce speaks in the voice of the False Self.”42 Like Allen, I have seen the kind of writing produced by the False Self—“compliant prose,” as Allen calls it, which not only alienates the reader but also expresses the alienation of the writer—and I know that the expressive, honest, personalized voice that reflects its own experience and psychic reality is the only voice that leads to the kind of self-healing students are in need of. Allen’s experiments in the classroom have led him to adopt, and to encourage others to adopt, three practices, two of which are pertinent to the argument that I have been making: one, “assignments that encourage students to write first-person narratives based on their experiences and observations” and, two, “an instructor/student relationship defined by the instructor’s operating as editor (supportive other) rather than simply as judge . . . .”43 The basic features of Allen’s writing course mimic the basic features of a psychoanalytic session with its emphasis on personal narrative and non-judgmental relationship between analyst and analysand. Referring to Freud as a master of the narrative, Donald Spence argues that “a well-constructed story possesses a kind of narrative truth that is real and immediate and carries an important significance for the process of therapeutic change.” 44 In fact, many contemporary psychotherapeutic practices make use of narrative in treating those suffering from psychic trauma, and even medical doctors are beginning to see the value of narrative in treating patients who are physically ill. Using language that sounds like that used in a literature classroom, child psychiatrist and medical educator Leon Eisenberg describes his psychiatric practice in this way: “The decision to seek medical consultation is a request for interpretation. . . . Patient and doctor together reconstruct the meanings of events in a shared mythopoesis. . . . Once things fall into place, once experience and interpretation appear to coincide, once the patient has a coherent ‘explanation’ which leaves him no longer feeling the victim of the inexplicable and the uncontrollable, the symptoms are, usually, exorcised.” 45 What is perhaps most valuable in Eisenberg’s 42

Ibid., 154. Ibid., 148. 44 Donald Spence, Narrative Truth as Historical Truth (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1982), 21. 45 Leon Eisenberg, “The Physician as Interpreter: Ascribing Meaning to the Illness Experience,” in Comprehensive Psychiatry 22 (1981): 245. 43

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Introduction

description is the concept of collaboration, a concept emphasized by Lisa Capps and Elinor Ochs, who argue that in telling and retelling about one’s experiences, opportunities for collaboration between therapist and client arise—and thus opportunities for reinterpretation and revision of self and other.46 If our students are wounded, as certainly seems to be the case, we have before us an exciting collaborative opportunity, that of functioning as supportive other who helps students begin to identify and narrate their primal pedagogical scenes and thus to heal. Does this mean abandoning all judgment regarding student work? No, I believe that we continue to be obliged to assess and evaluate in order to help our students develop and grow. What I am suggesting, however, is that we provide opportunities for students to think, talk, and write about the ways in which they have been pedagogically wounded. Once the writing cure has been initiated, perhaps there will be less resistance to learning and the “epistemophilic instinct” will be reinstated. Perhaps school will become a place where students find joy, pleasure, and desire on more than a “sometimes” basis.

II. While writing this introduction, I found myself reading a collection of manifestos presented at the 2012 International Congress on Medieval Studies, which was published in 2014 as a two-volume book entitled Burn After Reading. As Eileen A. Joy explains in her prefatory note to volume one, the presenters had been asked to think about and articulate what kind of future they wanted for post/medieval studies. It might not seem that a book of manifestos would have much in common with Theory Lessons, but, in fact, much of what is stated in Burn After Reading resonates with the ideas presented by the fifteen essayists in this collection. For these essayists, too, gesture toward the kind of future we want for the humanities, and so in solidarity with our medieval colleagues, I weave their manifestos together with our ideas about theory and pedagogy. In Lisa Weston’s manifesto, for example, she pledges to “manifest magical, fantastical and eccentric glamour in [her] scholarship and teaching.”47 This is a worthy pledge, one that the essayists featured in Theory Lessons have 46 Linda C. Garro and Cheryl Mattingly, “Narrative as Construct and Construction,” in Narrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing, ed. Cheryl Mattingly and Linda C. Garro (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 7. 47 Lisa Weston, “‘Tis Magick, Magick That Will Have Ravished Me,” in Burn After Reading, Vol. 1, Miniature Manifestos for a Post/Medieval Studies, ed. Eileen A. Joy and Myra Seaman (Brooklyn, NY: punctum books and Washington, DC: Oliphaunt Books, 2014), 120.

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already made good on as teachers, and while these essays may not be manifestos in the literal sense of the word, each essay either explicitly or implicitly offers a statement of principles as well as a call to action. Certainly these essays are as sincere, honest, and hopeful as manifestos generally are, and they serve the same purpose of unsettling the status quo. A case in point is Bruce Krajewski’s “Žižek on Ideology as Not Seeing, or, the Eyes (Don’t) Have It,” in which he argues that theory is by its very nature a threat to the status quo, especially to the status quo of consumer culture. Although Krajewski does not make explicit reference to anthropologist Barbara Tedlock, we can feel her influence hovering in the margins of his essay, for Tedlock has reminded us that the word “theory” comes from the ancient Greek theoria, “which refers to a sacred pilgrimage to a distant land in order to consult an oracle. Such a visitation involves the observation of material objects together with a heightened form of witnessing or sacramental way of seeing.”48 Tackling head-on the difficult question of how to teach theory when the humanities are being squeezed ever more brutally into utilitarian spaces and when students have been thoroughly steeped in a capitalist environment, Krajewski offers the glamour of Slavoj Žižek, the magic of Philip K. Dick, and the eccentric mixture of Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Brain Games,” and Agnès Varda to make the case for theory’s resilience, plenitude, and dynamism. Although some academics have taken up a post-theory attitude, Krajewski makes a convincing case for why we should avoid joining their ranks by pointing to the power of theory to see what generally escapes the eye, particularly ideological abuses that go undetected by those wearing the spectacles of common sense. Krajewski begins his essay by pointing to the theorist—in this case, Thales of Miletus—as a comic spectacle, but he gives theory the last laugh, arguing as Hans Blumenberg does in The Laughter of the Thracian Woman that the image of the scatterbrained professor “serves as camouflage for the work of undoing capitalism.” Krajewski’s is a great kick-off essay for anyone who feels the need to commiserate about the

48

Furthermore, says Tedlock, “[t]he Greek verb theorein, together with its Latin form observatio, indicates a journey with a divinatory purpose, combined with attentiveness in caring for sacred objects and places. Persons who undertook such journeys, called theoros in Greek, visited shrines where deities revealed themselves. In this ancient world, . . . religious festivals created a suspension of the world of work, providing an opening for the holy to illuminate the everyday world.” See “Theorizing Divinatory Acts: The Integrative Discourse of Dream Oracles,” in Divination: Perspectives for a New Millennium, ed. Patrick Curry (Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2010), 12.

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Introduction

sorry state of affairs in which higher education currently finds itself vis-àvis the administrative, bureaucratic, and political powers that be. Like Krajewski in his effort to introduce his students to the invisibility of ideology, Barry Mauer begins his essay, “Curating the Mystory: Ideology and Invention in the Theory Classroom,” with a reference to Louis Althusser, who argues that ideology is not just a set of beliefs about the world but material practices that shape as well as police identity and social relationships. Because ideology is put in place so early and operates unconsciously, says Mauer, discovering our ideological blind spots can be difficult. But Mauer has found a creative way to help his students do just that through the use of Gregory Ulmer’s “mystory,” a reflective style of writing akin to that of Roland Barthes in A Lover’s Discourse. Not content with critique alone—perhaps Mauer believes as Bruno Latour does that “what performs a critique cannot also compose”49—Mauer has his students engage in what Ulmer refers to as “electrate” reasoning (which makes use of loose association rather than the deductive and/or inductive methods common to “literate” reasoning) to create curated exhibits resulting from collages of historical images, autobiographical texts, found objects, news reports, and various types of art coupled with collections of various media, including still images, printed text, audio, video, and displayed objects. In creating their mystories, Mauer’s students work in groups composed of a querent, witness, diviner, and curator. According to Mauer, the group approach allows for greater reflective disclosure because what one student sees, another may be blind to. One of the things Mauer’s students begin to recognize through their mystories is that the disciplines, including the humanities, carry ideological baggage just as surely as does any other institution. And so Mauer encourages his students as well as his fellow teachers to use the mystory to reflect upon their institutions’ values, behaviors, and sacrifices. In “Text, Theory, and Things: Toward a Pedagogy of Vital Being,” Matthew Overstreet asks how we can understand who we are as teachers and conceptualize our pedagogical project when we live in an age bereft of foundational authority and grand narratives. For many teachers and students, the postmodern world is characterized by loss and disillusionment, and Overstreet uses what might be called Patricia Bizzell’s “mystory” as an illustration of the impact of postmodern thought on pedagogy. In Bizzell’s mystory, she describes the changes that took place in her thinking as a teacher and scholar over a twenty-year period, 49

Bruno Latour, “An Attempt at a ‘Compositionist Manifesto,’” New Literary History (2010), accessed May 14, 2016, http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/ files/120-NLH-finalpdf.pdf. Emphasis added.

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during which she came to doubt that education could combat poverty and political oppression. Overstreet takes a much more optimistic view of what has been called the postmodern impasse, however, when he argues that a concern for context, coupled with a respect for rigorous critique, can help (re)forge the apparently broken link between ethical action and postmodern thought. Like Krajewski and Mauer, Overstreet asks how we should “do theory” in a post-postmodern age. His answer is that we must understand theory as a living thing, as “something that happens in space and time through conscious, communal action,” and that we can create new avenues for pedagogical theory by turning toward the objects that populate our world and establishing relationships with them. In short, Overstreet advocates a mashup of postmodern thought’s epistemology and speculative realism’s ontology. In calling for a “transrational” mode of engagement, Overstreet eschews notions of mastery for the vitality that emerges in an encounter with the object in its limitless, infinite, and unfathomable depth. And thus his call resoundingly echoes that of Harris and Overbey in Burn After Reading: “to treat . . . objects . . . with compassion. To see them in their native logics, their strangeness, their ontological beauty. Materiality is not a trend or a fashion or a mode; it is an ethical system, and it should inform our collective future.” 50 Like mystics such as Meister Eckhart, Hadewijch, and Margery Kempe, Overstreet seems to believe that “looking at objects (and touching them, stroking them, losing yourself to them) could save your soul.”51 Matching Overstreet’s optimism for postmodernity’s positive program, Robert Gray powerfully demonstrates the merit of taking a postmodern or poststructuralist approach to assessment in higher education. In “Teaching and Learning as Textual Acts: Roland Barthes, Assessment, and the Value of the Writerly,” Gray argues that by adopting the Derridean standpoint that “everything is a text,” each aspect of a college course can be made available for analysis and evaluation. According to Gray, the classroom as text is a complex web of signifiers and signifieds that can fruitfully be understood through Roland Barthes’ concepts of “writerly” and “readerly” as well as Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of “novel” and “epic” texts. Using Barthes’ concepts to assess the college classroom, Gray asserts that while the writerly puts students in the active position of meaning-makers, the readerly does the opposite. Like Kirsten Olson, Gray has found that many 50

Anne F. Harris and Karen Eileen Overbey, “Field Change/Discipline Change,” in Burn After Reading, Vol. II, The Future We Want, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Brooklyn, NY: punctum books and Washington, DC: Oliphaunt Books, 2014), 143. Emphasis added. 51 Ibid., 139.

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Introduction

classrooms continue to operate in a readerly rather than a writerly fashion, despite educators’ avowed interest in active learning techniques. One of the obstacles to active learning and/or the writerly is the physical space in which classes are taught. Designed for lecture-based teaching, which is teacher-centered, the classrooms themselves work against writerly practices, argues Gray. The problem with the readerly is that it creates an artificial relationship to the truth through a lecture’s veneer of authenticity and expert authority. It also creates the illusion of denotation, which tricks us into believing that there is a literal meaning to the curriculum and thus an easy way to measure student outcomes. But, as Gray points out, preordained objectives are problematic, especially when interactive learning is introduced into the classroom, for interactive learning leads to unexpected and “collectively achieved ends” that depend not just on the professor but also on the students. This problematizing of preordained objectives resonates with what Will Stockton suggests in Burn After Reading: that we “delete all course objectives from our syllabi—all things that seek in advance to tell the student what he or she will learn.”52 It resonates, too, with statements made by his co-writer, Allan Mitchell: “The humanities should be a place for safe stumbling, a place to forget what we’re doing and to figure it out later; it should encourage people to try on ideas that do not have a secure place in the world, or not yet. The humanities need a new kind of modal logic: necessarily, everything is contingent.” 53 Writing as if in response to Stockton and Mitchell, Gray argues that coupling Barthes’ writerly plurality with Bakhtin’s novelistic indeterminacy gives students agency in the classroom and thus in the pedagogical process itself. Decentralizing the classroom helps students learn how to live life as participants rather than as mere consumers, and thus, for Gray, the “co-production of meaning should be the only true objective of learning.” Although Camelia Raghinaru makes use of the ideas of Lacan rather than those of Barthes or Bakhtin, what she argues in “Psychoanalysis and the Production of the New” is very much in keeping with the argument Gray makes for writerly plurality and novelistic indeterminacy. Using Lacan’s four discourses (those of the master, the university, the hysteric, and the analyst), Raghinaru explores and exposes the sometimes-fraught relationship between teacher and student in the production of knowledge. Focusing on uncertainty as a crucial aspect of pedagogy, she argues that 52

Allan Mitchell and Will Stockton, “Time Change/Mode Change,” in Burn After Reading, Vol. II, The Future We Want, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Brooklyn, NY: punctum books and Washington, DC: Oliphaunt Books, 2014), 162. 53 Ibid. Emphasis added.

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encountering the new and challenging the status quo are moments of growth. In manifesto-like language, Raghinaru calls for a pedagogy that disrupts the institutional status quo and allows it a revolutionary dimension, and thus she decries the discourse of the university, which, as the voice of bureaucracy, would have us embrace a hierarchical relationship between teacher and student in which the teacher transfers an “objective” body of knowledge to the student. In the discourse of the university, the student functions as slave who must be cured of her/his desire for truth and returned to the reality of consumerism. Perhaps the pervasive use of the discourse of the university is why “assessment” has become a key buzzword in the American higher education bureaucracy, as Gray argues. But how does one assess the kind of truth produced by the unconscious? How does one assess learning that proceeds by way of breakthroughs, leaps, discontinuities, regressions, and deferred action? Answering these questions is as difficult as solving a problem like Maria (“How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?”54), but these are the questions that Raghinaru’s essay gives rise to as it lays bare the discourse of the university, a discourse that would prefer to leave unchallenged the traditional linear pedagogy of “progress,” which views learning as a one-directional route from ignorance to knowledge and which seeks to make students into “good” consumerist subjects. What Raghinaru recommends instead is the kind of teaching that Lacan engaged in. Simultaneously occupying the position of analyst and analysand, he sought to show that the positions of mastery and ignorance are not fixed and inflexible but fluid. In other words, “the position of the teacher is of one who learns,” argues Raghinaru, “of the one who teaches nothing other than the way he learns.”55 Tapo Chimbganda makes use of psychoanalysis for different but not entirely unrelated purposes in “Privileged Space: A Psychoanalytic Paradigm for Pedagogy.” She begins by arguing that those who have been in a multicultural classroom have learned that the unconscious requires a privileged space rather than a safe space in order to speak. Clearly, her understanding of privilege is quite different from that held by theorists of gender, race, and class, all of whom view privilege as the outcome of a power imbalance sustained by hundreds of years of prejudice and 54 Oscar Hammerstein, “Maria,” music lyrics, from The Sound of Music, accessed June 6, 2016, http://www.lyricsfreak.com/t/the+sound+of+music/maria+the+nuns_ 20549097.html. 55 Shoshana Felman, Jacques Lacan and the Adventure of Insight (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 88.

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discrimination. Drawing upon Black Feminist Theory for an alternative view of privilege, Chimbganda distinguishes between what might be called the hegemonic privileged, i.e., “those who are privileged because they were born into social, economic, and political power,” and the epistemic privileged, i.e., “those who are disadvantaged due to their race, class, or gender but have come to possess a different kind of power through struggle and experience.” Chimbganda sees psychoanalysis as functioning in the domain of the epistemic privileged since it is viewed as a social and scientific outcast. Its abjection, however, is what makes it valuable for Chimbganda’s purposes. Because the unconscious is wholly unknown to us, except through dreams, slips of the tongue, and bungled actions, it is like a foreign country, and thus the space in which analyst/teacher and analysand/student meet in order to grapple with the unconscious is a strange space indeed. As Chimbganda argues, the unique type of epistemic privilege suggested by the eccentricity of psychoanalysis honors students’ strange interests. This form of privilege, as Chimbganda articulates it, would go a long way toward redressing some of the pedagogical wounds that Olson has documented. For example, Olson tells the story of a young man whose school experience was devoid of passion because his singular love of recreating military battles went unnoticed: “I once did an entire recreation of the Invasion of Normandy in the dirt outside my house, using pine cones to create the Atlantic Wall. But that never was a part of the curriculum. I don’t think a single teacher ever knew.”56 Just as important as Chimbganda’s argument for privileged space is her argument against safe space, however. One of the paradoxes of safe space is that it is supposed to be a space in which students feel secure enough to explore their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors, and yet in the current trigger-phobic climate that exists on many campuses, social dictates such as political correctness make psychoanalytic work—and thus psychic healing and/or “working through”—impossible. Chimbganda’s cogent argument against the pedagogical value of safe space deeply resonates with the ideas articulated in “The Coddling of the American Mind,” an essay in which Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt convincingly argue that contemporary college students’ demands for protection against words and ideas they find distasteful is disastrous for both education and mental health. By coddling students, they argue, we stunt their intellectual and psychological development. 57 Arguing against political correctness

56

Olson, Wounded By School, 6. See Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” The Atlantic Monthly, September 2015, accessed May 1, 2016, 57

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and safe space as unsound pedagogical practices, Chimbganda does the unpopular and risky work of the truly courageous. Like Chimbganda and Raghinaru, Patrick Cesarini and I find psychoanalysis a useful paradigm for thinking through certain types of pedagogical problems. For example, in “Epistemological Trauma and the Primal Pedagogical Scene: Henry James and the Act of (Re)Reading,” we explore and attempt to explain our students’ resistance to reading, a problem that pervades many English literature classrooms. Playing on Freud’s theory of the “primal scene,” we have come up with the concept of the “primal pedagogical scene” to refer to an early and/or originary classroom scene that plays a fundamental role in the constitution of the student’s episteme and life in general. The way one reacts to the scene (traumatic real or imagined) as a child colors the whole of one’s existence, determining one’s relations to one’s parents and teachers, one’s pedagogical preferences, and one’s capacity for epistemological satisfaction. While it may be the case that each of our students has reacted in her/his own way to a particular primal pedagogical scene, we have found it fruitful to try to (re)construct a more general primal pedagogical scene to account for the unpleasure we see our students exhibiting vis-à-vis their texts in the classes we teach. Why the failure to buy their texts in a timely manner? Why the failure, day after day, to bring their texts to class? Why the haste to return their texts to the bookstore at the end of the semester? Why the resistance to the kind of alert reading that Harold Bloom refers to as an agon, struggle, or fight? Using psychoanalytic concepts such as the Oedipal complex and repression, we explore the underlying reasons for the resistance to reading as well as attempt to redress the problem by inviting and initiating students into a sociality of reading in which the teacher/critic returns students not only to the text but also to the social struggle (and their possible place in it) whereby texts live and die, whereby art forms themselves live and die, whereby the varieties of human experience found through such art forms thrive or decay. For us, Henry James seems enormously helpful in enabling such a return because he offers in his own career an exemplary historical instance of the difficult importance of these relations for actual readers and authors and because in an exemplary story about rereading such as “The Figure in the Carpet,” he offers a kind of theory of these relations. Paul Dahlgren, too, has encountered students whose interest in reading is less than enthusiastic, but he has found a novel solution to the problem:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-theamerican-mind/399356/.

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love. In “A New Pedagogy of Love from Plato to Badiou: Rhetorical Hermeneutics and Evental Teaching,” Dahlgren explores how love impacts the classroom, encouraging us to embrace what he refers to as the “excesses of love” in order to generate meaningful educational experiences for our students. Beginning with the works of Plato, in which love and education are frequently bound up together, Dahlgren makes use of Lacan’s seminar on transference to comment on the story told in the Symposium by the priestess Diotima. Lacan, like Plato, argues that the lover is defined by lack and that the desiring lover believes this lack can be filled by the beloved. Having nothing to offer the beloved but lack, the lover’s demand for love is a demand to be loved for what is most hateful— her/his own lack. Out of this paradoxical phenomenon arises one of Lacan’s most paradoxical maxims: “Love is giving what you don’t have.” This paradox suggests why Lacan refers to love as a miracle, giving us the image of one hand reaching out and, inexplicably, another hand reaching back. For Dahlgren, the concept of the miracle is a useful one for thinking about what happens in the classroom. How learning occurs is impossible to explain, and thus it is a kind of miracle: “Something very basic about teaching is very strange indeed—it is inexplicable, and yet it happens,” says Dahlgren. Thousands of researchers have sought to account for great teaching, but over and over again, they have been forced to fall back on the language of the ineffable. Magic, some call it. Mysterious and mystical, say others. Jane Hannaway, the director of the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, refers to it as “voodoo.” 58 Alain Badiou, however, might call it “evental.” Using the example of St. Paul’s conversion experience on the road to Damascus, Badiou argues that when St. Paul proclaimed the Word and declared his faith, he changed both himself and the world. Dahlgren’s belief is that our students will undergo similar conversion experiences if they are encouraged to fall in love with the literary word and to declare that love on the road through the classroom. Laurie Ringer’s essay, “Teaching Dangerously: Assemblages of Canon and Fandom, Michael Drayton, ‘W. S.,’ and Hilary Mantel,” is what might be called an enactment of Dahlgren’s call for the excesses of love and the evental as conversion experience, for through the devotion of popular fandom, Ringer’s students, texts, and classroom practices have been transformed into “something rich and strange.” According to Ringer, instead of working against canonical texts, fan fiction rekindles interest in 58

Elizabeth Green, Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works (And How to Teach It to Everyone) (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014), 7.

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them “through (re)performing, (re)reading, (re)writing, and/or (re)viewing” —and thus brings them back to life. She forcefully argues that the humanities could benefit from integrating the magic of popular fandom into the classroom and not only for purposes of entertainment but also for ethical, theoretical, and existential reasons. While television and film productions such as The Tudors or The Other Boleyn Girl may not be entirely historically accurate, they have the salutary effect of creating awareness of and interest in renaissance England, and thus Ringer sees popular fandom not as a threat to the humanities but as an opportunity to shore them up. In bringing together Shakespeare’s Wars of the Roses dramas with Game of Thrones, Ringer encourages a type of coperformativity in which text and reader collaborate to create “personalized and open-ended meanings that involve and evolve beyond the closure of a given text.” Ringer argues that the excitement stirred up by fan fiction is precisely what students hope to find in their university course work and that while the Harry Potter series, to name but one example, may take them out of their everyday world, it also empowers them to change it for the better. Although popular fandom and fan fiction are far afield from what Charlotte Knox-Williams focuses on in “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Power, Control, and Authority in the Classroom,” she and Ringer have one important thing in common, and that is their use of the ideas of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, especially as articulated in A Thousand Plateaus. While Ringer makes use of the arborescent and the rhizomatic for her argument, Knox-Williams makes use of the paired concepts of territorialization and deterritorialization for hers. These concepts prove useful for Knox-Williams’ exploration of how to redistribute authority in the classroom. Citing John Dewey’s early experiments with student-centered learning and the fact that studentcentered learning has been proven beneficial for students, Knox-Williams asks how we can effectively shift power and control from teacher to student. Arguing that doubt remains regarding the extent to which power can be redistributed as well as how this redistribution can be effected, Knox-Williams questions whether it will ever be possible to eliminate the hierarchies that have been such a central feature in the classroom. In attempting to answer this question, Knox-Williams provides us with an example of a classroom scenario in which the teacher seeks to redistribute authority in the classroom. In this scenario, the teacher remains silent, relinquishing the power exercised through the voice of authority, and one of the students begins issuing orders to the other students in the teacher’s stead. Knox-Williams’ question is this: is student-centered learning

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occurring in this scenario? She turns first to Nietzsche and then to Deleuze and Guattari to answer the question, ultimately concluding that instead of replacing teacher-centered learning with student-centered learning, we should aim for thinking-centered learning. In this conclusion, she sounds very much like Bill Readings: “to listen to Thought, to think beside each other and beside ourselves, is to explore an open network of obligations that keeps the question of meaning open as a locus of debate.” 59 In listening to Thought, Knox-Williams might argue, teacher and student are no longer caught between the devil and the deep blue sea in the redistribution of power, control, and authority in the classroom. While Knox-Williams’ inquiries concern power dynamics in the classroom, Angeliki Roussou’s concern power dynamics in the structures of the art world, and thus in “Instituting and the Discursive: Theorizing ‘Former West,’” she examines the collaborative research project known as Former West from an institutional perspective. According to Roussou, the art world took an “educational turn” in the mid-1990s when it shifted from exhibitionary displays to participatory and discursive events such as symposia, publications, roundtables, and workshops. While many in the art world see these discursive practices as a way of challenging the hegemony of the exhibitionary form, Roussou argues that a discursive practice such as the “project” is ambiguous in its ability to challenge such hegemonic forces. While it offers the possibility of radically democratizing effects, it is also undeniably linked to late capitalism’s perpetuation of precarious labor, for in order to survive the uncertain labor conditions brought on by neoliberalism, workers in the creative arts must operate in a project-based fashion, which entails a constant struggle to make connections through networking. Has the project become a hegemonic structure in its own right? Roussou seems to think so, for she argues that projects are now seen as part of the art canon, and anything outside that canon is seen as “uncool, boring, or clueless.” In her attempt to tackle the paradoxes that surround discursive practices and curatorial/discursive projects such as Former West, Roussou makes use of Michel Foucault’s concept of parrhesia (a form of truth-telling whereby one speaks one’s own mind despite potential risk) to explore “the complexities and entanglements of knowledge, discourse, and institutional power.” Drawing a parallel between Foucault’s account of the French Communist Party and Former West, Roussou points out the blatant normativity of codes and behaviors that Former West has developed and adopted, concluding that

59

Readings, The University in Ruins, 165.

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unless it changes its ways, Former West will no longer be engaged in a parrhesiastic form of instituting. In “Neoliberal Learning and the Specter of Unemployability,” Russell Bentley makes no mention of Foucault’s concept of parrhesia, but he nevertheless makes use of it in his truth-telling critique of the neoliberal university. Clearly, he, like Roussou, believes as do manifesto-writers Fradenburg and Joy that critique continues to be necessary: “As long as there exist asymmetrical power relations and the capitalist-neo-liberal uptake-reification of everything, we will need critique, especially if, by ‘critique,’ we mean speaking truth to power in order to insist that power account for itself, that it be held accountable . . . .”60 Speaking truth to power from within its orbit is precisely what Bentley does in his argument that the neoliberal university disempowers students and professors while simultaneously employing the language of empowerment to drive an ideological agenda. Since the financial crisis of 2008, says Bentley, a university education has been increasingly instrumentalized; getting an education is no longer seen as a good in itself but as the means to a good such as a high-paying job. Even more troubling is the way the discourse of employability commodifies students. The principles of commodification force students to accept risk in two ways, argues Bentley: one, they must cover the full economic cost of tuition, which often financially cripples them for years to come, and, two, they must make themselves employable by distinguishing themselves from their classmates. Failing to get a job is seen as an individual failure either of the student or of her/his university but not of the neoliberal educational system. Unsurprisingly, the specter of unemployability not only haunts the students but also those who educate them, and thus job insecurity encourages educators to shape curricula so as to enhance the employability of students, thereby alienating students from learning, teachers from students, and pedagogy from its emancipatory potential. Obviously, the picture Bentley paints—of students as both consumers and commodities and of professors as frontline service workers—is bleak, but he does offer some small measure of optimism in his discussion of student opportunities for work placement and/or internships. While these opportunities can be seen as an encroachment of the world of work on the world of scholarship, they may, in fact, offer a practical education in capitalism in an age of neoliberalism.

60

L. O. Arayne Fradenburg and Eileen A. Joy, “Paradigm Change/Institutional Change,” in Burn After Reading, Vol. II, The Future We Want, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Brooklyn, NY: punctum books and Washington, DC: Oliphaunt Books, 2014), 151.

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Writing institutional autobiography during a time when, as Bentley would put it, sites of resistance to neoliberalism are being eliminated and reframed as loci of market transactions, Patrick Cesarini recounts in “The Business of Teaching: ‘Team-Based LearningTM’ and the Limits of Pedagogical Innovation” his introduction to a new pedagogical innovation being implemented by his university. Although Cesarini seldom lectures to his students, he had begun to feel that the effectiveness of his pedagogical method was in decline, and so when he was offered an opportunity to attend a workshop on Team-Based Learning, he took it. In the aftermath of the workshop, he began implementing some of TBL’s practices and found them helpful. But his story of TBL’s effectiveness is not a simple conversion narrative. Instead, it is one in which Cesarini articulates some of the benefits of TBL while also raising questions about its ability to respond in any real way to the crisis in education caused, at least in part, by our neoliberal capitalist economy. His story is what he refers to as a mid-level-drama that operates somewhere between the personal and social registers, and he, like Mauer, encourages his fellow teachers to engage in this sort of storytelling as well. Although Cesarini concedes that certain TBL practices are responsible for the improvements he has seen in his students, he also raises concerns about making use of these practices in a literature classroom, one of which is the reduction of course content covered in a semester. Cutting back on the number of literary texts read in a class for the sake of efficiency entails real disciplinary losses, argues Cesarini, for a short story written by Poe is not interchangeable with a short story written by Alcott. Of even greater concern, however, is its implementation in classes of one hundred students or more. Instead of fighting against bloated class sizes and the use of poorly compensated nontenurable faculty to teach labor-intensive courses such as composition, TBL leaves the status quo unchallenged, and thus its implementation is a surrender to the crisis in higher education rather than a solution to it. Ultimately, Cesarini sees TBL as little more than a diversion since it encourages teachers to accept the way things are instead of fighting to change it. What he sees as our task, then, is to be attentive to our home institutions’ overall management, to re-assume the power of faculty governance, and to participate actively and collaboratively in institutional thinking about learning-in-general. The final essay in this collection, Tetiana Matusevych’s “Developing Democracy in Ukraine by Gender Mainstreaming in Education: Challenges and Opportunities,” is both the most manifesto-like and the most poignant, for her essay has as its backdrop the two-months’ long Euromaidan Movement (a series of demonstrations that shook Ukraine

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throughout the winter of 2013-2014) as well as the ongoing war in Donbas. As Ukraine attempts to become a functioning democracy, the war in Donbas, the slow pace of reforms, and the economic crisis hinder progress. But in Matusevych’s essay, she lays out a thoughtful and exhaustive plan for how to achieve democratic change through gender mainstreaming, by which she means a strategy for making both women’s and men’s concerns and experiences integral to all economic, political, and social policies and programs. Noting that 75 percent of Ukrainian women encounter some form of violence in their families—whether it be economic, physical, psychological, or sexual—she believes that gender mainstreaming in education must be made a top priority if Ukraine is to build a successful democracy. While admitting that there are many challenges to implementing gender mainstreaming in Ukraine’s educational system, Matusevych outlines a number of methodological frameworks that she believes might fruitfully be employed, the first of which is gender theory. What makes gender theory particularly valuable is its interdisciplinarity, for this characteristic produces a holistic, comprehensive understanding of gender relations. A second framework is transversality, especially as it has been articulated by Deleuze and Guattari as well as by Wolfgang Welsch, and by this is meant the recognition of plurality and the existence of heterogeneous positions and paradigms. A third and fourth framework are transgression and transculturality, both of which find manifestation in freedom, democracy, honesty, and egalitarianism, to name but a few of the most important universal humanistic values common to many cultures. I hope that Matusevych’s dream comes true: a Ukrainian society in which men will feel free to work in kindergarten classrooms while their female counterparts no longer have to choose between having a baby and having a job. I hope, too, that these essays will help address the crisis in education by reinterpreting, reinventing, and reinvigorating the contemporary classroom.

Bibliography Allen, Guy. “The ‘Good-Enough’ Teacher and the Authentic Student.” In A Pedagogy of Becoming, edited by Jon Mills, 141-176. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002. Berry, Wendell. Standing by Words: Essays by Wendell Berry. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1983. Boler, Megan. Feeling Power: Emotions and Education. New York: Routledge, 1999.

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Carroll, David. Introduction to The States of “Theory”: History, Art, and Critical Discourse, edited by David Carroll, 1-23. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990. Conner, Jerusha. “Sleep to Succeed.” U. S. News and World Report, July 22, 2015. Accessed May 12, 2016. http://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/2015/07/22/teensneed-more-sleep-to-succeed-in-school. Eisenberg, Leon. “The Physician as Interpreter: Ascribing Meaning to the Illness Experience.” Comprehensive Psychiatry 22 (1981): 239-248. Evans, Ruth. “Be Critical!” In Burn After Reading, Vol. I, Miniature Manifestos for a Post/Medieval Studies, edited by Eileen A. Joy and Myra Seaman, 19-23. Brooklyn, NY: punctum books and Washington, DC: Oliphaunt Books, 2014. Felman, Shoshana. Jacques Lacan and the Adventure of Insight. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. Fink, Bruce. A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Fradenburg, L. O. Arayne and Eileen A. Joy. “Paradigm Change/Institutional Change.” In Burn After Reading, Vol. II, The Future We Want, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 145-155. Brooklyn, NY: punctum books and Washington, DC: Oliphaunt Books, 2014. Freud, Sigmund. Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety. Translated by Alix Strachey. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1989. Garro, Linda C. and Cheryl Mattingly. “Narrative as Construct and Construction.” In Narrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing, edited by Cheryl Mattingly and Linda C. Garro, 1-49. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Green, Elizabeth. Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works (And How to Teach It to Everyone). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014. Hammerstein, Oscar. “Maria.” Music lyrics. From The Sound of Music. Accessed June 6, 2016. http://www.lyricsfreak.com/t/the+sound+of+music/maria+the+nuns_2 0549097.html Harris, Anne F. and Karen Eileen Overbey. “Field Change/Discipline Change.” In Burn After Reading, Vol. II, The Future We Want. Edited and translated by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 127-143. Brooklyn, NY: punctum books and Washington, DC: Oliphaunt Books, 2014. Herndl, Diane Price. “The Writing Cure: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Anna O., and ‘Hysterical’ Writing.” NWSA Journal 1.1 (1988): 52-74.

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Kierkegaard, Søren. Either/Or, Part II. Translated and edited by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987. Latour, Bruno. “An Attempt at a ‘Compositionist Manifesto,’” New Literary History, 2010. Accessed May 14, 2016. http://www.brunolatour.fr/sites/default/files/120-NLH-finalpdf.pdf. Lukianoff, Greg and Jonathan Haidt. “The Coddling of the American Mind,” The Atlantic Monthly, September 2015. Accessed May 1, 2016. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddlingof-the-american-mind/399356/. McLaughlin, Becky. Introduction to Everyday Theory: A Contemporary Reader, edited by Becky McLaughlin and Bob Coleman, 1-12. New York: Pearson Longman, 2005. Miller, Richard. Writing at the End of the World. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005. Mitchell, Allan and Will Stockton. “Time Change/Mode Change.” In Burn After Reading, Vol. II, The Future We Want, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 157-163. Brooklyn, NY: punctum books and Washington, DC: Oliphaunt Books, 2014. Olson, Kirsten. Wounded by School: Recapturing the Joy in Learning and Standing Up to Old School Culture. New York: Teachers College Press, 2009. Peim, Nick. Critical Theory and the English Teacher: Transforming the Subject. London: Routledge, 1993. Pollock, George. “The Possible Significance of Childhood Object Loss in the Josef Breuer-Bertha Pappenheim (Anna O.)-Sigmund Freud Relationship.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 16 (1968): 711-739. Readings, Bill. The University in Ruins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. Ricoeur, Paul. “Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator.” In Facts and Values, edited by M. C. Doeser and J. N. Kraay, 121-132. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1986. Roth, Michael S. Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014. Snicket, Lemony. The Austere Academy. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000. Spence, Donald. Narrative Truth as Historical Truth. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1982.

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Tedlock, Barbara. “Theorizing Divinatory Acts: The Integrative Discourse of Dream Oracles.” In Divination: Perspectives for a New Millennium, edited by Patrick Curry, 11-23. Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2010. Weston, Lisa. “‘Tis Magick, Magick That Will Have Ravished Me.” In Burn After Reading, Vol. I, Miniature Manifestos for a Post/Medieval Studies, edited by Eileen A. Joy and Myra Seaman, 119-126. Brooklyn, NY: punctum books and Washington, DC: Oliphaunt Books, 2014.

CHAPTER ONE ŽIŽEK ON IDEOLOGY AS NOT SEEING, OR, THE EYES (DON’T) HAVE IT BRUCE KRAJEWSKI DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON, ARLINGTON, TEXAS 76019

An appearance is never ‘merely an appearance,’ it profoundly affects the actual socio-symbolic position of those concerned. —Slavoj Žižek, The Plague of Fantasies Knowledge like this was too much for the ordinary run-of-the-mill person. I had to keep it to myself. —Philip K. Dick, “The Eyes Have It” Theory leads people to become unnecessarily vulnerable to the world, to lower their guards. —Hans Blumenberg, The Laughter of the Thracian Woman In the paradox of the philosopher-kings, Plato articulated a lasting truth: being fit to rule over others or to carry out any official function can mean only knowing what is better and knowing how to perform the demands of one’s office. So the ideal of the theoretical life does have political significance. —Hans-Georg Gadamer, Praise of Theory They should make it their business to know all the poisons that Satan peddles. —Andrew Michael Hurley, The Loney

Theory is intrinsically an affront to the status quo, a threat. As Hans Blumenberg sees it, theory makes people “schwer,” difficult, heavy. Theory might be “too much for the ordinary run-of-the-mill person,” as Philip K. Dick suggests. In one important sense, theory is not meant, at

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least since Plato, for ordinary people. Plato’s community of philosopherkings is an exclusive club. Plato tells his readers that the theoretical life will result in transubstantiation, mortals becoming gods. Plato also presents philosophy’s story as one that necessarily intersects theory with politics. As Hans-Georg Gadamer points out (see epigraph), theory is the route taken to political power. In the Theaetetus, Plato makes sure to juxtapose the philosophers to the sophists, with the philosophers concerned about truth (aletheia) and essences, while the sophists waste their time on mercurial public opinions (doxa).1 The road to political power for Plato will be taken by the philosopher-king when the world is unable to conceive of other structures besides rulers (the few—in the same Platonic dialogue, the word is koruphaioi, the “top people”) and ruled (the many). As Martin Heidegger would interpret Plato’s Republic, “the philosopher might be the true politician.”2 Plato endorses the bios theoretikos, the life of theory. The goal of the bios theoretikos is nothing less than “becoming like God as far as possible” (176b).3 For the budding theorists who will be our undergraduates or graduate students studying theory in the classroom, the notion that studying theory can lead to a kind of apotheosis makes for a compelling and unusual justification for a course. I began with the notion that theory is intrinsically a threat. Theorists might be viewed as especially troublesome and odd when presenting opposition to Capital, since the story of Capital is framed in a way that occludes access to “any real alternative to Capital or to capitalism—any future other than their own.”4 One place to house threats is a classroom, a college, a university, traditional spaces where oddballs can be located and monitored in what the public might view as neutralizing territory, similar to the state-sanctioned displays of the Bakhtinian carnivalesque, where diverse voices are heard and alleged subversive performances can be witnessed in a controlled environment. In short, no carnival has ever brought down a nation-state. The ivory tower should be thought of as part of “the great confinement” about which Michel Foucault writes in Madness and Civilization. According to Foucault’s history, at an earlier stage in the 1

Jacques Taminiaux, The Thracian Maid and the Professional Thinker: Arendt and Heidegger, trans. Michael Gendre (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 4. 2 Ibid., 10. 3 Friedemann Buddensiek, “Thales Down the Well: Perspectives at Work in the digression in Plato’s Theaetetus,” Rhizômata 2.1 (2014): 2. 4 Geoff Waite, “There Is No Future in Capitalism’s Dreaming, Or, The Marranist Dictatorship of the Proletariat (Cronenberg’s Descartes, Kantian Antinomies, Spinoza’s God, Marx’s Capital and Ours), ArachnƝ 6.2 (1999): 5. Emphasis added.

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archaeology of madness, the mad were thought to possess wisdom, dangerous as that wisdom could turn out to be.5 The nutty professor, in contrast to a Socratic gadfly, can be seen as an ongoing example of a tolerable version of mental deviance that has haunted the learned since the story of Thales. My aim is to think through the madness of higher education and its denigration of theory via Hans Blumenberg’s The Laughter of the Thracian Woman. Blumenberg describes the reception history and figurative function of the notorious anecdote found in Plato’s Theaetetus: while focused on observing stars during a walk, the early astronomer and proto-philosopher Thales of Miletus fails to see a well directly in his path and falls into it. A young Thracian woman laughs, amused that Thales sought to understand what was above him when he did not even know what was right in front of him. In the version of the telling in which the maiden is the representative of common sense, she laughs because the philosopher/astronomer is too busy with other-worldly things to pay attention to the local. The philosopher/astronomer represents the theoretician, the person looking for what is normally unseen, unobserved, and furthermore what is normally unsaid or written between the lines. Theory calls into question the common sense view of the life-world, and the laughter is the Janus-like sign that allows a reader to think theory (Thales) and praxis (Thracian woman) together in one scene, even in a context that mocks theory by framing it as a comic spectacle. Thales did not fall without a spectator, but that might have been another way the narrative might have turned, a kind of earlier version of philosopher George Berkeley’s thought experiment about the tree falling in the woods when no one is around. If we play this out, the reader could imagine that Thales’ fall (akin to Adam’s fall in some readings of the tale) takes him out of the woman’s visual range, below the horizon, in a place where she does not know whether he has been injured by his fall, which would give her laughter a different twist, perhaps one of sadism. 6 One doubts that Thales would be laughing with the woman or at himself had he injured 5

Ruth Padel, Whom Gods Destroy: Elements of Greek and Tragic Madness (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). 6 It is Buddensiek who provides another view of the Thales story: “Thales wanted to observe zenith stars and deliberately chose a point of view, namely the bottom of a well, which allowed him to focus his field of vision on a well-defined [pun intended?] section of the sky.” Buddensiek, Thales Down the Well, 1. On this reading, the sequence of events is crucial and the position of the woman must be one in which she is able to look down into the well, after which she makes the supposition that Thales’ place there is not deliberate.

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himself in the fall. Blumenberg entitles one of the chapters of his book “Der Theoretiker zwischen Komik und Tragik.” The theorist lives in a third, in-between space in a dramatic spectrum. Depending on a number of things, including one’s perspective, the Thales story has the potential to encompass tragedy and comedy.7 Theory’s power emerges from the opening sentence of Blumenberg’s proto-history: “theory is what human beings do not see.” In the classroom, I have found it helpful to filter this notion through the work of Slavoj Žižek, who directs our attention to Jacques Lacan’s readings of anamorphosis and the famous 1533 Holbein painting (figure 1-1). In writing about one of the most famous Renaissance paintings, Hagi Kenaan echoes Blumenberg’s claim above: “The Ambassadors is indeed a painting that does not permit us to make do with what the eye sees.” 8 The anamorphic skull “slashing across the painting’s foreground,” according to Gail Kern Paster, invokes a dialogue between flesh and death that brings awareness of a second perception, a kind of seeing that cannot happen without undoing the initial looking. 9 This “skull from outer space” has generated a great deal of scholarship, most recently considerations of how the anamorphic image might have been produced mechanically. 10 An anamorphosis is a part of the picture which, when we look at the picture in a direct frontal way, appears as a meaningless stain or distortion (the skull in the Holbein painting) but acquires the contours of a known object when we change our position and look at the picture from aside. Lacan’s point is radical: the object-cause of desire, for example, is something that, when viewed frontally, is nothing at all, just a void—it acquires the contours of something only when viewed sideways, not frontally. The first step in achieving the necessary change of position is providing examples by which students can overcome commonsensical reports that the real is simply what they can see with their own eyes. I have used the film The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology in classes, and the popular culture examples employed by Žižek persuade students that philosophers are not the only

7

See especially Buddensiek, Thales Down the Well, 15-27. Hagi Kenaan, “The ‘Unusual Character’ of Holbein’s Ambassadors,” Artibus et Historiae 23.46 (2002): 61. 9 Gail Kern Paster, “The Pith and Marrow of Our Attribute: Dialogue of Skin and Skull in Hamlet and Holbein’s The Ambassadors,” Textual Practice 23.2 (2009): 247-265. 10 See John Bossy, “The Skull from Outer Space,” London Review of Books 25.4 (February 2003): 29-30, and David Hockney, Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters (London: Thames and Hudson, 2006). 8

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Figure 1-1: Lacan and anamorphosis, Holbein’s Ambassadors (public domain image)

ones who might escape from Plato’s cave. In the trailer to The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, Žižek says, “We enjoy our ideology,” meaning that living inside our ideology is a comfortable place to reside. Ideology is what makes the mottled mass of experience readable. The Real is the trauma that disrupts ideology, makes us realize that reality is not what we thought it was. The Real is the signal that when we thought we were seeing, we were not seeing at all, or at least not fully. This is also the reaction of the narrator to Philip K. Dick’s “The Eyes Have It”: “After I’d comprehended, it seemed odd I hadn’t noticed it right away.” The topic of “theory in the classroom” carries with it a series of problems. Total quality management techniques at work in higher education in industrialized countries squeeze academics ever tighter into

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utilitarian spaces where theory finds it difficult to survive. Japan, for example, has now initiated a policy to cut humanities and social sciences in favor of “practical” subjects.11 The capitalists prefer that we theorists in the liberal arts look like a joke, hence their comments that “we” need welders, not philosophers.12 Resisting capitalism, even mildly, has become a problem for global capitalism. “If you don’t shop, the terrorists win.”13 The state now has the capacity to listen in with new technologies such as Silverpush. According to Cory Doctorow, “Silverpush uses ultrasonic chirps that are emitted by apps, websites, and TV commercials to combine the identities associated with different devices (tablets, phones, computers, etc.), so that your activity on all of them can be aggregated and sold to marketers.”14 People can be made to participate in capitalism without their knowledge. Even within academic life, professors aligned with capitalists hope to disrupt what some teachers of theory might wish to do, which is to open people’s eyes to what is happening. Perhaps in the light of WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden, and the National Security Agency, conspiracy theories and esoteric plots no longer seem the stuff of lunacy. Unfortunately, surveillance and privacy issues crop up almost daily. For evidence of this, any reader could, for example, follow the Twitter feed of Matthew Green, who teaches cryptography at Johns Hopkins University. The audience for this essay need not be convinced that powerful capitalist forces are ready to squash suspected resistance, let alone real resistance. As proof, one could point to the case of Aaron Swartz.15 Similarly, in early 2015, the New York Police Department trumpeted its new team devoted to

11

Alex Dean, “Japan’s humanities chop sends shivers down academic spines,” The Guardian, September 26, 2015, accessed September 28, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/sep/25/japanshumanities-chop-sends-shivers-down-academic-spines. 12 “Philosophers (and Welders) React to Marco Rubio’s Debate Comments,” New York Times, November 11, 2015, accessed November 15, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/11/philosophers-and-weldersreact-to-marco-rubios-debate-comments/. 13 “If You Don’t Shop, the Terrorists Win,” C-Span, October 11, 2001, accessed November 15, 2015, http://www.c-span.org/video/?c3977016/dont-shop-terroristswin. 14 Cory Doctorow, “New Thing to be Paranoid About: Ads That Use Inaudible Sound to Track Your Gadgets,” Boing Boing, accessed November 15, 2015, http://boingboing.net/2015/11/13/startup-uses-ultrasound-chirps.html. 15 “Aaron Swartz,” accessed November 15, 2015, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz.

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dealing with terrorists and protesters. 16 Yes, both groups are mentioned together as if protestors might as well be terrorists and treated in a similar fashion. No need for any academic audience to gasp when that same audience is familiar with how the Occupy Wall Street protesters were treated, how G8 (now G7) protesters are gassed and beaten, how protesters at political conventions in the United States are, as in Russia, given protest space far from the scene in special areas, sometimes fenced off, almost always monitored by cameras. Furthermore, most readers in the United States will know stories that extend back for decades of the CIA, the FBI, and other governmental agencies planting spies in organizations known for anti-government or anti-capitalist sentiment. Meanwhile, life at the academy goes on as usual. We have courses that inform students about climate change and the destruction of the environment, courses about Thomas Picketty’s book on Capital, courses in theory that use verbs like “subvert,” “undermine,” “intervene,” and phrases like “paradigm change.” Students and faculty are resisting this and that, laying bare power structures, the patriarchy is scrutinized, colonized peoples are held up as heroic examples for potential widespread change in our culture. However, capitalism is happy with all of that, and the bottom line moves on, because, for one, capitalists do not simply talk about disruption, they enact disruption. Clayton Christenson at Harvard has made a career of showing others how to bring about “disruptive innovation.” Christenson coined the phrase “disruptive innovation,” and it became popular shortly after the publication of his 1997 book, The Innovator’s Dilemma. The disruptive feature takes place when the innovation leads to a new market and value network and eventually disrupts an existing market and value network, displacing established players and alliances. In some instances, disruptive innovations put people out of business or a sector of an organization out of work. Christenson’s signature idea concerns the steps taken by businesses or institutions to simplify processes, to make services and products more accessible and affordable. Less flattering interpretations of the phrase portray it as another rhetorical ploy at deregulation and outsourcing.17 It has achieved currency 16

David J. Goodman, “N.Y.P.D. Plans Initiatives to Fight Terrorism and Improve Community Relations,” New York Times, January 29, 2015, accessed September 27, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/nyregion/nypd-plans-initiatives-tofight-terrorism-and-improve-community-relations.html?_r=0. 17 Evgeny Morozov, “Our Naïve ‘Innovation’ Fetish,” New Republic (March 2014), accessed November 15, 2015, https://newrepublic.com/article/116939/innovation-fetish-naive-buzzword-unitesparties-avoids-policy-choice.

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in higher education mainly in relation to the expansion of online courses, particularly MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), which gained media attention, in part, because elite schools (MIT, Stanford, Harvard, and Yale, for example) began offering them, first for free but with the goal of eventually making the courses sources of profit, as the CEO of edX, Anant Agarwal, has suggested. My own university’s enrollment goals will be achieved on the wave of that disruptive innovation because we will not be able to teach 10,000 more students without a large portion of that teaching happening online in classes of hundreds of students with single instructors (often adjuncts) helped by coaches (one coach per seventy-five students) paid precious little for their outsourced assistance. What is needed is not a solution for my university alone but a global political response to global capitalism, and the Democratic party in the United States is not a global party, nor is the Labour Party in Britain, nor is the Green Party of Canada, home of ecological wisdom and a mere 12,000 registered members, nor is The Left Party in Sweden, the leaders of which are pushing for a Minister of Social Equality as a solution to some current problems. Marx knew about a global party that could take on capitalism, but Marxists also know that capitalists will not go quietly. Most progressive movements at universities in first-world countries will continue to be ineffectual because they are not prepared to align themselves in a global fight against capitalism. Instead, we have business as usual, with theorists at North American universities and elsewhere complicit in some nasty business, business that has to do with incorporation, thus corporeality, a trans-humanism linked to Colleges of Business rather than to Liberal Arts or a robotics department. Corporate personhood is one of those theoretical notions Blumenberg writes about in his book on the proto-history of theory. Corporate personhood, as described in the United States Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, exists somewhere between comedy and tragedy, and yet it has been inscribed into our legal system, into a body of law. Take corporate personhood as a natural outgrowth of Heidegger’s Einverleibung (incorporation). The far-reaching implications of incorporation reveal themselves through the ceremony of communion, the eating of a body (e.g., the Eucharist) to establish a larger body, community through communion. Bodies fade away, but through incorporation in this sense of Einverleibung, they also live on, a pattern of destruction and resurrection involving that which is dead coming back to life (e.g., a nonliving entity, a business corporation, is given the attributes of a person, such as the Supreme Court giving corporations the right to free speech; corporate personhood is a legal notion about non-living entities receiving

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the same rights as a physical human being). This notion can be expanded into explaining how Socrates is incorporated into Plato’s corpus, the Platonic body of texts gives us Socrates, allows Socrates to live on.18 For philosophers who advocate on behalf of Plato, say, for all of us, for our own good, to adopt the Socratic method, the idea is that our bodies reenact what Socrates did. We must not only accept the ideas but also learn that “real philosophy” involves Platonic/Socratic dialectic, reconstituting the kind of conversations Socrates had as depicted in the Platonic dialogues. Nothing short of our souls is at stake in this kind of incorporation, according to some pro-Platonists such as James Kastely: “To defend justice, Socrates has to reform poetry. Even more, if he is to counter poetry’s influence, he needs to become a poet of a different kind and lay a new foundation for the cultural legacy of a new heroism in which justice is appropriately embodied.”19 In short, Socrates is supposed to take over your body and mine if Plato’s/Socrates’ aims—even though both are dead—are to be continually fulfilled. As Kastely has it, we are to become mimes for these long-dead figures: “If mimesis is a form of identification or emulation [for those who admire Socrates], then it is an affective activity that has an important role to play in the constitution or reconstitution of souls.”20 So far, this discourse has been directed to an audience familiar with theory. Many in that audience who would identify themselves as theorists would likely be comfortable with Blumenberg’s notion that theory is intrinsically connected to vision in the negative, what one cannot or usually does not see. The theorist possesses the god-like capacity to accomplish both things, 1) see and 2) see what is unseen or difficult to see. In short, this paradigm fits warnings from people like Louis Althusser about ideology, when ideology means living day to day in a context in which people are not seeing what is really going on. In The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, Žižek uses John Carpenter’s classic film They Live as an instance of how ideology functions disguised as the everyday. The main character in the film finds a pair of magical glasses that permit him to see the horror that is taking place, which is somehow disguised and 18

See Geoff Waite, Nietzsche’s Corps/e: Aesthetics, Politics, Prophecy, Or, the Spectacular Technoculture of Everyday Life (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 10-15. Also relevant is Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, trans. Carol Stewart (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1962), 113-114. 19 James L. Kastely, The Rhetoric of Plato’s Republic: Democracy and the Philosophical Problem of Persuasion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 55. Emphasis mine. 20 Ibid., 5.

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inaccessible to those who do not have the glasses. What is seen and not seen are not two different worlds, one real and one illusory; instead, these realms exist simultaneously, in the same space. It might help to think about this part of They Live in parallel to Les Fiancés Du Pont Macdonald,21 a short film modeled on silent-era cinema, starring Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina, in which a couple separates on a bridge. The man remains on the bridge, and the woman, Anna, leaves and heads down a staircase on the right. There are two similar staircases leading down on either side from bridge level, non-accidental symmetry. After Anna heads down the stairs, the man puts on a pair of sunglasses and then sees Anna, now dressed in black, heading down the other staircase, as if in a loop of eternal recurrence, but this time the alterations in the scene, while mostly parallel, play out in a substantively different way, and Anna dies. The man blames the sunglasses for his seeing this dark episode. He tosses the sunglasses into the river toward the end of the film. Esoteric messages are visible to the man with the glasses, and the upshot of the juxtaposition of scenes showing the divide between the esoteric and exoteric realms is that the everyday world, permeated with representations from popular culture, functions in much the same way Althusser describes in the famous essay about ideology and the state.22 Ideology disguises itself as “that which is,” the literal level, what stares one in the face and seems undeniable, functioning as a tautology, until something comes along to alter the visual field (e.g., sunglasses). You can locate the play of ideology in the expression some people use when confronted with an unpleasant but seemingly inextricable, bad situation: “It is what it is.” The non-violent cultural reinforcement of ideology can include the comic or tragic, two categories that play an important role in Blumenberg’s text on Thales and his proto-history of theory. Althusser also points his readers to the violent reinforcements of ideology by state apparatuses such as police, judges, the military, and families. In fact, Althusser means something specific to the police by “interpellate,” a key term in Althusser’s writings about ideology. He states, “Interpellate refers to the action of the police when they ‘stop’ or ‘detain’ an individual; this action implies more than simply a hailing or calling out to the individual and instead takes the form of a command, which is to say, of a speech act necessarily grounded not simply in a specific legal context but also in an inequality of forces, to produce proof 21 The film is available for viewing online, accessed November 15, 2015, http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22pt9x_les-fiances-du-pont-macdonald-shortfilm-by-agnes-varda_shortfilms. 22 Louis Althusser, On the Reproduction of Capitalism, trans. G. M. Goshgarian (London: Verso Books, 2014), 232-272.

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of the identity already assigned by the very process of interpellation.”23 Interpellation, on this reading, is more of a command, a call to produce verification of one’s identity. An interpellater, according to Warren Montag, is a “disruptor,” someone who reminds the individual of that individual’s place in a hierarchy, place in a system, or lack of place in that system. Some give commands; others are commanded. Without the proper papers, one can be detained or removed from the system (rendition). As in the capitalist context in which Christenson uses “disruption,” a disruptor reminds workers of their instability in the system, say, by the threat of being replaced by machines for cost efficiencies. In this instance, too, the disruptor discloses mechanisms that are present, which the interpellated individual might prefer to ignore. Montag uses the example of a debt collector. The individual would prefer to suppress the fact of debt, and the call by the debt collector interrupts that suppression. Seeing what others do not see—that is part of what makes theorists laughable in the eyes of utilitarians, pragmatists, and capitalists. Theorists’ heads are in the clouds, occupied with impractical, intangible things or “that which is not.” Our students who come to us for help, particularly undergraduates, are usually unprepared for theory, and the head-on approach of giving them a tour of the mall of theory (a brief stop at postcolonialism, followed by another stop at psychoanalysis, and another at ecocriticism—almost any theory anthology out there for undergraduates follows the tour-of-the-mall approach) has proven numerous times to be a failure for me. The students quickly become lost in the nomenclature, and most of the primary source materials deal with literary or philosophical texts that many undergraduates justifiably think are removed from their experiences. To add insult to injury, these texts also require knowledge of contexts that prefatory essays within anthologies must condense, often to the point of caricature. As beings raised in a capitalist environment, many of our students are prone to seek out the cash value of a theory class in the William Jamesian sense of a concern for the course’s utility, its linkage to

23

Warren Montag, “Between Interpellation and Immunization: Althusser, Balibar, Esposito,” Postmodern Culture 22.3 (May 2012). See also Montag’s chapter on Althusser and Lacan in his Althusser and His Contemporaries: Philosophy’s Perpetual War (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), 118-140. In this latter essay, Montag notes that Althusser differentiates between interpellation and recognition, based on an inequality of force.

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landing a job, to getting money, to producing practical effects that fit in comfortably with previous experiences.24 Thus, I have altered my tactics in theory classes to showing first, telling later. I begin with the Blumenberg quotation about theory and that which is not seen. I introduce some videos (e.g., “Change Blindness” and one involving counting the passes of a basketball) and articles for discussion to demonstrate the empirical truth that everyone’s vision is pre-warped. Some explanation about our physiology, particularly our visual inabilities, gives the students in the course of one class meeting compelling evidence to begin questioning what they count as given in their visual field. If it helps, one could call it introducing Verfremdungseffekte (estrangement effects, going back to Bertolt Brecht’s use of the term). Most of the students will already know the physiological problems such as the fact that we see things upside down and that our brain normalizes the sensory input. One famous psychological test involved an experiment in which a man wore glasses that turned images upside down. He did this for several days, but after a few days, his brain adapted and turned the images right side up again.25 The examples I put before the students so they can appreciate that what is going on behind the scenes (the “invisible” code) drives what appears on the visible page include the famous duck/rabbit (figure 1-2) from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, the old woman/young woman illustration (figure 1-3) from Introduction to Psychology classes, anamorphic images, an episode about the problems of common sense from “Brain Games,”26 and the source code to a random page from the Internet. Sometimes, I will have the students read the essay from Oliver Sacks’ An Anthropologist on Mars about the painter who suffers from cerebral achromatopsia although the painter had not been colorblind from birth.27 That essay explains, for instance, how the food we eat tastes different, depending on how we see it. The food has not changed, but our perception of that food has real effects in the way Žižek suggests when he speaks of “mere appearances” in the epigraph. 24 George Cotkin explains the multiple valences of “cash-value” in William James’ writings in George Cotkin, “William James and the Cash-value Metaphor,” Etc: A Review of General Semantics 42 (April 1, 1985): 37-46. 25 George Stratton’s visual experiments are described in “Action-based Theories of Perception,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, July 8, 2015, accessed November 15, 2015, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/action-perception/. 26 “Brain Games,” National Geographic Channel, accessed November 15, 2015, http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/brain-games/episodes/common-sense/. 27 Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales (New York: Knopf, 1995).

Žižek on Ideology as Not Seeing, or, the Eyes (Don’t) Have It Figure 1-2: Wittgenstein, duck/rabbit (public domain image)

Figure 1-3: Young woman/old woman (public domain image)

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In class, we take a poll of how many students think they are good at multitasking, which is, of course, considered a capitalistic virtue. Then we go through several empirical studies which show that everyone is awful at multitasking, especially, it turns out, the very people who think they are good at multitasking. They think they are good at multitasking because they are in denial about their abilities.28 This denial subgroup is important as I then move the discussion in class toward ideology and the intrinsic difficulty of helping people to become aware of their own blind spots. Most of us have powerful capacities for denial on various levels. I call it the “whatever” defense—i.e., those moments when one presents someone, perhaps a student in class, with devastating information that dissolves the key point the person is trying to make, and the person’s defense mechanism in the face of data that soundly refute her/his position is not one of presenting counter-evidence but of dismissing the entire context in a verbal throwing up of the hands via a resounding “whatever.” Sometimes empirical evidence fails to persuade while something like shame works as an antidote to denial. 29 An endorsement of shame will understandably trouble some readers here. Politically and theoretically, shaming can be a political project. Shame relies on the art of exposure, making visible to people what people could not see before, possibly about themselves and/or their community. Employing shame implies a trust in people that they can acknowledge their (perhaps self-imposed) blindness. The Hebrew Bible gets it right (Genesis 3:7): shame is an after-effect of having one’s eyes opened, a goal of the theory teacher. The most successful video in my classes has been one about a psychological experiment labeled “change blindness” completed at Harvard, in which 75 percent of participants (all from the Harvard community) fail to notice in the course of less than a minute that the person standing before 28

Ruth Pennebaker, “The Mediocre Multitasker,” New York Times, August 29, 2009, accessed September 27, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/weekinreview/30pennebaker.html. 29 Stephen Dubner, “Freakonomics,” podcast episode, accessed September 15, 2015, http://freakonomics.com/2012/06/21/riding-the-herd-mentality-a-new-freak onomics-radio-podcast/. The capitalist Steve Levitt revels in the cost-free nature of shame as a factor in persuasion: “From an economic perspective, shame is a wonderful punishment because unlike imprisonment, it’s free. It’s not only free but the society can impose as much shame as they want on people without any kind of cost or resources used up. But in fact, the rest of society actually likes it when other people get shamed. People love to read in The National Enquirer or The New York Times about the shame that comes down on public people. So it’s actually a really incredibly efficient mechanism for punishing people who do things we don’t like.”

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them has changed. It is not as if the new person standing in front of them is a twin of the previous person. It is that the focus of attention in the context is not the person at the counter. The participants admit later that they “did not notice” that they had interacted with two human beings rather than one. Not noticing did not mean they had their eyes shut. “Having one’s eyes opened” does not mean that one’s eyes were ever closed. After seeing this video, many of the students in different courses have laughed and admitted that they “don’t pay attention” either in such circumstances. They are ready to entertain the notion that such lack of attention/seeing might be dangerously pervasive in their lives. After the YouTube video on passing a basketball and the gorilla, also called “the selective attention test,”30 which some students seem to know about before they arrive in class, students have the foundation to appreciate the opening of the Žižek-narrated A Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (figure 1-4). The film about Žižek and ideology makes clear to many students that one of the ideologies with which they come to class—the one that has told them that studying theory is a kind of trying on of different lenses or filters for the world, some benign version of Les Fiancés Du Pont Macdonald—is precisely part of ideology. As Žižek puts it, ideology is our spontaneous relationship with the social world. It is unquestioned and/or un-skeptical because it is the one that some people would claim is most commonsensical. This viewpoint is the basis for the Thracian maiden’s laughter at the philosopher/astronomer in what Friedemann Buddensiek labels the traditional reading of the Thales story. Errol Morris’s Abu Ghraib essays in his Believing is Seeing book could be brought into class as an example of how viewers imagine seeing more than what is in front of them. Instead of missing something in our perceptual field, we have the possibility of adding information that is not there, drawing conclusions from insufficient voyeurism. As someone who hunts for the material basis of beliefs through images, Morris functions as a Marxist philosopher, although I doubt that he would accept this characterization. According to Morris, “Photographs attract false beliefs the way flypaper attracts flies. Why my skepticism? Because vision is privileged in our society and our sensorium. We trust it; we place our confidence in it. Photography allows us to uncritically think. We imagine that photographs provide a magic path to the truth.”31 The truth declared in the New York Times on March 11, 2006—that Ali Shalal Qaissi was “the 30

“The Selective Attention Test,” YouTube video, 1:21, posted by Daniel Simons, March 10, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo. 31 Errol Morris, Believing is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography (New York: Penguin Press, 2011), 92.

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Figure 1-4: Still from The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology

hooded man” in the famous Abu Ghraib photograph—turned out to be a falsehood. Morris’s detective work dissolves postmodern deconstructionist indeterminacy and leaves empirical evidence in its place. After reading Morris, students usually have a better sense of how to be epistemologists. Seeing deserves as much attention as what is not seen. The fact that something is in front of us—a photograph of a torture victim, a gorilla walking through a group of people passing a basketball, Holbein’s The Ambassadors—does not guarantee that the facts of the presentation register with us. Becoming skilled at seeing what is already there takes training, just as the theory classroom can provide training on seeing what is not there. What Morris directs our attention to is what we might be missing in those cases where we imagine we could not miss “getting it.” An epistemological structure that seems important to introduce at this point in class appears in Žižek’s essay on méconnaissance and truth.32 The upshot of this essay is that we all begin by misrecognizing reality. This ought to make a difference for students, undoing a potentially misleading dynamic of capitalistic competitiveness in which some students might imagine that the exercise is meant to suggest that some people have the capacity to see the truth without the help of magical eyeglasses (as in They 32

Slavoj Žižek, “The Truth Arises from Misrecognition,” in Lacan and the Subject of Language, ed. Ellie Ragland-Sullivan and Mark Bracher (New York: Routledge, 1991), 188-211.

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Live), thanks to superior ocular physiology or better, more expensive or prestigious, educations. Following Lacan, Žižek posits that “the truth arises from misrecognition.” It is a process, and misrecognition is the necessary condition for truth to make its appearance. Now, how this movement from misrecognition to recognition unfolds is not always of Oedipal proportions, making us want to put our eyes out. However, along the lines of the narrative in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, some pain is involved, as happens when the philosopher leaves the darkness of the cave and encounters full sun for the first time. An analogous situation is described by Gadamer in his description of what goes on in our encounters with works of art. Gadamer argues that a disruption or disorientation takes place, after which our self-understanding has been altered.33 Some of our contemporary models of education, particularly versions that focus on selfesteem or reinforce identity politics, might look down upon pathei mathos. On Žižek’s reading of the situation, the misrecognition and its consequences are unavoidable, and denial turns into an ingredient in the recipe: “One knows one’s destiny in advance, one tries to evade it, and it is by means of this attempt itself that the predicted destiny realizes itself.”34 The next twist in Žižek’s essay is a political one. One might think that the prevailing condition outlined is one of passivity—wait for things to unfold, resistance is futile, destiny will come to you. And yet, Žižek’s next step in the essay is an overtly political one that sweeps away the usual interpretations of kairos (a passing instant when success might be achieved) as well as much of the talk about phronƝsis (practical wisdom, the ability to discern how and when to act) and finding the appropriate moment: We find the same logic of the error as an internal condition of truth with Rosa Luxemburg, with her description of the dialectics of the revolutionary process. I am alluding here to her argument against Edward Bernstein, against his revisionist fear of seizing power too soon, ‘prematurely,’ before the so-called ‘objective conditions’ had ripened. This was, as is well known, Bernstein’s main reproach to the revolutionary wing of social democracy: they are too impatient, they want to hasten, to outrun the objective logic of historical development. The answer of Rosa Luxemburg is that the first seizures of power are necessarily ‘premature’. The only way for the working class to reach its ‘maturity,’ to await the arrival of the ‘appropriate moment’ for the seizure of power, is to form itself, to educate itself of this act of seizure. And the only possible way of achieving this education is precisely by ‘premature’ attempts. If we just wait for the 33 34

Gadamer, Truth and Method, 354-356. Žižek, “The Truth Arises,” 190.

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Chapter One ‘appropriate moment,’ we will never live to see it, because this ‘appropriate moment’ cannot arrive without the subjective conditions of the maturity of the revolutionary force (subject) being fulfilled. That is, it can arrive only after a series of ‘premature,’ failed attempts.35

In short, the subject seeking the truth has work to do, failures to experience. Getting things wrong is part of the necessary work. If students find themselves in a text (“I identify with character X”), what they find is a self they did not previously recognize, as if they have gotten themselves wrong. In higher education in North America, scores of Neo-Fordist administrators devoted to assessment insist that classroom activities (in face-to-face classes or virtual ones online) must produce outcomes, products. Education is being sold, after all. Public universities in the United States are hardly supported by the public any more. The amount of collective tax dollars making their way into higher education has been declining for years. Utilitarianism reigns, and theory finds itself on the defensive, despite its inherent interplay with practice. In fact, by some reports, we have quickly moved into the twilight of theory at the academy,36 with a new generation of students learning about the wild days of Adorno, Arendt, Mulvey, Heidegger, Foucault, Barthes, Rorty, Cixous, Derrida, Duras, Jameson, and Negri. Philip Felsch’s book is but one example of a high point in academic theory converted into nostalgia for polysemous texts and “master thinkers.” Felsch provides a history of excitement about theory in the Federal Republic during the 1960s and 1970s when theory was considered anti-academic. He mentions, for instance, when Theodor Adorno returned to Germany after the war to find himself, much to his surprise, overwhelmed by young students interested in works like Minima Moralia. As academics embrace post-humanism, post-industrialism, postcolonialism, and postmodernism, it might seem natural for some to take up a post-theory attitude, bowing to capitalism’s Benthamite victory over theory as it is framed in mass and social media. The “Posties” (a term of my own coinage) attitude makes it seem as if the struggle against global capitalism’s repressive economic structures is a thing of the past, that the post-ness of theory à la Felsch demonstrates, again, capitalism’s capacities

35

Ibid., 192. Philip Felsch, Der lange Sommer der Theorie: Geschichte einer Revolte, 19601990 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2015).

36

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to foreclose all significant alternatives to itself.37 On the one hand, I would argue, theory need not morph into a hothouse topic or a late twentiethcentury historical phenomenon. Blumenberg’s book on Thales and theory verifies theory’s resilience, its plenitude and dynamism, some of which is captured in The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology by way of Žižek’s ability to point to examples from popular and trash culture and to link those examples to various theories, Lacanian and Marxist, acting out. Here is an example: Recall the typical tricky situation in which all the people in a closed group know some dirty detail (and they also know that all the others know it), but when one of them inadvertently blurts out this detail, they nonetheless all feel embarrassed—why? If no one learned anything new, why do all feel embarrassed? Because they can no longer pretend that (act as if) they do not know it—in other words, because, now, the big Other knows it. Therein resides the lesson of Hans Christian Andersen’s “Emperor’s New Clothes”: one should never underestimate the power of appearances. Sometimes, when we inadvertently disturb the appearances, the thing itself behind appearances also falls apart.38

On the other hand, the past-ness of theory à la Felsch serves as a protection to what Blumenberg calls “the exotic behavior” of theorists: “The figure of the scatterbrained professor has functioned at best to promote tolerance toward theorists, as it presents the fossil of their type to an environment that smiles respectfully, even forgivingly, at them.”39 The historical caricature of theorists in the form of scatterbrained professors serves as camouflage for the work of undoing capitalism, in part by appropriating the caricature while our students learn about the ideology of ideology through the screening of The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology. Teachers have the option of allowing Žižek to take on the role of the exotic academics who insists on thinking seriously about what appears on

37

Waite, Nietzsche’s Corps/e, 1-34. “As one consequence [of Finance Capital colonizing all the last resorts previously excluded from its domination], the concept of ‘post-colonialism’ and the practice of ‘post-colonial studies’ are rendered nothing more than self-legitimating delusions in unwitting collusion with a Capital that precisely has no ‘post-.’” Ibid., 5. Emphasis added. 38 Slavoj Žižek, How to Read Lacan (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), 25. 39 Hans Blumenberg, The Laughter of the Thracian Woman: A Protohistory of Theory, trans. Spencer Hawkins (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 1.

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the screens our students watch, informing students of the esotericism40 at work in front of their eyes.

Bibliography “Action-based Theories of Perception.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, July 8, 2015. Accessed November 15, 2015. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/action-perception/. Althusser, Louis. On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Translated by G. M. Goshgarian. London: Verso, 2014. Blumenberg, Hans. The Laughter of the Thracian Woman: A Protohistory of Theory. Translated by Spencer Hawkins. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. —. Das Lachen der Thrakerin: Eine Urgeschichte der Theorie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987. Bossy, John. “The Skull from Outer Space.” London Review of Books 25.4 (February 20, 2003): 29-30. “Brain Games.” National Geographic Channel. Accessed November 15, 2015. http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/brain-games/episodes/ common-sense/. Buddensiek, Friedemann. “Thales Down the Well: Perspectives at Work in the Digression in Plato’s Theaetetus.” Rhizômata 2.1 (2014): 1-32. Cotkin, George. “William James and the Cash-value Metaphor.” Etc: A Review of General Semantics 42 (April 1, 1985): 37-46. Dean, Alex. “Japan’s Humanities Chop Sends Shivers Down Academic Spines.” The Guardian, September 26, 2015. Accessed September 28, 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/sep /25/japans-humanities-chop-sends-shivers-down-academic-spines.

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The use of esotericism here is not about the general strangeness of the prose many students will attribute to writers of theory. It refers to both esoteric theorists and writers who might be used in a theory classroom (e.g., Plato, Nietzsche, Heidegger) and to the ideological esotericism of the kind Žižek points to in They Live. In the film, when a character has the glasses on, he can see what ideological messages are hidden in advertisements, for example. For the former kind of esotericism, see Arthur Melzer’s Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), Waite, Nietzsche’s Corps/e, and my forthcoming article, “Little Did He Know: Cavell Absorbed by Nietzschean Esotericism” in Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies.

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Doctorow, Cory. “New Thing to be Paranoid About: Ads That Use Inaudible Sound To Track Your Gadgets.” Boing Boing, November 2015. Accessed November 15, 2015. http://boingboing.net/2015/11/13/startup-uses-ultrasound-chirps.html. Dubner, Stephen. “Freakonomics.” Podcast. June 6, 2012. Accessed September 27, 2015. http://freakonomics.com/2012/06/21/riding-theherd-mentality-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/. “Experimental Psychology—Change Blindness.” YouTube video, 3:58. Posted by Fabrizio Bonacci. 2008. Accessed September 27, 2015. https://youtu.be/38XO7ac9eSs. Felsch, Philip. Der lange Sommer der Theorie: Geschichte einer Revolte, 1960-1990. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2015. Les fiancés du pont Mac Donald ou (Méfiez-vous des lunettes noires). Directed by Agnès Varda. Ciné-Tamaris, 1961. Accessed November 15, 2015. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22pt9x_les-fiances-dupont-macdonald-short-film-by-agnes-varda_shortfilms. Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Madness in the Age of Reason. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Random House, 1988. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Praise of Theory: Speeches and Essays. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988. —. Lob der Theorie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983. —. Truth and Method. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. New York: Continuum, 1989. Goodman, David J. “N.Y.P.D. Plans Initiatives to Fight Terrorism and Improve Community Relations.” New York Times, January 29, 2015. Accessed September 27, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/nyregion/nypd- plans-initiativesto-fight-terrorism-and-improve-community-relations.html?_r=0. Hockney, David. Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters. London: Thames and Hudson, 2006. Hurley, A.M. The Loney. London: John Murray Publishers, 2015. “If You Don’t Shop, the Terrorists Win.” C-Span, October 11, 2001. Accessed November 15, 2015. http://www.c-span.org/video/?c3977016/dont-shop-terrorists-win. Kastely, James L. The Rhetoric of Plato’s Republic: Democracy and the Philosophical Problem of Persuasion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Kenaan, Hagi. “The ‘Unusual Character’ of Holbein’s Ambassadors.” Artibus et Historiae 23.46 (2002): 61-75.

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Krajewski, Bruce. “Little Did He Know: Cavell Absorbed by Nietzschean Esotericism.” Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies (forthcoming). Lacan, Jacques. “Anamorphosis.” In The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, edited by JacquesAlain Miller. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988. Montag, Warren. Althusser and His Contemporaries: Philosophy’s Perpetual War. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. Morris, Errol. Believing is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography. New York: Penguin Press, 2011. Padel, Ruth. Whom Gods Destroy: Elements of Greek and Tragic Madness. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Pennebaker, Ruth. “The Mediocre Multitasker.” New York Times, August 29, 2009. Accessed September 27, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/weekinreview/30pennebaker.html. The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology. DVD. Directed by Sophie Fiennes. Zeitgeist Films, 2013. “Philosophers (and Welders) React to Marco Rubio’s Debate Comments.” New York Times, November 11, 2015. Accessed November 15, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/11/philosophersand-welders-react-to-marco-rubios-debate-comments/. Sacks, Oliver. An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995. “Selective Attention Test.” YouTube video, 1:21. Posted by Daniel Simons. 2010. Accessed September 27, 2015. https://youtu.be/vJG698U2Mvo. Taminiaux, Jacques. The Thracian Maid and the Professional Thinker: Arendt and Heidegger. Translated by Michael Gendre. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. Waite, Geoff. “There Is No Future in Capitalism’s Dreaming, Or, The Marranist Dictatorship of the Proletariat (Cronenberg’s Descartes, Kantian Antinomies, Spinoza’s God, Marx’s Capital and Ours).” ArachnƝ 6. 2 (1999): 3-58. —. Nietzsche’s Corps/e: Aesthetics, Politics, Prophecy, or, the Spectacular Technoculture of Everyday Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996. Žižek, Slavoj. How to Read Lacan. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007. —. The Plague of Fantasies. London, UK: Verso, 1997.

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—. “The Truth Arises from Misrecognition.” In Lacan and the Subject of Language, edited by Ellie Ragland-Sullivan and Mark Bracher. New York: Routledge, 1991.

CHAPTER TWO CURATING THE MYSTORY: IDEOLOGY AND INVENTION IN THE THEORY CLASSROOM BARRY MAUER DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA, ORLANDO, FL 32816

“It is only because our understanding of the world is first disclosed to us that we can disclose the world again, and again. The world is not disclosed in one shot.” —Nikolas Kompridis, Critique and Disclosure

Ideology, Louis Althusser argued, is more than a set of beliefs about the world; it includes material practices within specific institutions that lead to subject formation and to the reproduction of social relationships. Institutions sort people into groups and then into particular roles; they shape and police our behaviors and our boundaries. The university is one such institution, and the humanities another inside it. Whereas other ISAs—the acronym for Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatuses—seek to instill ideology in their subjects without encouraging self-reflection, the university, and the humanities in particular, makes ideology a subject of knowledge, at least sometimes. Humanities professors, in other words, seek to uncover the work of the other ISAs or to offer students the opportunity to do so themselves, and even to identify and question the precepts of the humanities themselves. But how successful are we? According to Gregory Ulmer, not very successful, for he argues the following in “The Making of ‘Derrida at the Little Bighorn’: An Interview”: I had been trying to develop a strategy for helping students recognize the interdependence of what they know and what they believe. I found that

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their intellectual sophistication about the categories of ideology—class, gender, race, and the like—was never applied to themselves. Their opinions, at the level of emotional engagement, remained largely untouched by the theory or the knowledge. Alexander Kluge and Oscar Negt have theorized this persistence as the “obstinacy” of experience. It is the obstinacy of stereotypes that seem to be invulnerable to critique, at least in the register of common sense. To see that the theories we were working with were themselves informed by the ideologies in question required a shift of levels, to find another discourse within which the discourse of knowledge could itself be made an object.1

A humanities education aims to produce self-reflection, not only in the individual person (as in the Oracle’s order to Socrates: “Know Thyself!”) but also at the institutional and the collective levels. At the heart of identity, whether of the person or institution, there are blind spots that prevent us from seeing how we have been shaped by ideology. And when most people and institutions are exposed to critique about ideology, it appears to have little effect in revealing the location of their blind spots, which would allow them to reshape their relationship to ideology. To demonstrate the power and invisibility of ideology to my students, I use a simple lesson. On the first day of class, students fill up the available desks and face the front of the room. When I start talking, they shift attention to me, and many start taking notes. I point out to them that their behaviors had to be learned and that they result from efforts by the institution of school to sort people into groups and to shape their behaviors.2 The proof of ideology at work is that my students no longer need to be told what to do when they enter a new classroom for the first time. Because other students were unable to adopt these behaviors during their K-12 experiences, they are thus not here in the university classroom. Ideology is all around us, hidden in plain sight. I also explain to students the ways in which the institution of family sorts people into gendered subjects. This process begins before birth with the ultrasound that determines the baby’s sex, the selection of gendered baby names, the color used to decorate the baby’s room, and the choice of clothes and toys. Students are surprised to learn that pink was once considered “masculine” and blue “feminine,” that boys were once more 1

Gregory L. Ulmer, “The Making of ‘Derrida at the Little Bighorn’: An Interview,” in Strategies for Theory: From Marx to Madonna, eds. R. L. Rutsky and Bradley J. Macdonald (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2012), 151-152. 2 For more information see Étienne Balibar and Pierre Macherey, “On Literature as an Ideological Form,” in Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader, ed. Robert Young (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1981), 79-99.

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ornamented than their sisters, and that there was a “great masculine renunciation”3 in the early twentieth century that aligned masculinity with productivity and lack of ornament and femininity with consumption and ornamentation. I ask students who have siblings of the opposite sex to discuss the different rules for boys and girls that were established in their households when they were growing up. Common answers include the following: “boys were encouraged to learn mechanical skills, and girls were encouraged to study,” “boys were allowed to stay out late, but girls had to stay home,” and “boys were taught to be competitive, and girls were taught to be nurturing.” As children, we internalize these lessons as social “rules” that continue to exert force even if we choose to rebel against them. Critique alone is largely ineffective against ideology. One reason for its ineffectiveness is that ideology articulates us as part of a discursive social system when we are small children, before we are capable of employing the most powerful tools of critical thinking. Ideology works in the family, for instance, by gendering us as subjects before we are old enough to reason abstractly about our experiences—indeed, before we are even born—or before we are able to compare and contrast our experiences to those of other groups. Another reason is that ideology, as Foucault taught us, is a system of discipline, punishment, and rewards, and thus it operates beyond the level of cognition, individual belief, and free choice. A third reason is that ideology functions largely unconsciously as a screen or interface that we use to make sense of the world; it is pre-reflective or, to put it another way, ideology is like software for a computer and thus a necessary condition for our making sense of the world. To uncover ideology is to disclose to ourselves our sense-making apparatus, our social order, and our understanding of past experiences. Nikolas Kompridis, in his discussion of Heidegger, refers to the way the world becomes intelligible to us as disclosure: What is disclosed may concern the background structures or conditions of intelligibility necessary to any world- or self-understanding, which I’ll refer to as pre-reflective disclosure (Heidegger called them Existenzialen); or it may concern the ways in which these background structures of intelligibility are reopened and transformed through novel interpretations

3 Peter Wollen, Raiding the Icebox: Reflecting on Twentieth-Century Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).

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and cultural practices, which I’ll refer to as reflective disclosure (or redisclosure).4

The mystory is a practice of reflective disclosure that reveals our sense-making machinery to us. Kompridis writes that “a new disclosure of the world cannot eliminate relations of power and domination, but it can bring about a change in the conditions of intelligibility on which those asymmetrical relations depend, giving them much less ‘ontological’ support.”5 To undertake a reflective disclosure is to risk vertigo, part of the experience of liminality—a concept first introduced by Arnold van Gennep but later developed by Victor Turner—in which the “self” undergoes transformation; during a liminal state, the parts of the self come loose and re-integrate into a new configuration6: A reflective disclosure can critically introduce meanings, perspectives, interpretive and evaluative vocabularies, modes of perception, and action possibilities that stand in strikingly dissonant relations to already available meanings and familiar possibilities, to already existing ways of speaking, hearing, seeing, interpreting, and acting. Such a dissonance cannot but disturb the unreflective, taken-for-granted flow of our self-understanding and social practices. This kind of disturbance is not like noise that one can turn off by closing a window or by plugging one’s ears, although this is certainly one way to describe metaphorically the resistance to effects of self-decentering. One can characterize these effects as a scrambling of our symbolically structured pre-understanding of the world, putting into defamiliarizing relief our self-understanding and our practices. But the experience of self-decentering is not limited to the scrambling and defamiliarizing of existing patterns of interpretation, action, and belief; it also involves a push to enlarge and transform our self-understanding and our practices.7

In his book, Kompridis also argues that reflective disclosure is not incompatible with critique but is part of critique, just as critique is part of reflective disclosure.8 But reflective disclosure is not identical to critique 4

Nikolas Kompridis, Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 35. Emphasis added. 5 Ibid., 35. 6 Victor Turner, “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in ‘Rites de Passage,’” in Symposium on New Approaches to the Study of Religion: Proceedings of the 1964 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society, ed. June Helm (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964), 4-20. 7 Ibid. 8 Kompridis, Critique and Disclosure, 35.

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because, unlike critique, it is not structured primarily by conventional logic (deductive, inductive, and abductive). Rather, its logic is poetic, using associative networks of language and experience to draw new patterns. I do not claim that critique alone never has an impact. Some students have had epiphanies and radically changed their lives as a result of their exposure to critical methods. (One renounced his family’s religion after a lesson about skepticism, while another filed for a divorce after a week of feminist theory.) Perhaps these students were already dissatisfied with the ideological lessons they were living when they came to my class. Perhaps they used critique to draw new patterns for themselves. Whatever the case may be, they experienced the vertigo that comes from re-evaluating the ideology they brought with them into the university. Ulmer’s approach to teaching humanities knowledge, the mystory, has students work in a poetic way to produce reflective disclosure. The mystory is not a form of “self-expression.” Rather, it formalizes the reflective style of writing Roland Barthes used in his later works such as A Lover’s Discourse. In A Lover’s Discourse, Barthes makes a self-portrait using literature and other discourses, revealing to himself his points of identification. Ulmer calls these points the writer’s premises: “the inventor’s ideological premises do not determine in advance the outcome of the process but constitute the field, place, diegesis, or chora of its genesis.” 9 Barthes’s text is at once literary and critical, as aesthetically interesting as it is scholarly. Barthes proceeds by means of the fragment— a term that is also part of his title—which makes a collage of the various discourses that pass through him. Barthes wanted to avoid being on the side of the “obvious,” of that which “goes without saying,” which he equated with ideology. So he scandalized his academic peers, bound as they were to a highly rationalistic Marxist critique, by writing sentimentally, revealing the ideology of the academic institution to be thoroughly positivist, meaning that it zealously guarded a narrow definition of what counts as knowledge. While the lover’s discourse may seem trivial, Barthes discovered it was also a profound mode of knowledge. To the lover, the beloved is always the unknown, so the lover uses an intuitive method of knowing that produces social knowledge as well. Barthes understood that the scenes and schemes common to the lover recur across everyday life and in literature, art, and science (particularly psychology). Barthes’s method made it 9

Gregory L. Ulmer, Heuretics: The Logic of Invention (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 84.

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possible for him to orient himself to love by superimposing various discourses from these domains one upon the other, with none of them dominant, to form emblems of knowledge that would guide him through his life decisions. Ulmer, like Barthes, supposes that ideological blind spots make attaining self-knowledge difficult. Only by externalizing ideological mechanisms can we begin to debug them, i.e., to detect and address the blindness and denial at the heart of ideological abuse. The mystory reveals the blind spots at the core of identity and shares these lessons with others. Ulmer calls for a program of invention to create the institutional practices of “writing” (in any medium) appropriate to the “electrate” age. The mystory is an “electrate” form of writing aimed at producing, in Ulmer’s words, “an Internet fifth estate,” capable of bringing a wise citizenry into public policy debate and formation. Ulmer’s term “electrate,” related via the suffix to the term “literate,” refers to the ways in which we might reason in an age of electronic media. One can reason in an electrate way, Ulmer demonstrates, within any media, including old-fashioned print media. Ulmer distinguishes electrate from literate reasoning, referring to it as reasoneon (a reference to Walter Benjamin’s interest in “atmosphere” over message content), choragraphy (a reference to Plato’s Timaeus in which Socrates contrasts chora, a space of possibility, with the literate topos, a category), avatar (an encounter with a higher form of oneself), conduction (reasoning by loose association rather than by the more formal deductive, inductive, and abductive methods common to literate reasoning), and many others. Ideology is experienced in the body, not just in the mind, as habits and affective states, and electrate reasoning provides access to this bodily experience in a more visceral way than formal reasoning does. The mystory lowers boundaries between the arts and theory, between creative writing and literary criticism, subject and object, individual and collective, history and memory, and the disciplinary discourses and those of everyday life. The invention program initiated by Ulmer finds a home in my classroom. My students use electrate reasoning to create curated exhibits, which they show at our university’s gallery and in other spaces on campus. These exhibits result from collages of various texts, including literary works, historical images, autobiographical texts, found objects, news reports, and various types of art, some original and some copies. The exhibits also include collections of various media, including still images, printed text, audio, video, and displayed objects; furthermore, these exhibits demonstrate the students’ epiphanies about the ways in which ideology has structured their lives. Through the power of example—their

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“case studies” about how ideology works in and through them—these exhibits also invite visitors to try the method for themselves. I require students to curate an exhibit rather than to produce a written essay for the final project because creating a public exhibition, being unfamiliar to most students, requires more conscious thought about audience, purpose, and materials. Furthermore, technological and social changes have shifted the focus of communicative practice from speech and writing to curating. Thus I teach curating as an electrate form of writing. Many archives are multimedia and contain documented sounds, images, and written texts. Using modernist and avant-garde collage and montage poetics, these documents can be fragmented, manipulated, juxtaposed, and synthesized in endless configurations. Also, exhibitions, onsite or online, can be adapted to include public participation in ongoing discussions about key issues of public significance. Training students to manage public forums and to curate exhibits helps them adapt to the technological shift. Just because we embrace electracy does not mean we abandon literacy. I require a written argumentative essay for the midterm paper because I want students to know how to write a conventional literate research paper using literary theory as a frame to understand a work of literature; the essay or treatise still “counts” as knowledge in our discipline. Also, before they produce their exhibits, students must write project proposals in which they explain and justify to the gallery director what their plans are for their exhibit, as a bridge between argument (explanation and justification) and creative work. By requiring students to curate exhibits, I encourage them to take ownership of their historical, cultural, and intellectual legacies. By curating exhibits, students learn to think critically about the ways in which information shapes their views of the past and present as well as to think rhetorically about how effective communication with diverse audiences is achieved. This form of “citizen curating” offers students two important things: the unique opportunity to work directly with archival materials and a public forum in which to interpret those materials. Further, with the class emphasis on difficult or controversial topics such as the history of racism and gender oppression in America, this project constitutes a significant form of activism and civic engagement. Curating exhibits prepares students to fully participate in their communities since it encourages critical thinking about how archives create narratives that shape our views of local history, community issues, and public policy options. By working with archival materials and curating exhibits, students combine creative and critical thinking skills. Consideration of ethical principles, relevance, framing, and inclusiveness occur at each

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stage of the curatorial process. To prepare themselves for their work in curating, students review literature about curatorial practices such as Silke Arnold-de Simine’s excellent Mediating Memory in the Museum: Trauma, Empathy, Nostalgia, which investigates the ways in which museums negotiate the difficult landscapes of history, memory, and politics. As public crises emerge, such as those affecting women’s rights and civil rights, we need to access and use the unique materials available at our local museums, libraries, and archives as a way to participate in discussions and deliberations about these problems. For example, in a previous class that served as a pilot project, my students examined their own values and behaviors in relation to racism in America using our library’s special collections as an archive for their exhibits. They explored how they came to their values, whether their behaviors and values were aligned, and how these behaviors and values might affect their work. It was a self-reflective process that led to profound changes in how many students understood their identities. For example, many white students had been unaware of how white privilege structured their lives and those of others before they began work on their exhibits. While no black students were enrolled in the class, many LGBTQ, Asian, Latino/a, and disabled students found commonalities between the oppression they experienced and the oppression experienced by African Americans. When students participate in public policy debates via a mystory, they do so with the wisdom gained from seeing how ideology works on and through them. In particular, they learn to connect their personal values and behaviors with collective costs, which they come to see as sacrifices on behalf of their values. Georges Bataille’s The Accursed Share explains sacrifice as a necessary part of all economies.10 In modern societies, we acknowledge only some of these losses—war deaths, for example—as sacrifices on behalf of our values. Other losses such as deaths from poverty, preventable disease, or automobile accidents remain abject since they do not register as collective losses on behalf of our values and behaviors. Students also work with the concept of negative externalities, which are costs borne by a third party not directly involved in an economic transaction. In one of my previously published mystories (“Oracles and Divinations”), I discuss how my decision whether to consume coffee, a decision the nation as a whole has already made, can have dire implications for other cultures, other species, and the environment in

10 Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, trans. R. Hurley (New York: Zone Books, 1988-1991).

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distant places.11 In another of my mystories (“The Mystory”), I show how my use of electricity leads to mass die-offs of manatees in Florida. The point of this work is to understand how habits that feel and seem like personal decisions come from collective values and result in collective sacrifices. I take responsibility for these habits by claiming collective losses as sacrifices on behalf of my values and behaviors. Until I assume this responsibility, the consequences of my ideology remain invisible to me. The mystory traces a route through the “popcycle,” which is Ulmer’s term for the major institutions that shape identity in the United States. These institutions are family, school, entertainment, and a discipline (or career) although some students have had their identities shaped by other institutions such as church (an alternative to entertainment) or “street” (gang as an alternative to family). The mystory method requires the practitioner to search her/his memory for “scenes of instruction” in each institution. A scene of instruction is a tableau in which the roles and expectations attached to identity are crystallized. A classic example is the moment one learns that “boys don’t cry.” Once the scenes of instruction are identified, the student uses them to construct an “image of wide scope,” which is an emblem that shows the mystorian her/his “mood” in relation to a question or problem, and thus, as Ulmer posits, it becomes the interface between the affective body and the archive of documents.12 The outside edge of this graph represents the collective entities responsible for subject formation, while the intersection of these entities in the center of the graph represents the individual person. Everyone in the society encounters most if not all of these institutions in her/his development, and yet we each experience the lessons in different circumstances, at different times and places, and with different people. The lessons the society teaches its subject are surprisingly uniform, however. Regardless of our biological sex, for instance, we all learn that “boys don’t cry.” This lesson, or some variation of it, is repeated across the four quadrants of the popcycle: in the sandbox at home, the playground at school, in stories of national heroes (Nathan Hale), in the movies (John Wayne), and in the materials of the disciplines (for example, in the writings of Judith Butler, although she critiques the lesson).

11

Barry Mauer, “Oracles and Divinations: A Monument to Biocultural Diversity Loss,” Excursions 3.1 (2012): n.p., accessed June 18, 2014. 12 Gregory L. Ulmer, Avatar Emergency (Anderson, SC: Parlor Press LLC, 2012).

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Figure 2-1: Graph based on Ulmer’s popcycle

The inside of the image is composed of the experiences of the particular subject, who encounters the ideological lessons of the popcycle in her/his own unique “scenes of instruction”: a particular person with a particular experience in a particular place and time. Ulmer appropriated the “image of wide scope” from the history of science, where it is used to explain how illustrious figures reached such great heights in their careers. For example, Einstein had a childhood experience with a compass his father had given him, an experience that shaped his life. He was fascinated by the idea that an invisible force made the compass needle move, and he sought to understand it. The search for the laws of invisible forces became the subject of his life study, and the image of the compass needle always pointing north became a way for him to navigate a number of life’s problems. An image of wide scope allows one to think across the various scenes of instruction; it compresses by finding the common element(s) that unites them. The image of wide scope becomes our guide to the unknown, our logic of invention, which Ulmer calls our heuretic principles. The disciplines of the humanities typically oppose, as least partially, the ideological practices of the other institutions. Critical theory explains how sexism, racism, imperialism, homophobia, and exploitation are replicated and justified in each of these institutions. The mystory, however, does not foreground critique, but rather an aesthetic approach to knowledge. Instead of making an argument, students make an emblem or “wide image” that helps them navigate the ideology of the society. Critical arguments are part of the work, but they do not dominate. I ask students to select at least one exemplary figure from the discipline because identity is often anticipatory, meaning we identify with that which we will become (or believe we will become). This process of anticipatory identification begins early with our gendered relationships to

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parents and caregivers. Russell Banks’s essay, “Bambi, A Boy’s Story,” describes his identification process in relation to the film Bambi, which he saw as a small child. The following passage from Banks’s essay demonstrates his epiphany about how the story of Bambi structured his anticipation about becoming an adult male: At bottom, they are both, novel and movie [Bambi], moral tales about the proper relations between the genders, told for boys from the Victorian male point of view. In the book, after having seen a passing pair of grown male deer for the first time, Bambi asks his mother, “‘Didn’t they see us?’ “His mother understood what he meant and replied, ‘Of course, they saw all of us.’ “Bambi was troubled. He felt shy about asking questions, but it was too much for him. ‘Then why . . .,’ he began, and stopped. “His mother helped him along. ‘What is it you want to know, son?’ she asked. “‘Why didn’t they stay with us?’ “‘They don’t ever stay with us,’ his mother answered, ‘only at times.’ “Bambi continued, ‘But why didn’t they speak to us?’ “His mother said, ‘They don’t speak to us now; only at times. We have to wait till they come to us. And we have to wait for them to speak to us. They do it whenever they like.’” And a little further on, his mother says, “‘If you live, my son, if you are cunning and don’t run into danger, you’ll be as strong and handsome as your father is sometime, and you’ll have antlers like his, too.’13

Banks’s destiny, like Bambi’s, was to become the father. By discovering this scene of instruction from his childhood encounter with entertainment, Banks also identifies the site of an ideological blind spot that had haunted him for decades; in the reflective disclosure he performed by revisiting Bambi, he learned that the Victorian patriarchal view of the world he inherited both from the movie and from his family felt “natural” and “normal” to him. Bambi had crystalized his world into an ideological formation, it divided the genders and policed behaviors, and it even made the worst values—the ones that exalted the absent and emotionally distant father—seem important and exciting. To teach students to understand the university classroom as an ideological space requires a different approach from the one Banks uses here. Students have acquired some learning habits from K-12 and 13 Nancy R. Comley, Robert Scholes, and Gregory L. Ulmer, Text Book: Writing Through Literature, 3rd ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002), 204.

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freshman college courses. But many or most of the disciplinary practices are still largely unknown to them. How do we teach students disciplinary practices while teaching them to think critically about the ideological underpinnings of the disciplines? To understand their other scenes of instruction—those from family, entertainment, and national history— students must perform a retrospective reading. But students have not yet encountered most of the disciplinary figures who will constitute the pantheon that will guide them in their careers. I ask students to focus on the discipline, or career, institution last because they stand at a threshold moment in relation to their disciplinary objects of knowledge. Because they do not yet inhabit the disciplines fully, they search the scholarly archives, rather than their memories, for exemplary lessons in their field. For example, in my literary theory class, we are studying the life and works of African-American author and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston in addition to the literary theorists typically taught in an introductory literary theory class: those who invented and elaborated upon approaches such as psychological, Marxist, feminist, semiotic, structuralist, gender and queer, and cultural studies. Ultimately, students use the exemplary figures in the discipline as analogies for their own future careers. Students come to understand their place in the discipline by noting the contextual shifts between earlier periods, such as Hurston’s era, and their own. Students account for their exemplary figure’s purposes but by no means are they bound by them; students have their own purposes that arise from their own historical situations. They use the exemplary figure as a “relay,” a term Ulmer uses to suggest something less constrictive than a “model.” Thus, while they note that Hurston employed salvage ethnography to preserve the richness of rural African-American oral tradition before it disappeared, they may find Hurston’s interest in gender equality more relevant to their current concerns. By understanding the role ideology has played in shaping their identities until now, students gain an advantage in shaping their future identities. Once they come to a university setting, students can now consciously invent a self; they can choose the superegoic figures they wish to introject and decide how they will use these figures to structure their professional identities and make career decisions. Thus, Hurston might become a “higher self” they can choose to internalize as their own guide. They can also choose which parts of Hurston’s story to use as their scenes of instruction for their careers. For example, Hurston went to high school at age twenty-seven by pretending to be seventeen. Her tenacity and struggles to learn at all costs are inspiring. Also impactful is the story

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about how, at age forty-six, she wrote her most celebrated novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, in order to extricate herself from an obsessive relationship with a man who wanted her to give up her writing career for him.14 Hurston’s actions become a scene of instruction, which I accept as a lesson that applies to my career; it teaches that creative activity and scholarship—Hurston was on a scholarly mission to Haiti when she wrote the novel—can be therapeutic outlets for dealing with other life situations. Hurston had her own guiding emblem or wide image, evident from her biography and from Their Eyes Were Watching God. When Hurston was a child, she climbed a tree and saw the horizon—Florida is mostly flat—and decided she had to go there. This experience of seeing a limit and wanting to explore it is part of her wide image, and it guided her throughout her career. Hurston reproduces this desire for the horizon in her novel’s protagonist, Janie. Another element of the emblem concerns sexuality; Janie, as a teenage girl, lies under a pear tree and sees a bee come into contact with a pear blossom. The tree’s embrace of the bee embodies a life lived to the fullest and without fear. She thus sought a life that includes “sun-up and pollen and blooming trees [and] far horizon.”15 This lesson reminds us that human beings are not only creatures of ideology but also of desire. Although desire often follows the route of ideology, desire also exceeds ideology because we are also biological beings and not purely social and intellectual beings. Janie learns a contrasting life lesson, put to her by her grandmother, Nanny, who had been a slave and was raped by her former owner. Men can make a “spit cup” out of women, she says. The solution Nanny offers is to seek “protection.” You do not marry for love, she teaches, but for security. And you do not state your desires boldly. You self-contain. Between the two poles—“sun-up and pollen and blooming trees [and] far horizon” and “protection”—lay a choice for Janie (and for Hurston). What to do? Live a secure but less satisfying life of constraint, or live dangerously but more fully? Our society contains texts that support either or both values. Neither set of values is inherently right or wrong, but they constitute a choice. Hurston’s protagonist, Janie, shows us the consequences of both choices, since she, like Hurston herself, had three husbands, each embodying one or the other or a combination of these values. The first of Janie’s husbands, Logan Killicks, offers security but nothing else. The 14 Valerie Boyd, “A Protofeminist Postcard from Haiti,” The official website of Zora Neale Hurston, accessed March 2, 2014, http://zoranealehurston.com/resources/guides/a-protofeminist-postcard-fromhaiti.html. 15 Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God, 58.

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second, Joe Clark, offers security and horizons, but not “sun-up and pollen and blooming trees.” The third, Tea Cake, offers little security but an abundance of passion. At the end of the novel, Janie kills Tea Cake in selfdefense after he contracts rabies and becomes paranoid and violent. Despite having to kill her husband, Janie regrets nothing. A mystory shows us a map of our values to help us decide what to do in the face of an aporia such as those faced by Hurston and Janie. The mystory can be produced alone or with others assisting. I assign students to groups of four or five, in which they share the various roles required to make a mystory. Each group has only one querent, and at least one witness, diviner, and curator. A querent has a burning issue, problem, or question to explore; common topics include career, relationships, money, family, living situation, and health. A witness investigates the abject dimensions of collective identity and makes first-hand reports on her/his findings in the field (direct observation of the world) and in the archives. A diviner reads patterns in the materials gathered by the querent and witness, adding new materials, if needed, to link the other materials. A curator makes these materials accessible to the public in the exhibit. Everyone on the team shares necessary roles such as archivist, artist, researcher, critic, historian, documenter, promoter, and educator. The following four paragraphs detail the assignment I gave to my students:

Mystory assignment: detailed tasks for making a mystory 1. The querent starts by posing a burning issue, problem, or question to

explore; common topics include career, relationships, money, family, living situation, health, etc. This question should not be one that is easily answerable by means of reason (true/false) or by morality (right/wrong). Rather it should raise issues about your identity and values: who do I want to be? What do I consider to be a good life? To really answer the question, you have to explore the values you have, which you learn largely through and from other people (“extimacy”) and which may be unconscious (i.e., you may not have really known you had them) and the values you want to have (like Janie in Hurston’s novel, who learns to value the bee + blossom, the horizon, having a voice, people not things, to partake, and to risk everything for love). a. You (the querent) narrate and/or describe—in writing—at least three “scenes of instruction” from your own life that taught you how the world works, particularly how people are divided into groups with different expectations for each group. You then share this writing with the other members of your group. The example I

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referred to in class is that we all learn “boys don’t cry.” But we each learn our lessons in specific settings. We need to know the details of your setting—was it on the playground? From a movie? Who was there? What happened? Where were you? How did you feel? i.These “scenes of instruction” should come from different parts of the popcycle. These are 1) Family or Street, 2) Entertainment or Church, and 3) K-12 School (particularly national history and mythology; i.e., the founders, explorers, champions, and heroes every American is supposed to know). ii.In addition, the querent chooses at least two scenes of instruction from within the materials of “discipline/career” that this class is offering to you. Choose these scenes based on their emotional resonance for you. One will be from Hurston (and can include her life and/or literature), and the other is from the literary theory we are studying, which includes race, ideology, psychoanalysis, feminism, semiotics, cultural studies, and poststructuralism. iii.All of these scenes together are represented by the graphic below. The inner part of the graph is your experience learning the lessons. The outer part is the society: how it actually works as well as its pictures of the world. Figure 2-2: Graph based on Ulmer’s popcycle

2. The witness researches the collective dimensions of identity that relate

to the querent’s material. In other words, the witness notices that the

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querent’s scenes of instruction touch on identity categories such as race, gender, nationality, sexual preference, career, subculture, family role, class, age, region, politics, religion, language, body type, and education. The witness observes and records, in a more general way, how our society treats these various categories. Think of George Lipsitz’s work—exploring whiteness in America—as a type of witnessing. He is recording some of the many ways in which our society treats race. The witness then provides written documented evidence, including academic sources, statistics, graphics, historical events, etc. that relate to the identity categories. The witness is teaching us about the gap between perception and reality, between our “worldviews” and the world as it really works. For example, most white people do not think racism is still a major problem in America, and yet there is a huge gap between their worldview and actual reality. 16 The witness documents both the common worldviews and expert knowledge of the reality. 3. The diviner notices patterns throughout all the materials. First, take the

various parts of the assignment that the querent and witness made or found—the querent’s question, the scenes of instruction, the Hurston material and literary theory, the witness’s research into ideology and reality, etc.—and put this material into different configurations. It is like a collage. This is where the assignment gets “poetic.” There is an emotional resonance to the material. Often there is a detail or theme that repeats from one part of the mystory to another—perhaps a sound, shape, color, texture, object, relationship. It does not have to “mean anything” at first. Just put things together because they feel like they should go together. What is the dominant mood when all the material is juxtaposed? There is no right or wrong answer here. Just notice things and produce a written report on why you put things together the way you did and what patterns you found. a. When the group reviews the collaged material, there should be an epiphany—a recognition—about your values, your worldview, and how the world works. What are the epiphanies? b. The querent, with the assistance of the other members, constructs an “image of wide scope,” which represents the epiphany. This image of wide scope can combine words and images.

16

Given the rash of recent shootings and the emergence of Black Lives Matter, it would now be difficult to argue that race relations are anything less than a major problem in the US. [Editor’s note.]

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4. The curator’s job is to take the materials from the first three steps and

turn them into an exhibit. Any and all media are available; you can use images, objects, texts, sounds, video, performance, etc. But it should be aesthetically interesting, not boring. The exhibit should include text panels explaining what the project is and how the group made it work. Everyone in the group should help with this part, although the curator should be the main organizer to make sure the work gets done. Although I have divided the work for this assignment into four roles— querent, witness, diviner, and curator—the work should be shared. For example, if the querent is having difficulty producing material, the other members of the group can ask questions to get the process moving. Everyone in the group can contribute to the other three roles by doing research, noticing patterns in the material, and putting it all together in an exhibit. The work should be shared and not strictly delineated. To avoid battles over control, members of the group should imagine they are part of a team, with each “role” being not that of a dictator but of an organizer/facilitator. I give this assignment to students, and they begin their mystories by producing anecdotes and fragments related to their scenes of instruction. Here is one student-produced fragment posted on the course website: Another scene I had was today in class. Prof. Mauer said “BEHOLD” and I thought “Bee hold” and was reminded of the time I saw a family friend grab a bee/wasp (some stinging insect) to keep it from stinging his allergic wife. And though it stung him he took it outside and set it free. It is one of the first examples of what you do to protect people that you love. And it’s had a big impact on me.

This fragment links to multiple scenes and discourses crisscrossing the class: the student learning from the teacher in the theory classroom, the childhood memory about the family friend who held the bee, the “sting” of Barthes’s punctum, the “behold” of the philosopher/witness (part of the day’s lesson), and the “bee + pear tree” scene in Their Eyes Were Watching God. And these scenes and discourses intersect by way of what Ulmer calls puncepts: “sets of the fragments collected on the basis of a single shared feature.”17 Students sometimes ask whether they need to know in advance how all 17 Gregory L. Ulmer, Teletheory: Grammatology in the Age of Video (New York: Routledge, 1989), 209.

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the fragments—their scenes of instruction, the archival materials, and the disciplinary materials—fit together. I assure them that the materials, no matter how seemingly disparate, will fit together, that they should trust the process, and that the result will surprise them. The result of the mystory, in other words, brings the unknown to light. Many students, particularly those who have gotten high scores by mastering the term paper, experience some reluctance to try a mystory. They are used to succeeding by showing what they already know. The process of making an emblem or wide image using the puncept is a radically different experience. The mystory is surprising, for it is aesthetic, it privileges emotion over logic, and it depends largely on chance. As a pattern emerges from the fragments of the popcycle, the emblem or wide image comes to represent a guiding mood for the mystorian: One goal of mystory as an experiment is to learn how to replace argumentation with mood as a way to guide research. . . . One motive for this shift is to leave a place for the reader in the construction of the text (interactive texts are written from the position of receiver rather than author—a receiver of the traditions of existing high and popular culture). If there are to be any arguments made, the reader of the mystory, not the composer, supplies them. The emotion generated during the process of composition is “objective” in that it does not necessarily exist prior to the activity of research; the writer does not express this emotion. Rather, the experiment shows a potential scene of emotion to the writer, who then decides to grasp it, research it, and repeat it through a series of elaborations and enlargements to learn what it has to say about the relation of the writer to the cultural contexts brought together in the mystory. The text creates the experience; it does not “represent” a prior experience within the standards of a realism. The writer is free to reject the comment of the miniaturized pattern or to interpret it. At the same time, the metaphor that emerges during the stage of invention (of research, of finding and collecting the items of information from each context) may be manipulated by the writer, since an extensive number of details may be found that repeat across these discourses. The emotion functions to hold the diverse materials together in memory, more than to express an authentic reality.18

In my recent classes, I have required group work on mystories because I find that a cooperative approach allows for greater reflective disclosure. First, other people can see patterns in our scenes of instruction that we may otherwise miss. Also, people find that they share similar patterns. 18

Comley, Scholes, and Ulmer, Text Book, 295-96.

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Finally, the group itself undergoes a liminal process in which relationships are reimagined and reshaped. Kompridis supports the cooperative approach to reflective disclosure, stating that “any act of reflective disclosure that ‘clears the way and liberates’ is necessarily cooperative in character”: “Disclosure that aims to enlarge the cultural conditions of possibility, and the social conditions of freedom and intelligibility, is necessarily a reflective act of co-disclosure, not a soloistic, monological, and monophonic act of ‘genius.’ What it calls for is solicitous cooperation, not individual virtuosity.”19 We are not independent atoms, contrary to the right wing’s individualistic creed. Changing oneself entails changing one’s relationship with the world; it entails changing the world. In the process of making their mystories, students come to realize that the disciplines, including the humanities, rely on ideological processes related to those of other institutions. In other words, the disciplines sort people and things of the world into categories and police those categories. Students and academics alike can use the mystory to produce reflective disclosure about their own institution, its values, behaviors, and sacrifices. Humanities scholars themselves should revisit the disciplines continually to ask the following questions: who is included and excluded? Do the disciplines perpetuate pernicious ideological abuses—such as racism, sexism, homophobia, domination, and exploitation—common in other institutions (such as family, church, entertainment, and state)? What methods do the disciplines use to reproduce subject positions and social relationships? How effective are the disciplines in teaching students about ideology and in empowering them to challenge it? If humanities scholars practice reflective disclosure, enhanced by Ulmer’s methods, we may find better ways to navigate our institution through the age of electracy.

Bibliography Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation).” In Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, 127-186. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971. Arnold-de Simine, Silke. Mediating Memory in the Museum: Trauma, Empathy, Nostalgia. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Balibar, Étienne, and Pierre Macherey. “On Literature as an Ideological Form.” In Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader, edited by Robert Young, 79-99. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1981. 19

Kompridis, Critique and Disclosure, 67-68.

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Banks, Russell. “Bambi: A Boy’s Story.” In Text Book: Writing Through Literature, edited by Nancy R. Comley, Robert Scholes, and Gregory L. Ulmer. Text Book: Writing Through Literature. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002. Barthes, Roland. A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978. —. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by Richard Howard. London: Jonathan Cape, 1982. Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy. Translated by R. Hurley. New York: Zone Books (original work published 1947), 1988-1991. Boyd, Valerie. “A Protofeminist Postcard from Haiti.” The official website of Zora Neale Hurston. Accessed March 2, 2014. http://zoranealehurston.com/resources/guides/a-protofeminist-postcardfrom-haiti.html. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge, 1990. Comley, Nancy R., Robert Scholes, and Gregory L. Ulmer. Text Book: Writing Through Literature. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002. Foucault, Michel. The Archeology of Knowledge. Translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith. London: Tavistock Publications, 1972. —. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by A. Sheridan. London: Allen Lane, 1977. Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Reprint, New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006. Kompridis, Nikolas. Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. Mauer, Barry, John Venecek, Patricia Carlton, Marcy Galbreath, Amy Larner Giroux, and Valerie Kasper. “Teaching the Repulsive Memorial.” Producing Public Memory: Museums, Memorials, and Archives as Sites for Teaching “Writing,” edited by Jane Greer and Laurie Grobman. New York: Routledge, 2015. Mauer, Barry Jason. “Oracles and Divinations: A Monument to Biocultural Diversity Loss.” Excursions 3.1 (2012): n.p. Accessed June 18, 2014. http://www.excursionsjournal.org.uk/index.php/excursions/article/view /58/117. —. “The Mystory: The Garage D’Or of Ereignis.” Alicante Journal of English Studies 26 (2013): 175-191. Accessed March 6, 2014. Turner, Victor. “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in ‘Rites de

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Passage.’” In Symposium on New Approaches to the Study of Religion: Proceedings of the 1964 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society, edited by June Helm, 4-20. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964. Ulmer, Gregory L. Teletheory: Grammatology in the Age of Video. New York: Routledge, 1989. —. Heuretics: The Logic of Invention. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. —. Internet Invention: From Literacy to Electracy. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc., 2003. —. Avatar Emergency. Anderson, SC: Parlor Press LLC, 2012. —. “The Making of ‘Derrida at the Little Bighorn’: An Interview.” In Strategies for Theory: From Marx to Madonna, edited by R. L. Rutsky and Bradley J. Macdonald, 151-152. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2012. Wollen, Peter. Raiding the Icebox: Reflections on Twentieth-Century Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.

CHAPTER THREE TEXT, THEORY, AND THINGS: TOWARDS A PEDAGOGY OF VITAL BEING MATTHEW OVERSTREET DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH, PITTSBURGH, PA 15260

We live in an age of reconstruction. Decades after Peak Theory, the human sciences are still working through the disruption of foundational ways of knowing wrought by Foucault, Derrida, and Co. The following essay will sketch a proposal for reconstruction as it relates to the classroom. It will ask, in this post-postmodern moment, how we can understand who we are as teachers. In a thoroughly foundationless age, bereft of grand narratives, how can we conceptualize the pedagogical project? Such questions require an examination of the tension between word and act, belief and being. They implicate the human, the nonhuman, and the ideas about language, thought, and thing which bind the two. As we will see, many of the old antagonisms between these elements of experience are no longer live. With this in mind, I hope to clear the ground, to hack away some of the pomo overgrowth and gesture toward a new mode of pedagogical thought that respects text, theory, and things.1 In Fragments of Rationality, published in 1989, Lester Faigley addresses what he calls the primary impasse of postmodernity: “a sense that the critiques of postmodern theory are so powerful that no principled

1

“Theory” is, of course, a polysemous term. It can refer to critical theory (a mode of critique practiced by Theodor Adorno, for example), deconstruction or other theories of literary interpretation (i.e., “Theory”), a method of doing something designed to bring about certain results, or, in its broadest sense, a set of principles underlying a practice—the “why” to a “what.” Unless otherwise stated, “theory” in the following pages points to this last definition.

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position can stand in their wake.” 2 We are all compromised, the most extreme version of this argument would go, so who is to say one position is better than the next? At the core of this impasse is the idea, drawn from many sources but particularly associated with French post-structuralism, that there is nothing outside of the constructed and contingent. We are all nodes within the cultural text, tissues composed of our discursive habits. If there is nothing beyond this, or nothing we can get at anyway, there is nothing on which action or belief can be grounded. In practical terms, this means that at some point in the mid-twentieth century, it became impossible for a sophisticated thinker to make assertions of right or wrong, beautiful or ugly, without being implicated in a long-running drama of power and oppression. There is no non-interested, no extra-cultural. Nor are there any eternal truths, universal experiences, or master narratives. And any claim that references such—be it in art, science, ethics, or law— is highly suspect. Louise Wetherbee Phelps, writing a few years before Faigley, notes the sense of loss associated with this “negative purging of belief.” 3 “The postmodern world,” she writes, “is marked by themes of loss, illusion, instability, marginality, decentering, and finitude.” 4 Phelps situates this loss among wider changes in the way reality is constructed, tying the human sciences’ embrace of postmodernity to the erosion of the CartesianNewtonian worldview in the physical sciences. “Just as the physical universe has, in modern physics, become unstable . . . indeterminate, and inaccessible to common sense,” she writes, “so has our intellectual universe.” 5 As we shall see, the ascent of the unintelligible has great progressive potential. It requires new sources of authority, however, new ways of talking about and justifying belief. Many critics feel that postmodern thought, with its focus on critique, is incapable of providing such a program. As Faigley’s notion of impasse suggests, the postmodern subject, deprived of reference to a shared language of universals, is, for many, left without any critical purchase. This does not have to be the case. Postmodern critique can, and in practice does, provide a basis for ethical action. Before explaining how this can occur, however, it will be useful to examine precisely how the trauma of postmodernity plays out in the classroom. 2

Lester Faigley, Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and the Subject of Composition (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989), xii. 3 Louise Wetherbee Phelps, Composition as a Human Science: Contributions to the Understanding of a Discipline (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 5. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid.

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Few works better document the impact of postmodern thought on pedagogy than the foreword to Patricia Bizzell’s collection of essays, Academic Discourse and Critical Consciousness. In this piece, Bizzell describes her evolution as a writing teacher and scholar between 1971 and 1992, a time in which she increasingly came to doubt “the American promise that education leads up from poverty and political oppression.”6 Certainly, many educators will relate to Bizzell’s experiences. On graduating from Wellesley, she chooses a career in teaching so as to do something “socially useful” in “vaguely left-liberal terms.”7 At first, she takes what could be called a rationalist tact. She teaches Standard Written English and close reading, believing that literacy itself will make her students see, and want to change, society’s ugly habits. Touchingly, however, she finds that her “simple assumption that [her] own values would be ratified by reality”8 is shattered when her students insist on the validity of the status quo. Frustrated, she turns to the work of Paulo Freire. From Freire she learns that ideological change requires introduction to an entirely new way of knowing, the cultivation of “critical consciousness.” Bizzell’s education continues, and in the summer of 1977, after exposure to Stanley Fish and Edward Said, she discovers the postmodern revelation that “everything” is discourse.9 She embraces anti-foundationalism and adopts a critical pedagogy that centers on teaching the constructed nature of reality so that her students, like Freire’s Brazilian peasants, can learn to “detach themselves from the world” and discover the “true interrelations” of unjust social systems. 10 In the ultimate postmodern move, however, Stanley Fish, who had previously giveth, now taketh away. “I began to doubt,” Bizzell writes, “that critical detachment in the Freirean sense could be achieved.” 11 In short, as she becomes further acquainted with postmodern thought, Bizzell comes to see that within such a scheme, no thinker can escape her/his positioning. There is no critical method, no authoritative mode of seeing or thinking, guaranteed to lead students to the “left-oriented view of the socio-political world”12 she holds and wishes to promote. “I had hoped,” she writes, that “antifoundationalist critique could itself provide the kind of authoritative 6

Patricia Bizzell, Academic Discourse and Critical Consciousness (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992), 3. 7 Ibid., 4. 8 Ibid., 5. 9 Ibid., 8. 10 Ibid., 19. 11 Ibid., 20. 12 Ibid.

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certainty I condemned in foundationalism.” 13 She comes to view this perspective as naïve. In Fish’s words, it is “anti-foundational theory hope.” Thus, Bizzell arrives at the very impasse described by Faigley. The tools of postmodern critique help her expose unjust social relations and the discursive practices that sustain them, but in doing so they leave her without any ground on which to construct a positive program. Her solution to this impasse is noteworthy. Ultimately, she comes to believe that Freire’s mission of education for critical consciousness can be saved through the disavowal of objectivity. According to her reading, Freire, like Bizzell early in her career, falters by pretending (or perhaps naïvely believing) that his literacy methods allow students to discover objective social relations. As an anti-foundationalist, Bizzell rejects the idea of objective reality. Unjust social relations are real, she believes, but they are created by and accessible only through discourse, any take on which, as we have seen, is always interested, always implicated. Within this worldview, critical literacy cannot provide students access to reality; instead, it can only work to create new realities, new social constructions. In light of this realization, Bizzell’s goal in the classroom becomes a rhetorical one. “The problem facing me,” Bizzell writes, is “how to argue in an anti-foundationalist universe of discourse for left-oriented or egalitarian social values. . . . I have to figure out how to persuade [students] to identify with social justice as the common good.”14 This is inevitably a locally-situated and ideologically-interested project. Bizzell’s solution to the postmodern impasse is to openly present it as such. Bizzell is not alone in viewing the postmodern world as fundamentally rhetorical. Phelps takes a similar view, seeing in postmodern thought an “epistemic revolution” which replaces a widely agreed upon rationalistic worldview with “a dialectic emphasizing pluralistic perspectives.” 15 By both accounts, we now have a profusion of voices, all making truth claims based on different positionings and different logics. How can anything get done in such a world? How can Bizzell and her students, for example, create new meaning without baseline notions of truth to fall back on? The key, Phelps believes, is an increased respect for context. As we have seen, the postmodern universe is one characterized by multiplicity. The mode of thought best suited to deal with such a space, Phelps argues, is contextualism, the “most nearly adequate” of four “world hypotheses,” or global conceptual schemes, first laid out by Stephen Pepper. A contextualist paradigm, Phelps writes, “is one in which all parts 13

Ibid., 26. Ibid., 27, 30. 15 Phelps, Composition as a Human Science, 40. 14

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are not only interdependent but mutually defining and transactive,” 16 constantly reshaping themselves and the whole through their relations. This mode of thought provides for a great degree of complexity; causality, and indeed being, is presented as multidimensional and constantly evolving. Contextualism has in turn been taken up across a variety of intellectual enterprises. One consequence of this shift, Phelps argues, is that it helps Western thought move beyond the Cartesian split between subject and object, the very divide that necessitates the postmodern impasse. As Phelps explains, within a contextualist paradigm, human individuals are “remarkably various” and “remarkably complex,” with subjectivity being an “open system constantly evolving through the exchange of energies with the world.”17 All actors, human and nonhuman, act within the shared tissue of context, drawing from, but also redrawing, that tissue. In contextualist thought, it is this interaction—the event—that is privileged, not the subject nor the object. Such a view radically redefines the relationship between thinker and thought. The tools of understanding —reason, rationality, the senses, and the body—are seen as provided by the world as opposed to existing apart from it. Reason is communal, rationality dialogical; they arise in time and space, from specific interactions and delimited events. This focus on the relational and situated, Phelps argues, lays the groundwork for postmodernity’s positive program. An invigorated notion of context, she writes, “represents the precise counterpart (as God-term) to the discredited ideals of an autonomous, context-free authority.” 18 Shared attention to the local, in other words, provides for the possibility of shared meaning. It allows for negotiation between what were once autonomous perspectives. Thus, a focus on the generative power of context can help overcome the loss of authority occasioned by the postmodern turn. The next step, of particular relevance to pedagogical inquiry, is to ask how we can occasion such focus. The first step, according to Phelps, is to recognize the constructive power of critique. As we have seen, postmodern thought is defined by self-reflection, by a relentless turning of the tools of inquiry against one’s own positioning. This drive toward critique can undermine the principles on which action is based, leading some to conceive of it as a purely negative force. Phelps takes a different view, however. “Criticism,” she writes, “helps us to identify . . . limits to reason, meaning, and community

16

Ibid., 32. Ibid., 34. 18 Ibid., 30. 17

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insofar as they constantly impose themselves”19 on our constructive efforts. The values of distance, irony, and critical analysis work to detotalize any specific truth claim. They thus allow for the generation of shared truth. To further see how postmodernism’s privileging of critique can be generative, it is useful to look outside the postmodern tradition. Hannah Arendt’s discussion of critical thought, and its moral implications, is especially pertinent. Specifically, Arendt, following Kant, draws a distinction between knowing and thinking. The former, arising out of material necessity or simple curiosity, involves the exploration and mapping of our physical world. It is instrumental, constructive, and cumulative, leaving behind a “growing treasure of knowledge.” 20 Thinking, on the other hand, is completely open-ended. It has no purpose (other than the act of thinking itself) and is driven by a desire that knows no limit or satiation point. “The need to think,” Arendt writes in “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” “can be satisfied only through thinking, and the thoughts which I had yesterday will [satisfy] this need today only to the extent that I can think them anew.”21 In Arendt’s distinction between thinking and knowing, we see the defining tension of postmodern thought. Western ways of “knowing,” exemplified by the Cartesian-Newtonian model in the physical sciences, have led to great social gains. At their core, however, they are marked by positivism, rationalism, and a debilitating equation of knowledge, truth, and power. The postmodern turn represents a challenge to this model. It undercuts the foundations on which such thought rests but, at the same time, voids itself. As seen in the traumatic education of Patricia Bizzell, the logic of postmodernity is relentlessly reflective, forever turning back on itself, challenging its own reason for being. It has no purpose and posits no endpoint. In other words, it is “thinking” in its purest form. For Arendt, thinking is directly tied to morality. Specifically, she traces a connection between consciousness and the conscience, seeing in the former the distanciation from self that allows for the latter. Observing Adolf Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem, she finds him neither demonic nor stupid but simply unable to think. Eichmann, she writes, had little trouble transitioning from Nazi functionary to prominent war criminal: he passively accepted this new value system “as though it were nothing but another language rule.”22 The invocation of linguistic habits is key here. 19

Ibid., 28. Hannah Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” Social Research 38.3 (1971): 421. 21 Ibid., 422. 22 Ibid., 417. 20

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According to Arendt, Eichmann lived by clichés, stock phrases, and standardized codes of expression and conduct. These allowed him to operate in the world, but they left him “utterly helpless”23 when confronted with a situation to which none of them would apply. Perhaps he could know his world in positive terms, but being unable to think, he had no ability to challenge the way in which that world was conceptualized. From this, Arendt concludes that the activity of thinking, “the habit of examining and reflecting upon whatever happens to come to pass, regardless of specific content and quite independent of results,”24 can act as a hedge against evil. Thinking makes us consider the consequences of our actions. It “brings out the implications of unexamined opinions and thereby destroys them,”25 allowing us to conceptualize our world in new and better ways. Arendt’s discussion of the relationship between critical thought and morality directly informs our efforts at reconstruction. First, it highlights the ethical implications of the postmodern fascination with linguistic habits. The primary purpose of thinking, Arendt writes, is to unfreeze “what language, the medium of thinking, has frozen into thought.”26 In this we see how Derrida and Co.’s constant deconstruction of meaning, and the challenge such efforts pose to the literal, can have positive social consequence. Eichmann, to be sure, was not a deconstructionist. Arendt also helps us negotiate the hazards associated with this cognitive thaw. Thinking inevitably invalidates all workable criteria, values, and measurements. This can pave the way for new and better values, but it also works to impede immediate action. Indeed, thinking’s “chief characteristic,” Arendt writes, “is that it interrupts all doing.”27 For this reason, thinking, as opposed to the scientist’s quest for knowledge, has often been viewed as “unnatural,” at odds with the practical affairs of the world. It concerns itself with destruction in a world in which destruction equals death. To permanently dwell in such a mental space can be disconcerting. It is this innate human distaste for uncertainty, I would argue, that we see in claims of a postmodern impasse.28 23

Ibid. Ibid., 416. 25 Ibid., 445. 26 Ibid., 417. 27 Ibid., 423. 28 The human desire for certainty, and the effects thereof, is perhaps most thoroughly elucidated in the philosophical tradition known as classical American pragmatism. See, for example, John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action (Dublin: Capricorn Publishers, 1929). 24

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Arendt is also aware of the danger of questioning bleeding into nihilism. Thinking, as she conceives it, entails the acceptance of responsibility. One must commit to an ongoing quest for meaning as well as an ongoing acceptance of partial results. In light of our desire for certainty, however, the tendency exists to change this non-result into a negative result. “The quest for meaning,” Arendt writes, “can at every moment turn against itself, as it were, produce a reversal of the old values, and declare these as ‘new values.’”29 In this we have nihilism, the rejection of process and the embrace of a negative certainty. This is the position of the postmodernist who argues that because we are all compromised, no one has the authority to say that one position is better than the next. As Arendt makes clear, such thought is regressive, invoking the same unthinking mental routine as hide-bound conventionalism. Despite its claims to transcendence, this thought remains squarely within the logic of the old system. Despite these dangers, Arendt suggests, like Phelps, that an embrace of critical thought can ultimately pave the way for a more fulfilling, and sustainable, mode of existence. To highlight this point, both thinkers turn to the Socratic dialogues. Socratic inquiry, like all critical thought, is alienating in that it leaves the subject incapable of naïve, unexamined being. After an encounter with Socrates, and “the wind of thought,” knowledge is understood as always incomplete, always in process. This is destabilizing but ultimately constructive, for it forces the subject to turn outward, to the shared knowledge-making procedures provided by communal inquiry. Arendt phrases it beautifully when she writes that thinking “has roused you from your sleep and made you fully awake and alive,” but, at the same time, it has revealed that “you have nothing in your hand but perplexities, and the most we can do with them is share them with each other.” 30 In other words, when practiced whole-heartedly, thinking generates the desire for shared inquiry. Upon realizing that we do not know, we must turn outward and share what little we do know with one another. In this move we see the generative power of critique. By tracing the limits of meaning, it allows for richer meaning. By undermining the abstract and universal, it demands that the thinker take part in the local. The above analysis helps show how the destruction of universal foundations, rather than occasioning loss and disillusionment, can actually provide for new modes of ethical action. The key is to recognize the extent 29 30

Ibid., 435. Ibid., 434.

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to which all actions are inevitably situated in time and space, in context and community. It is from this expanded notion of context that actions take their shape and derive their value. One result of this, as we have seen, is that the interests and positioning of the thinker are always implicated. This should not be seen as debilitating, however. Indeed, it is the recognition and interrogation of these bonds that allow for community, authority, and, ultimately, the creation of shared meaning. Such a vision goes a long way, I believe, toward overcoming what Faigley identifies as the postmodern impasse. Faigley himself would likely agree. In addressing the riddle of how to present a positive program legitimated by non-foundational authority, he follows Jean-François Lyotard in arguing that the first step must be to disallow any claim based on a priori truth. “The question for justice in a society,” Lyotard claims, “cannot be resolved in terms of models.” 31 Instead, questions of value must be determined per the affordances of the specific and situated. So, in short, all knowledge is local. Fair enough. But how does this claim impact how we talk about teaching? Does it mean that Bizzell’s classroom experiences, for example, and the conceptual system by which she understands them, are of no use to you or me? Or even of no use to Bizzell when transported from one situation to the next? Such questions run deep, implicating the very relationship between word and act: I can say and I can do, but how does one affect the other? They also entail value judgment, because theory—whether in the form of learning models, methodological approaches, or projected outcomes—is inevitably the standard by which practice is judged. At heart, theory and practice are (and should be conceived of as) mutually sustaining, returning to each other in “infinitely recursive loops,” as Phelps puts it. And yet many teachers criticize the former for attempting to over-determine the latter. In composition, for example, Phelps finds a “strong undertow of anti-intellectual feeling that resists the dominance of theory.”32 Granted, in the history of writing instruction, I would wager that theory has more often been wielded as a cudgel than utilized as a plowshare.33 In light of this, and in recognition of the postmodern insight that all knowledge is local, some thinkers have proceeded to deny 31 Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean-Loup Thebaud, Just Gaming, trans. Wlad Godzich (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 55, quoted in Faigley, Fragments of Rationality, 235. 32 Phelps, Composition as a Human Science, 206. 33 As evidence of this, one can look towards the trend of “critical” pedagogies which, supposedly justified by the postmodern insight that all instruction is interested, proceed to use the classroom for (very uncritical) indoctrination.

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theory—as in portable expressions of teacherly knowledge—altogether. Following the work of Donald Davidson and Thomas Kent, the postpedagogy writing movement, for example, holds that no pedagogy can “teach writing.” Teachers participating in this movement focus instead on “occasion design,” on establishing conditions in which students create “constellations whose connections we did not and could not anticipate.”34 In such a space, teachers and students act as co-workers, collaboratively engaging with text, idea, and experience. This vision is appealing. It presents the classroom as a scene of active reconceptualization—of thinking. However, even in the context-dependent, open-ended world of the post-pedagogical classroom, a language is nevertheless needed to talk about what happens and should happen. In short, theory is still necessary. So how should we “do theory” in our post-postmodern age? Phelps’s work again proves instructive. In light of what she views as composition’s anti-intellectual tendencies, she sets out to construct “a new dynamic balance”35 that respects both theorists’ pursuit of abstract knowledge and teachers’ intuitions about the proper role of that knowledge in practical situations. In Phelps’s contextualist worldview, ends are shaped by available means and local needs; therefore, as with the later postpedagogical thinkers, no prescriptions are possible. Instead, the thinkerteacher must use phronesis, or practical wisdom, to apply general knowledge to specific context-bound cases. Key to this application is the notion of reflection. Phelps uses this term, borrowed from John Dewey, to represent “deliberate, rigorous thinking” as well as a “critical attitude or relation to phenomena.”36 For her, the teacher’s capacity to reflect—“to weight, compare, experiment, judge” 37 —acts as the mediating element between theory and practice. Knowledge, in the form of theory, guides reflection. It is abstract, but it is also alive. Phelps also demands that theory be understood as a fluid entity. Theory, she writes, is oppressive when “transmitted to the teacher’s mind—and received—as a solid, invariant chunk of meaning.”38 Instead, each viewpoint or theoretical scheme must remain “plastic . . . [an] open system of meanings capable of entering into a communicative relation with other knowledge systems.”39 Theory, like all knowledge, arises out of 34 Paul Lynch, After Pedagogy: The Experience of Teaching (Chicago: National Council of Teachers of English, 2013), 55. 35 Phelps, Composition as a Human Science, 206. 36 Ibid., 208. 37 Ibid., 210. 38 Ibid., 214. 39 Ibid.

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context. Its application inevitably represents a return to another, different context. The teacher, and her capacity for critical reflection, must act as a medium, actualizing the abstract via its merger with the local and material. To accomplish this merger both teacher and knowledge system(s) must be adaptive, responsive. They must remain fluid. The above vision may sound aspirational, but I would argue that it is actually descriptive of what any conscientious educator does every day. In short, we take bits and pieces of wisdom about how the world works, paste them together, and use them to help us do our job. For the self-aware and socially engaged, this process is always experimental, our theory always responsive to our practice. An abstract idea, about student writing habits, for example, is affirmed and becomes a guide to action. Alternatively, it is contradicted and adapted or replaced. There is a constant cognitive churn, in other words, effected by the (inter)action of text, theory, and things. For Phelps, this actualization of the abstract is, of course, always an interested process, taking place in space and time. Its context, while singular, is never isolated, either synchronically or diachronically. In the former sense, at any given moment, a teacher must be aware of the demands and affordances of her specific spacio-temporal milieu. For example, she may know that Brad, if called upon, will reliably give voice to libertarian political views. In the latter sense, she must have the mind of a collector, always on the lookout for potential connections between disparate bits of experience. That same teacher, for example, may be able to problematize Brad’s views, and use that provocation to fuel class discussion, through knowledge gained via exposure to Slavoj Žižek and Fox News. Again, no single theory is “applied.” Instead, the teacher functions as an active medium, an ongoing point of connection, between knowledge(s) and action. Such work requires attunement. Attunement, Phelps writes, “is a readiness on the part of teachers to perceive a theoretical idea as relevant and productive, not merely to existing problems but to unknown situations.” 40 It is a “background state of attention,” continually sifting “concepts, images, frames, bits of language, traces of thought”41 for traces of anything that might connect past to present to future. This state of hyper-awareness is developed over time, through trial and error, and through participation in the process of communal inquiry. “The process of experimentation that builds such wisdom is repetitive and social,” Phelps writes.42 Instead of carrying out single experiments in isolation, teachers 40

Ibid., 221. Ibid., 222. 42 Ibid., 235. 41

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always engage in the merger of theory and practice within broad webs of influence: students, colleagues, and people we have never met. Libertarian Brad’s teacher, for example, could not problematize his views without Žižek, Fox News, and, of course, Brad and his classmates. That phronesis is ultimately a communal process is key. It is knowledge-making, and like all knowledge-making, it is a social act. Thus far I have argued that a deep contextualism, coupled with respect for vigorous critique, can help overcome the moral untethering supposedly associated with postmodern thought. I have also argued that within such a scheme, theory must be understood as a living thing—something that happens in space and time through conscious, communal action—rather than as dead letters on the page. Taken together, I believe these claims work to overcome (or, at least, to sidestep) what Faigley labels the impasse of postmodernity. For me, they provide a basis for ethical thought and action in a world without foundations. Building on this premise, we can begin to think forward, so to speak. This means using the above insights to gesture beyond postmodernity, the goal being to identify new avenues for pedagogical theory. I believe that a turn toward the object, and our relationship with it, can help achieve this. In “Weird Reality, Aesthetics and Vitality in Education,” Sevket Benhur Oral makes a bold claim. He writes that the purpose of education is not the transmission of knowledge, skills, or dispositions. Instead, for him, “education is about vitality.”43 Vitality in this sense arises from the pose we strike in relation to the material world or object. In particular, Oral, building on the speculative realism of philosopher Graham Harman, argues that to experience life at its most vital, we must respect the “interiority” of objects. This entails an understanding that while we may come to know an object—a fig, thunderstorm, or baseball, for example— within the intentional sphere of our consciousness, the “real” object lies beyond this sphere, constantly receding into the “inscrutable depths of being.” 44 Objects, in other words, always exceed their appearance, use value, or role within a causal chain. The recognition of this fact, Oral believes, leads to a “sense of awe and wonder in the face of reality,” a state which he views as the mark of an “educated” person.45 Now admittedly, postmodern thought may seem distant from, or even in conflict with, Oral and Harman’s brand of speculative realism. One focuses on epistemology—how we know—while the other explores 43

Sevket Benhur Oral, “Weird Reality, Aesthetics, and Vitality in Education,” Studies in the Philosophy of Education 34 (2014): 462. 44 Ibid., 466. 45 Ibid., 471.

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ontology—what is. For the former, everything is text, while for the latter, every thing is an object. Indeed, Derrida would likely dismiss Harman’s interest in the interaction (or lack thereof) of hydrogen molecules on distant stars as beholden to “the metaphysics of presence,” while Harman’s texts are full of mirror-image attacks on the great deconstructionist. That said, for purposes of finding new ways to think and talk about what happens in the classroom, a mashup of these disparate traditions has much to offer. The key, as Phelps suggests, is to view each conceptual system as plastic, an open system of meaning capable of entering into “communicative relations” with the other. As we have seen, postmodern thought does particularly valuable work in tracing the limits of meaning. Much of human experience—economic systems, the fluctuation of the earth’s atmosphere, even the workings of our own bodies—lies outside human knowledge or control. Postmodernism makes this clear. In doing so, it presents a powerful challenge to those who demand that the positivism of the natural sciences be considered the default mode of human understanding. For some, this discrediting of objective access is unsettling. I have argued, however, that it need not be. Instead, even Derrida’s hyperbolic claim that “there is nothing outside the text” entails a profound ethical demand. Because all we have is an endless chain of signifiers, the burden is on us as thinkers and citizens to ensure that the cultural text is well written. I would like to suggest that Oral’s embrace of the object, although seemingly the opposite move philosophically, makes a similar demand. This proposed link between object and ethics comes into view when we examine Oral’s conception of pedagogy as a “heuristic device” designed to move students toward “aesthetic reflection.” Following Harman, Oral sees a tension between the interiority of objects—their weird, unknowable centers—and the part they play, and attributes they take on, when lodged in systems. Aesthetics involve acknowledgment of, and respect for, the object, the system, and the tension that binds them. Pedagogical theory, Oral argues, should seek to cultivate this enhanced notion of the aesthetic. Oral tracks the student’s relationship to the object through a series of stages. First is naïve realism, an understanding of the object as given. Next, the student develops the ability to systematize and define, to understand the object as existing within a web of cause and effect. This is the domain of conventional Western education. It is marked by a shallow form of contextualism and undergirded by a philosophy of scientific realism. Within such a scheme, rationality rules, and epistemic mastery, control, and predictability are privileged. The student, an engineer or

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molecular biologist perhaps, seeks correct answers, air-tight theories, and final definitions. This mode of thought, Oral argues, is regressive in that in seeking to tame the object, it robs the world of the “enigma of interiority.”46 Although Arendt would use different language, she would likely second Oral’s complaint. In her scheme, this stage of intellectual development is correlated with knowing, not thinking. Eichmann could function well in such a system. Likewise, Bizzell would decry the resort to foundations and Phelps the re-inscription of the subject/object split. All these thinkers, it seems, are united in their wish to transcend the reductive, static tendencies of conventional educational theory. Toward this end, Oral proposes a “transrational” mode of engagement. Here, the thinker surrenders notions of mastery, seeking instead “dramatic proximate encounters with things with the full awareness of their irreducible autonomous inner reality.”47 Such an understanding represents a form of vital engagement with the world and, for Oral, a third and penultimate stage of student development. It marks the recognition of our existence as both a unique individual, irreducible to any single set of attributes, and a node within a larger system. Such positioning transcends both “prerational fusion” and “rational distance.”48 Instead, an “inexhaustible surplus of reality”—in objects, ideas, others, and self—is recognized and celebrated. As I see it, Oral’s introduction of the unknowable object adds a new layer of complexity to Phelps’s contextualism. From Phelps we have a picture of the world as one of constant unfolding, constant evolution through the exchange of energies. By understanding the object—every object—as limitless, of infinite and unfathomable depth, we see how such a flux can be sustained. Context, we can now say, is the all-encompassing tissue of existence, studded throughout with objects-as-mini-black-holes. These objects, although inaccessible, bend space and time through their perpetual emergence. From this emergence arises all potentiality: the capacity of actors, both human and nonhuman, to redraw themselves and the systems in which they move. Again, the focus is on the interaction, the event. When set against the backdrop of an unknowable field, however, the event is reimagined as unbounded, its potential inexhaustible. This conception of being—vital being—presents a horizon toward which pedagogical theory can strive. In other words, it represents an endpoint, a model for the subjectivity progressive education should engender.

46

Ibid., 471. Ibid., 462. 48 Ibid., 469. 47

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Of course, being a mashup of two disparate conceptual systems, the above proposal may not be acceptable to committed partisans of either postmodernism or speculative realism. On the one hand, it demands that the thinker recognize something, an always-emergent unknowable something, yet something of consequence, beyond the bounds of discourse. On the other, it insists on remaining mired in human experience. This aspect may be distasteful to some object-oriented thinkers. Harman, for example, argues for a shift “from the analysis of consciousness and written words toward an ontology of dogs, trees, flames, monuments, societies, ghosts, gods, pirates, coins, and rubies.’’ 49 What would such a shift entail, however? What happens when we try to look beyond what we know or can know, toward the blank inner-core of a ghost or pirate? Oral provides a hint when he writes that one must approach the unknowable “indirectly, by way of allusion.” 50 We cannot see inside the object-as-black-hole. Instead, we can only hope to brush against it, drawing sustenance from its perpetual emergence. This relationship, as Oral hints, is one of allusion. To better understand allusion—and to see how contextualism is necessary to actualize the promise of Oral’s vitalist pedagogy—it is useful to turn to an example. Toward the end of Plato’s Phaedrus, the title character notes the poetic license taken by his lover and dialogue partner. “Socrates,” he exclaims, “you’re very good at making up stories from Egypt or wherever else you want!”51 Socrates does not deny this claim. Instead, he urges his young confidant to focus on the truth of his tales, not their (admittedly shaky) provenance. The truth to which he refers is truth-via-allusion. It is a social object but one that emerges through talk of gods and heavenly arenas and far-off Egypt—in short, through metaphysical speculation. This is the type of vital truth Harman captures in his ontological explorations of ghosts and rubies. It is, in fact, the type of truth we find whenever we brush against the unknowable. But how should we understand this truth? In answering this question, pedagogical theory must diverge somewhat from object-oriented philosophy. As we have seen, in the classroom, truth is always shared, situated, and implicated. It always arises from within space and time: from within human experience. As such, teachers recognize that whenever we think the unknown, we engage not just the object—what is—but also rhetoric—the process by which we understand, communicate, and, in a non-negligible way, create what is. Seen in this 49

Graham Harman, “Realism Without Materialism,” Substance 40 (2011): 55. Oral, “Weird Reality,” 470. 51 Plato, Phaedrus, trans. Alexander Nehmas and Paul Woodruff (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1955), 55. 50

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way, we can say that Socrates, when he tells Phaedrus to pay attention to the truth of his tales, is not telling his young lover to look toward the skies. Instead, he is urging him to reflect on his own experience. Of course, claiming that all knowledge comes to us through lived experience contradicts the epistemological theory to which Socrates claims to subscribe. For him, “the body is a source of endless trouble.”52 The senses are mere “distracting elements,” which “infect the soul [and] hinder her from acquiring truth.” 53 True knowledge, he claims, entails recollection of the divine Forms—the ultimate unknowable object. Sure. But such knowledge is decidedly not what Socrates traffics in. Instead, his domain is the rhetorical, the embodied, the communal. This fact becomes apparent when he and his confidants try to think the unknowable. Any time they seek to understand what lies beyond the senses, they are drawn back, as if by magic (or authorial intent) to the corporal. On the most basic level, Socrates’s language betrays him. “It has been proved to us by experience,” he says, “that if we would have pure knowledge of anything we must quit of the body.”54 It has been proved by experience. Even in arguing for the necessity of quitting the body, Socrates cannot quit the body. Rather than the above being a singular event, analysis reveals that time and time again Socrates uses reference to shared experience to build understanding of seemingly “eternal” truths. A bit further along in Phaedo, for example, he seeks to reassure his confidants that after death, the soul “dwells in the world below,” eventually to reemerge into the land of the living. To create this truth he refers to a number of widely known natural processes: heating and cooling, sleeping and waking, the life cycle of organisms. “Shall we suppose nature to walk on one leg only?”55 he asks, expressly drawing on a shared knowledge of the physical world to support his speculation. “Must we not rather assign to death [as to life] some corresponding process of generation?” 56 “Certainly,” an interlocutor replies. So it is proven: the living come from the dead, just as the dead come from the living. Knowledge has been generated about that of which the knowledge-makers cannot know. This truth comes not from the heavens or recollection of the Forms, however. Instead, it arises through

52

Plato, Phaedo, in The Portable Plato, ed. Scott Buchanan (New York: Penguin, 1977), 134. 53 Ibid., 134. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., 138. 56 Ibid.

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allusion—which means it arises rhetorically from reference to shared experience. Plato’s Phaedrus further highlights the rhetorical nature of Socratic truth. Here, Socrates admits the need to speak in allusion. “To describe what the soul actually is,” he says, is “a task for a god in every way; but to say what it is like is humanly possible.”57 To explain what the soul is like, Socrates presents an elaborate and eloquent tale of divine arenas and heavenly chariot races. In this section, he approaches the very core of the unknown, the place where the object-as-black-hole asserts its greatest force. Not surprisingly, his language rises in intensity. It also becomes increasingly personal, more connected to and invocative of the physical world. The souls on the heavenly circuit, as they strive to catch a glimpse of the unknowable Forms, “are all eagerly straining to keep up . . . trampling and striking one another as each tries to get ahead of the others.”58 Socrates speaks so passionately about the unknown, I believe, because in reality he is describing what he knows intimately: the struggle of the thinker. Engagement with the emergent object, paradoxically, has brought him closer to himself. This dual movement—toward the situated, the local via the unknowable—is what we must strive for in the classroom. It is the engine at the heart of a pedagogy of vital being. As with the fluidity of theory and practice, here again, I would argue, that which seems wildly aspirational is instead a daily occurrence in many classrooms. Any time individuals think together, trying to understand that which they cannot know, they approach the emergent object. The key to (re)vitalizing such engagement is simply to recognize what is already taking place. For example, in my own classroom, a recent discussion of optical illusions sparked much talk and thought of the unknown, the unknowable, and ultimately, for some students, led to the exploration of their own cognitive limits. “Which way of seeing the Janus-faced figure is correct?” I asked. Meditation on this simple question was enough to invoke the unknown and all of the opportunities for self-discovery such an invocation allows. The question allowed for thinking, in other words. And thinking is always vital. To summarize, the above has argued for a deep contextualism sustained by a conception of the object as unknowable and constantly emergent. Attention to the Socratic dialogues, and everyday classroom experience, demonstrates what such a pedagogy might look like in practice. In particular, we have seen that within such a scheme all 57 58

Plato, Phaedrus, 30. Emphasis added. Ibid., 34.

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knowledge—even that of the unknown—inevitably arises from, and returns to, shared experience. The object, after all, is a black hole. Despite remaining in darkness, however, its inexhaustible surplus can invigorate our lives and thought. It can give teachers and students a renewed sense of purpose and power in the classroom and beyond. The key to such a pedagogy, as captured in the postmodern impulse, is to approach the unknowable in a spirit of communal inquiry and self-reflection. Ultimately, while in no way complete, this merger of self and object, text and thing, I hope, gestures toward a new mode of pedagogical theory.

Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. “Thinking and Moral Considerations.” Social Research 38.3 (1971): 417-446. Bizzell, Patricia. Academic Discourse and Critical Consciousness. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992. Faigley, Lester. Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and the Subject of Composition. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989. Harman, Graham. “Realism Without Materialism.” Substance 40 (2011): 52-72. Lynch, Paul. After Pedagogy: The Experience of Teaching. Chicago: National Council of Teachers of English, 2013. Lyotard, Jean-Francois, and Jean-Loup Thebaud. Just Gaming. Translated by Wlad Godzich. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985. Oral, Sevket Benhur. “Weird Reality, Aesthetics, and Vitality in Education.” Studies in the Philosophy of Education 34 (2014): 459474. Phelps, Louise Wetherbee. Composition as a Human Science: Contributions to the Understanding of a Discipline. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Plato. Phaedo. In The Portable Plato, edited by Scott Buchanan, 127-176. New York: Penguin, 1977. EPUB e-book. —. Phaedrus. Translated by Alexander Nehmas and Paul Woodruff. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1955.

CHAPTER FOUR TEACHING AND LEARNING AS TEXTUAL ACTS: ROLAND BARTHES, ASSESSMENT, AND THE VALUE OF THE WRITERLY ROBERT GRAY INSTITUTE FOR PEDAGOGY, UNIVERSITY OF BERGEN, BERGEN, NORWAY 5020

Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear, —both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognize In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being. —William Wordsworth1

In recent years, especially given the growth of online learning and outcomes-based data collection in universities, assessment and evaluation have become key buzzwords in the American higher education bureaucracy. This trend has continued to grow,2 but the question of what defines quality has never been adequately addressed. This is certainly understandable since doing so would require a task of unthinkable difficulty, and as a 1

William Wordsworth, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, July 13, 1798,” in William Wordsworth, ed. Stephen Gill (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 134. 2 Alexander W. Astin, Assessment for Excellence: The Philosophy and Practice of Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012).

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result, we have resorted to simplistic and reductionist methods of pseudoquantitative inquiry in the interest of efficiency. Perhaps the chief difficulty in all of this is that no one can seem to define or agree upon what constitutes quality, much less upon how to measure something so abstract and elusive. Nonetheless, a rather lucrative industry has emerged over the last few decades on “best practices” in the college classroom, both online and faceto-face, but it would be quite futile to identify any replicable essential element that makes these best practices best. The problem lies with the question of how one measures quality in the first place. Most recent studies have tended to look at student outcomes, but the translation of subjectively arrived upon indicators into objectively analyzed statistics is at the very least problematic. Another difficulty lies in the mere idiosyncrasies of the concept of quality in the first place. What one student considers an outstanding, inspiring class is another student’s misery. It is plainly oversimplification to state that such a course computes out as average. Context, circumstances, and social discourses play a vitally important but underrepresented role in the determination of quality. It is almost as if we should simply follow the famous lead of Justice Potter Stewart and state, “I know it when I see it.” In addition, this je ne sais quoi we call quality, and more importantly the qualities that make it unknowable, is behind much of the difficulty in establishing an effective model or method for measuring it. Undoubtedly, there is such a thing as good teaching; however, this mystical reality we call good teaching cannot simply be reduced to a dependent variable or, for that matter, statistical formulae or theoretical exposition. This search for the je ne sais quoi that represents the “best” of educational practice demonstrates the value of a postmodern or post-structuralist approach to assessment in higher education. Post-structuralism, particularly as seen in the work of Roland Barthes, enables us to recognize this reified “best of” as a demonstration of the metaphysics of presence, a search for a transcendental signified. While we believe that there is such a thing as quality in university teaching and learning, such quality cannot be easily quantified or automatically implemented. In any case, this essay will argue that the best university teaching and learning experiences, whether online or in the traditional classroom, are experiences that allow the students not only exposure to quality course content and instructional methods but also an opportunity to participate in the course’s production of meaning. This shift from the standard, institutional language of “course content” and “intended learning outcomes” to “meaning,” or, further yet, “signifiers” and “signifieds” is a significant move, and the field of literary theory is

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arguably the best place for such a move to take place. Literary theory primarily explores the relationship between texts, authors, and readers, and most contemporary literary theory derives from the same traditions that have shaped philosophy, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and qualitative education research. These traditions—post-structuralism, readerresponse theory, semiotics, cultural studies, Marxism, feminism, etc.—can provide us considerable insights into how we conceptualize and evaluate all aspects of teaching and learning from course content to curriculum. Perhaps the chief advantage that literary theory offers is that it provides the necessary tools for reconceptualizing courses and classrooms as “texts.” Such a move would enable novel and sophisticated modes of analysis of the teaching and learning process. While rethinking the classroom as text might be easier to conceptualize in an online environment where most content is literally written and read, the term “text” here is something much larger. For our purposes, a text is any combination of “signs” that convey meaning, and therefore for the purposes of this analysis, we will adopt the Derridean stance that “everything is a text.”3 Such a theoretical frame makes every aspect of a college course available for analysis: from text written by the instructor; to text written by external subject matter experts (e.g., textbooks, articles, websites, etc.); to video or audio produced by the instructor; to video or audio produced by others (e.g., YouTube or other videos, guest lectures, etc.); to text written or even video produced by students; to words actually spoken by the instructor and/or students in the classroom. In addition, this “text” can happen anywhere, from the face-to-face classroom; to the pages of the assigned textbooks; to the pages of the online course site; to discussion forums, chat rooms, and emails; to student papers and projects submitted on paper or online; to images, videos, and other multimedia objects. Therefore, when we consider college courses and classrooms as texts, we consider the complex web of signifiers and signifieds that are produced by and within the course as a whole. It is important to note that students are a vital part of this textual web as well, not only in the form of their contributions to discussions and assessments but also in that they become embodied texts and authors themselves, re-writing the course in active collaboration with the instructor, the content, and one another. Recognizing, however, that instructors, students, and course content are mutually influencing is not enough. In the interactive processes of teaching and learning, course content becomes a distillation of the 3

John Rawlings, “Jacques Derrida,” Stanford Presidential Lectures in the Humanities and Arts, 1999, accessed March 5, 2016, http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/derrida/.

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instructor’s goals and experiences, the instructor’s utterances, the assigned texts, other texts, and the students’ written, spoken, and perhaps even imagined contemplations upon and within the content. In addition, at the macro and micro levels, the department, institution, and the broader academic community all influence the course content. For example, anyone who has taught literature in an evangelical high school or a state university will quickly recognize that those institutions significantly determine what is taught and how, and sometimes even what can be uttered in the classroom. Course content, therefore, is not a discrete or concrete entity; rather, it is a distillation of many sources, factors, and seemingly insignificant decisions but also sources, factors, and decisions that are limited and provided by the discourse. In addition, this content is nebulous, as it is so differently understood by all the participants, as well as transitory, constantly in a state of flux. One possible way to gain a deeper understanding of all of this is to apply Roland Barthes’s concept of the “writerly” text to the practice and evaluation of teaching and learning in higher education. In his essay S/Z, Barthes considers how texts can legitimately be evaluated: The primary evaluation of all texts can come neither from science, for science does not evaluate, nor from ideology, for the ideological value of a text (moral, aesthetic, political, alethiological) is a value of representation, not of production (ideology “reflects,” it does not do work). Our evaluation can be linked only to a practice, and this practice is that of writing. On the one hand, there is what it is possible to write, and on the other, what it is no longer possible to write: what is within the practice of the writer and what has left it: which texts would I consent to write (to re-write), to desire, to put forth as a force in this world of mine? What evaluation finds is precisely this value: what can be written (rewritten) today: the writerly. Why is the writerly our value? Because the goal of the literary work (of literature as work) is to make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text.4

This passage is important for multiple reasons. Perhaps most important is the fact that Barthes links evaluation to practice. Science (e.g., quantitative statistical methods) offers no more reliable measure for determining the quality of a college course than it does for analyzing the value of a poem or a work of art. Therefore, we must look to practice, specifically the practice of writing, of meaning making, to meaningfully evaluate teaching and learning. For Barthes, the writerly (or scriptible in his original 4

Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), 34. Emphasis added.

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French)5 is important because it puts the reader in an active posture, in the role of co-writer, jointly producing meaning rather than passively receiving it. In some ways this speaks to the currently popular concept of active learning, 6 which, despite its popularity in universities around the world, is still not very deeply understood by most practitioners or even educational researchers.7 However, the concept of writerly texts gives a much more theoretically rich and sound understanding of what such an active approach can mean. This concept becomes even more applicable to traditional, passive teaching and learning practices in higher education when we consider the continuation of Barthes’s paragraph: Our literature is characterized by the pitiless divorce which the literary institution maintains between the producer of the text and its user, between its owner and its customer, between its author and its reader. This reader is thereby plunged into a kind of idleness—he is intransitive; he is, in short, serious: instead of functioning himself, instead of gaining access to the magic of the signifier, to the pleasure of writing, he is left with no more than the poor freedom either to accept or reject the text: reading is nothing more than a referendum.8

This passage displays many of Barthes’s major concepts; from “jouissance,” which means the ecstasy or bliss of the text, to “the magic of the signifier,” to “the pleasure of writing,” to how the commercial and institutional demands of the text industry reduce reading to superficial consumption. Barthes also promotes his concept of “play,” as suggested by its contrary, the word “serious” (sérieux in the original French). What is most interesting about this passage, however, is that when we substitute the concepts of “teaching” for “literature” and “student” for “reader,” the statement is just as accurate and relevant for the higher education industry. For example, we could translate Barthes’s passage to read thus: Our modern teaching practice is characterized by the pitiless divorce 5

Roland Barthes, S/Z (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1970), 10. Charles C. Bonwell and James A. Eison, “Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the Classroom,” ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report 1 (1991). 7 Maryellen Weimer, “Active Learning: In Need of Deeper Exploration,” Faculty Focus, Magna Publications, March 9, 2016, accessed March 12, http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/active-learning-inneed-of-deeper-exploration/. 8 Barthes, S/Z, 4. Emphasis added. 6

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I am not aware of a more apt (and oddly prophetic) description of the increasingly bloated, bureaucratic, and commodified twenty-first-century higher education industry. Nor am I aware of a more apt description of what has been called the “teacher-centered classroom.”10 However, lost in the countless articles, conference presentations, and professional development teaching workshops about active or student-centered learning is the realization that authentic learning happens with the acceptance of the freedom “of reading the text as if it had already been read.”11 This, of course, is not as simple as it sounds. Rereading, for Barthes, is more than simply reading again; it breaks the illusion of the text’s linearity and exposes its artifice. It is also perhaps the most vital of activities, in that it runs “contrary to the commercial and ideological habits of our society, which would have us ‘throw away’ the story once it has been consumed (‘devoured’), so that we can then move on to another story, buy another book, and which is tolerated only in certain marginal categories of readers (children, old people, and professors).”12 One merely has to think of the recent development of textbook rentals, the long standing practice of exorbitant textbook prices where students routinely pay $200 for a single textbook they never open, or the publishing industry’s penchant for producing “new” editions every two or three years to prevent losing revenue from used book sales. Even here in Norway, where higher education is free, textbooks are a prohibitive expense for students. It all reminds me of an old college professor of mine who said that “owning a college bookstore is a license to steal.” 13 What makes rereading so important for Barthes is that “rereading is no longer consumption, but play (that play which is the return of the different).” Rereading, however, opens 9

Ibid. Emphasis mine. Kathy Laboard Brown, “From Teacher-Centered to Learner-Centered Curriculum: Improving Learning in Diverse Classrooms,” Education 124.1 (Fall 2003): 49-54. 11 Ibid., 15. 12 Ibid., 15-16. 13 Thomas Moore, personal communication, October 1983. 10

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“not the real text, but a plural text: the same and new.”14 When reading is commodified, such play becomes “intransitive” and “serious.” The kind of text described in the original version of Barthes’s paragraph above is what he calls a “readerly” (lisible) text. The readerly text is the opposite of the writerly text. Readerly texts are “what can be read, but not written. . . . They are products (and not productions).”15 They “make up the enormous mass of our literature” and offer limited possibilities for interpretation.16 Regrettably, the great majority of all texts, not just literary texts but also the educational “texts” that constitute our classrooms, are readerly. This includes everything from reading assignments to words spoken or projected in the classroom to lecture videos streamed through an online course site. A year after publishing S/Z, Barthes carried the readerly/writerly concept a little further in his essay “From Work to Text.” He uses the terms “Text” and “work” instead of writerly and readerly; however, “Text” (note the capital “T”) and “work” operate in much the same way. For Barthes, a work is something that sits on a shelf, a reified object. A Text, however, is a living thing. It comes alive with each reading: “the Text is experienced only in an activity of production.” 17 Whereas the author is the “father and the owner of his work,” the Text “reads without the inscription of the Father.”18 This leads Barthes to a conclusion that is central to all of his writing: “The Text requires that one try to abolish (or at the very least to diminish) the distance between writing and reading, in no way by intensifying the projection of the reader into the work but by joining them in a single signifying practice.” 19 Barthes’s work on privileging the reader has tremendously rich potential in its applicability to educational theory and practice. Privileging the student in a way that abolishes (or at least lessens) the distance between teaching and learning can cause a fundamental shift in the way we think about not only teaching and learning but also the concept of active learning. In order to do this, however, we must rethink the role of the teacher and teaching in the signifying (i.e., teaching) process. It is not difficult to identify the readerliness (or “work”-ness) in most modern university teaching practices, where in a typical lecture classroom 14

Barthes, S/Z, 16. Ibid., 4-5. 16 Ibid., 5. 17 Roland Barthes, “From Work to Text,” in Image Music Text, ed. and trans. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana Press, 1977), 157. Emphasis added. 18 Ibid., 161. 19 Ibid., 162. 15

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a student is posed as a passive recipient of information. The overwhelming majority of all college classroom spaces in the US are designed for lecturebased teaching (e.g., chalkboards, whiteboards, and projector screens on one wall; a usually immobile computer station and/or podium in front of that wall; desks arranged and often anchored to face that wall, etc.). And while data show that only about 51 percent of US college professors selfreport doing extensive lecturing in most or all of their courses,20 it is more likely the number is closer to 75 percent, based on recent student survey data gathered by Bressoud, Mesa, and Rasmussen 21 and NSSE. 22 In slightly older but more rigorously obtained data, Thielens23 and Hativa24 found the number closer to 90 percent for undergraduate courses in the US. And even though the percentage of lecturing has undoubtedly been declining among American faculty since the Thielens study, the overwhelming majority of students on American and European college courses still spend most of their classroom time passively receiving a monologic delivery of information. And regardless of how the instructors delivering those lectures may feel about this popular teaching practice, almost fifty years of research have shown the ineffectiveness of the lecture as a method for delivering course content. This is not to say that the lecture has no place in the college classroom; however, lectures put students into that position mentioned above, where learning is nothing more than a “referendum,” where students only have the freedom to “accept or reject” what is thrown at them.25 As José Antonio Bowen points out, “great lectures can be an important motivational tool” but they are also “poor at delivering content, creating high-level questions, encouraging deep learning, and getting students to reexamine their

20

Kevin Eagan et al., Undergraduate Teaching Faculty: The 2013-2014 HERI Faculty Survey (Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, 2014). 21 David Bressoud, Vilma Mesa, and Chris Rasmussen, Insights and Recommendations from the MAA National Study of College Calculus (Washington, DC: MAA Press, 2015). 22 National Survey of Student Engagement, Engagement Insights: Survey Findings on the Quality of Undergraduate Education—Annual Results 2015 (Bloomington: Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research, 2015). 23 Wagner Thielens, Jr., “The Disciplines and Undergraduate Lecturing” (presentation, Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Washington, DC, April 20-24, 1987). 24 Nira Hativa, Teaching for Effective Learning in Higher Education (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2001). 25 Barthes, S/Z, 4.

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assumptions.”26 The readerly also puts students in an artificial relationship to the “truth,” a situation in which meaning is simplified and naturalized “to give credence to the reality of the story.”27 The expert perspective of a lecture grants a veneer of authenticity to the reality of the presented content, while the presentation, in both its preparation and delivery, is nothing more than a transformation of the real into “a depicted (framed) object.” 28 For Barthes, realism “consists not in copying the real but in copying a (depicted) copy of the real: this famous reality, as though suffering from a fearfulness which keeps it from being touched directly, is set farther away, postponed, or at least captured through the pictorial matrix in which it has been steeped before being put into words: code upon code, known as realism.” 29 And the more painstakingly instructors endeavor to be thorough, the more they move away from that reality, or as Barthes claims, “the more signs there are, the more the truth will be obscured,”30 the more the world is “adjectivized.”31 This is because “reality” is never placed at the “origin” of discourse but rather at “an already written real,” that is “as far as the eye can see, only a succession of copies.”32 The instructor who lectures, like the classic author, “becomes a performer at the moment he evidences his power of conducing meaning.” 33 This instructor brings about the meaning in one direction, “from signified to signifier, from content to form, from idea to text, from passion to expression,” whereas the student, like Barthes’s critic, goes in the opposite direction, working back “from signifiers to signified.” 34 In this arrangement, if we simply exchange our terms “instructor” and “student” for Barthes’s “author” and “critic,” we can see the problem a bit more clearly: “the author is a god (his place of origin is the signified); as for the critic, he is the priest whose task is to decipher the Writing of the god.”35 This agential semiotic relationship moves ever forward in a system 26 José Antonio Bowen, Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology out of Your College Classroom Will Improve Student Learning (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012), 111-12. 27 Barthes, S/Z, 23. 28 Ibid., 55. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., 62. 31 Ibid., 76. 32 Ibid., 167. 33 Ibid., 174. Emphasis added. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. Emphasis added.

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of stacked meanings, “replete with signifieds” which (at least) the best students “will not fail to deliver.”36 However, this mode of teaching, while it fits almost perfectly the aims of the classic model of quality education, is inadequate because it has “nothing more to say than what it says,” even though “it still seems to be keeping in reserve some ultimate meaning” that is not there, the “inexpressible,” not the “unexpressed.”37 This misrepresented presence and authority is able to preserve itself through a theatrical system of connotation cast as denotation. Barthes contends that readerly or “classic” texts artificially vacillate between denotation and connotation. They are “moderately plural”38 and make possible “a (limited) dissemination of meanings, spread like gold dust on the apparent surface of the text.” 39 They do this by “inducing meanings that are apparently recoverable” in a “deliberate ‘static,’ painstakingly elaborated, introduced into the fictive dialogue between author and reader.”40 This artificial structure of polysemy “enables the text to operate like a game, each system referring to the other according to the requirements of a certain illusion” that “seems both to establish and to close the reading.”41 The illusion of denotation, for Barthes, distracts us into thinking there is a literal meaning to the curriculum that can be reduced to a properly formulated learning objective or outcome, that the course text is “telling us something simple, literal, primitive: something true.” 42 This faith in the denotative allows us to accept, naïvely, “the collective innocence of language”43 and to believe that there is an easily identifiable key to measuring desired student learning outcomes. This belief is a common trap that traditional evaluation methods in education often fall into. Jim Dwight and Jim Garrison identify this as a shortcoming of structuralist metaphysics, which “assumes that ultimate ends and essences regulate the process so it achieves preordained objectives.” 44 This is perhaps most easily demonstrated by how the concept of interaction has been discussed in the literature about online learning. Ellen Wagner makes an important early move in that literature, 36

Ibid., 201. Ibid., 216. 38 Ibid., 6. 39 Ibid., 8-9. 40 Ibid., 9. 41 Ibid. Emphasis added. 42 Ibid. Emphasis added. 43 Ibid. 44 Jim Dwight and Jim Garrison, “A Manifesto for Instructional Technology: Hyperpedagogy,” Teachers College Record 105.5 (June 2003): 700. 37

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arguing that we need to move beyond a fascination with the tools that enable interaction and start looking more at intended outcomes of that interaction, that we should begin to see interaction as “a means to an end.”45 This concept of interaction as a “means to an end,” however, is problematic in that it implies an ultimately predetermined, but veiled, purpose. Interaction necessitates a process of negotiation that leads to unanticipated, collectively achieved ends, which depend at least as much on the creative input of the student as on the predetermined learning objectives developed by the instructor. Otherwise, what happens on the way to the learning objective is an artificial drama, an illusion of learning, a travesty of reading. Mikhail Bakhtin is another literary theorist to address the problematic relationship between author, reader, and text, as well as which qualities we should value in texts. Instead of writerly and readerly texts, however, Bakhtin speaks of “novel” and “epic” texts. As Tom Barone states, for Bakhtin, epics are “stories that seek to suppress a variety of discourses by converging upon a correct, final interpretation of events.”46 Epics provide, as Sue Vice puts it, a “final word,”47 or as Bakhtin himself claims, there is “no place in the epic world for any openendedness, indecision, indeterminacy.”48 Novels, on the other hand, offer a multiplicity of voices, and therefore, like a writerly text, a multiplicity of possible interpretations. More importantly, perhaps, novel texts participate in what might be considered a contemporary worldview, where truth and meaning are decentered and where there is not simply one point of view. As Bakhtin explains, “the novel inserts into these other genres an indeterminacy, a certain semantic openendedness, a living contact with unfinished, still-evolving contemporary reality (the openended present).”49 This indeterminacy, which is a precursor to a post-structuralist worldview (Bakhtin initially published this work in the early 1940s), is vital to what is desirable about the concept of novelistic or writerly texts, and it is as enabling of the reader as it is of the writer. While some might argue that Bakhtin’s theory of the novel is out of 45

Ellen D. Wagner, “Interactivity: From Agents to Outcomes. Teaching and Learning at a Distance: What It Takes to Effectively Design, Deliver, and Evaluate Programs,” New Directions for Teaching and Learning 71 (1997): 21. 46 Tom Barone, Touching Eternity: The Enduring Outcomes of Teaching (New York: Teachers College Press, 2001), 155-56. 47 Sue Vice, Introducing Bakhtin (New York: Manchester University Press, 1997), 79. 48 Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 16. 49 Ibid., 7.

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context in discussions of teaching and learning in higher education, Michael Holquist reveals a central conceptual point, i.e., that novelness, and not the novel itself, is the “real hero” of Bakhtin’s work. Holquist argues that the “vision of novelness grows out of Bakhtin’s conception of language, and his ideas about language are rooted in his epistemology,” that the “history of the novel has its place in literary history, but the history of novelness is situated in the history of human consciousness.”50 Bakhtin opens up many opportunities for rethinking our definitions of teaching and learning. Whereas the epic poet deals in a distant, “valorized” past with fixed, closed forms and predetermined plots, the novelist is able to participate in a more realistic and fruitful production of meaning, for as Bakhtin points out, the reality of the novel is “only one of many possible realities; it is not inevitable, not arbitrary, it bears within itself other possibilities.”51 As Gary Morson explains in his discussion of Bakhtin’s essay “Epic and Novel,” these possibilities flow from the text because “each truth is someone’s truth, reflects someone’s experience, and serves someone’s interests. . . . The epic knows; the novel asks how we know.”52 In educational terms, this sense of novelistic indeterminacy and writerly plurality, therefore, gives the student a new authority in the classroom and, ultimately, in the teaching and learning process itself. It helps reposition our conception of the classroom as an unrestricted forum that demands active engagement on the part of the student/reader in a dynamic and interactive interrogation of the course text. Hence, as Caryl Emerson points out, the producer of novelistic online course texts will “create not just objects but full-fledged subjects.”53 The idea of creating “subjects” is especially powerful when applied to higher education. This move from object to subject, from the epic to the novel, from the readerly text to the writerly text, would seem easy enough, but it requires a profound shift in our conception of what it means to teach, to write, to learn, and to know. If our educational practice is to move beyond its outdated metaphysics into a more postmodern, decentered worldview, Bakhtin, over seventy-five years ago, provided a powerful statement on what that might mean:

50 Michael Holquist, Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World (New York: Routledge, 1990), 72-72. 51 Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 37. 52 Gary Saul Morson, Bakhtin: Essays and Dialogues on His Work (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 13. 53 Caryl Emerson, “The Outer Word and Inner Speech: Bakhtin, Vygotsky, and the Internalization of Language,” Critical Inquiry 10.2 (1983): 259. Emphasis added.

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For the first time in artistic-ideological consciousness, time and the world become historical: they unfold, albeit at first still unclearly and confusedly, as becoming, as an uninterrupted movement into a real future, as a unified, all-embracing, and unconcluded process. Every event, every phenomenon, every thing, every object of artistic representation loses its completedness, its hopelessly finished quality and its immutability that had been so essential to it in the world of the epic “absolute past,” walled off by an unapproachable boundary from the continuing and unfinished present. Through contact with the present, an object is attracted to the incomplete process of a world-in-the-making, and is stamped with the seal of inconclusiveness. No matter how distant this object is from us in time, it is connected to our incomplete, present-day, continuing temporal transitions; it develops a relationship with our unpreparedness, with our present. But meanwhile our present has been moving into an inconclusive future. And in this inconclusive context all the semantic stability of the object is lost; its sense and significance are renewed and grow as the context continues to unfold.54

This move from the epic past is “inaccessible to personal experience and does not permit an individual, personal point of view or evaluation.” 55 Epic discourse is such that one “cannot glimpse it, grope for it, touch it; one cannot look at it from just any point of view; it is impossible to experience it, analyze it, take it apart, penetrate into its core.”56 In other words, the epic world, like a readerly text, must be experienced passively, uncritically, and uncreatively. The novelistic world, on the other hand, opens up semantic and epistemic possibilities strictly because of its semantic instability and inconclusiveness, because of its insistence to speculate “in what is unknown.” 57 And when this world is applied to education, it opens up rich and powerful possibilities for learning. Dwight and Garrison point out that traditional pedagogy, “more often than not, is construed as a monologue, a centralized mode of communication with a closed, hierarchical semiotic.” 58 In most college courses, the tendency—if not the perceived responsibility—of the instructor is to deliver content monologically, in a single statement from a single voice of authority. Perhaps the biggest problem with monologic education is that it, almost by definition, is reduced to didacticism. Didacticism, then, as Douglas McKnight explains, reduces language to “a means to transfer 54

Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 30. Ibid., 16. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., 32. 58 Dwight and Garrison, “A Manifesto for Instructional Technology: Hyperpedagogy,” 702. 55

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what is already defined and coded as official knowledge.”59 Language is no longer a shared relation in this context but rather a function of authority that ultimately serves to determine, to control, to limit possibilities of thought, understanding, and insight. Such didacticism attempts “to shear away an individual’s historicity in favor of a structure of ahistorical, selfevident meanings that are non-negotiable and therefore not open to dialogue and revision. One’s lived experience and its interpretation have little or no value within this pedagogical and curricular context.”60 Bakhtin is perhaps most famous for his concept of dialogism, but if we apply this concept to teaching and learning, what would it mean to deliver content dialogically or novelistically? For Bakhtin, dialogism means “double-voicedness,”61 not “relating to dialogue,” as one might assume. It concerns the interplay of voices, of perspectives, in an utterance. It can certainly be present in dialogue, where two people are discussing something, but it can also be present in written texts, or rather, in the reading of written texts, where there is conversation between the text and reader, where meaning is negotiated, translated, and appropriated. It can be present when an instructor provides some content and then asks questions or makes demands of the student/reader to fill in the gaps or finish the lesson. It can also be present in the incorporation of multiple perspectives in that content delivery, in the form of guest speakers or intertextual connections. When a thought is translated into an expression, it must be edited, reshaped, added to, translated from the fog of mental abstraction to the concreteness of language. As Morson points out, “The thought becomes different from what it was, which means expressing may be a form of learning.”62 Dialogism, thus, addresses different aspects of the concept of multiple voices in a single textual (contextual or intertextual) environment. As David Lodge makes clear, this directly relates to what Barthes calls plurality or writerliness when we apply it to teaching and learning: “Instead of trying desperately to defend the notion that individual utterances, or texts, have a fixed, original meaning which it is the business of criticism to recover, we can locate meaning in the dialogic process of interaction between speaking subjects, between texts and readers, between

59 Douglas McKnight, “Task of the Teaching Life: Self through Bakhtinian Dialogue and Ideological Engagement,” Interchange 35.3 (2004): 289. 60 Ibid. 61 Vice, Introducing Bakhtin, 45. 62 Morson, Bakhtin: Essays and Dialogues on His Work, 18.

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texts themselves.”63 It is this kind of interaction—between the “voices” in a course as well as between its participants—that will lead to more robust and plural learning, and for Barthes, the assignment of authority to a text or utterance is the essence of the readerly. As he points out, “the more indeterminate the origin of the statement, the more plural the text,” because for Barthes, “the discourse, or better, the language, speaks: nothing more.”64 This concept of the decentralizing of the course text translates well into many of the most widely held values of a college education such as the teaching of critical thinking and other higher-level cognitive skills. But more importantly, it can come down to students learning how to be more fully human. Dwight and Garrison point out the following in their discussion of how hypertext can revolutionize learning in a postmodern world: hypertextuality’s absence of textual borders and fixed hierarchies can promote participatory democracy as a lived experience. In texts with blurred boundaries, the role of the user/reader becomes much more powerful than in the linear, bounded, fixed, and final text, so active readers may learn how to act as participants rather than just recipients in a social network. Hypertexts inspire integration rather than segregation of ideas and texts.65

Or, as John Dewey asks, “What avail is it to win prescribed amounts of information about geography and history, to win ability to read and write, if in the process the individual loses his own soul: loses his appreciation of things worth while, of the values to which these things are relative; if he loses desire to apply what he has learned and, above all, loses the ability to extract meaning from his future experiences as they occur?”66 So much of learning has been reduced to what can be measured as an object; so much of living has been reified into what can be quantified as a test score. While movements such as No Child Left Behind continue the push for these reductionisms in the K-12 arena, similar calls for objective evaluation and assessment pervade higher education as well. This is unfortunate as so much of what delights an intellectual mind derives from the dynamic play 63 David Lodge, After Bakhtin: Essays on Fiction and Criticism (New York: Routledge, 1990), 86. 64 Barthes, S/Z, 41. 65 Dwight and Garrison, “A Manifesto for Instructional Technology: Hyperpedagogy,” 719. 66 John Dewey, Experience and Education (Indianapolis, IN: Kappa Delta Pi, 1998), 50.

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of what occurs when the monologism of a lecture breaks down and other (student) voices enter the discussion. As we have seen, this voice of the student/reader is very important, for as Barthes points out, writing (or, in our case, teaching) is not the “communication of a message which starts from the author and proceeds to the reader”; rather, it is the voice of the reader and the reading itself: “in the text, only the reader speaks.”67 Barthes’s essay “The Death of the Author” opens with several questions about Balzac’s short story “Sarrasine” (this story also happens to be the primary focus of S/Z). The questions concern who is speaking a particular sentence in the story. Is it the story’s hero? The author as an individual? The author as the author? Universal wisdom? Or even Romantic psychology? Barthes concludes that we cannot know because language loses all function when it becomes writing, that is, all function except its own signification, and it is at this point that a “gap appears, the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins.” 68 Or, more directly, “it is language which speaks, not the author.” 69 Also, Barthes argues that when we give a text an author, it imposes “a limit on that text,” and serves to provide “it with a final signified, to close the writing.”70 This concept of the death of the author is important not simply because it makes the student/reader the central figure in the process, but also because it shifts a significant portion of the agency in the process of textual (or semantic) production away from the author by attributing it to social discourses, to language. This renders the text a composite “of multiple writings drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation.” 71 Barthes continues, saying that “there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not as was hitherto said, the author. The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination.” And then, ultimately, “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.”72 Therefore, for our purposes, the birth of the student comes at the cost of the death of the instructor. From an educational perspective, the birth of the student—that is, the recognition of 67

Barthes, S/Z, 151. Emphasis added. Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in Image Music Text, ed. Stephen Heath, trans. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana Press, 1977), 142. 69 Ibid., 143. 70 Ibid., 147. 71 Ibid., 148. 72 Ibid. 68

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the centrality and primacy of the student in the teaching and learning process—is of vital importance. With this conception of the student/reader, as John Sheriff argues, “the text and the meaning of the text are dynamic, constantly changing, in the process of becoming, not something fixed, or static.”73 Therefore, any utterance of the instructor, in whatever modality, cannot be considered final or authoritative. This shift in perspective is certainly related to the current pedagogical movement from teacher-centered to student-centered classrooms,74 but it goes a step further by dissolving the division between the two. Further, it necessitates an epistemological change of agency whereby instructors’ ownership of the material, even their authority to determine learning objectives, comes into question in order to make room for the constructive role of the student/reader. Dwight and Garrison identify two fundamental fallacies of conventional curriculum theory and instructional design: to assume “we can determine the ‘objectives’ of learning before curriculum development” and to privilege “learning goals, objectives, and standards defined by the designer as opposed to the needs, interests, and purposes of the student.”75 This is not to say, of course, that instructors should not have instructional goals or that they should not provide course content or serve as subject matter experts in their own courses; however, as students strive to become experts in the content area themselves, it would seem obvious that they should be co-creators of the course content as well. Such a dialogue can lead to new meanings that are generated in a social and dialectical process where shared meanings are constantly rewritten, constantly created. Barthes provides us with yet another complicating factor in our discussion of pre-ordained learning objectives, pointing out that I is not an innocent subject, anterior to the text, one which will subsequently deal with the text as it would an object to dismantle or a site to occupy. This “I” which approaches the text is already itself a plurality of other texts, of codes which are infinite or, more precisely, lost (whose origin is lost). Objectivity and subjectivity are of course forces which can take over the text, but they are forces which have no affinity with it.76

73 John Sheriff, The Fate of Meaning: Charles Peirce, Structuralism, and Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 22. 74 Leo Jones, The Student-Centered Classroom (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 75 Dwight and Garrison, “A Manifesto for Instructional Technology: Hyperpedagogy,” 703-704. 76 Barthes, S/Z, 10. Emphasis added.

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Each “I,” that is, each individual student/reader, brings a different set of eyes and experiences to the course and the curriculum, and the process of learning/reading the course text(s), regardless of how writerly or readerly, is a process of finding and naming meanings that dangle between objectivity and subjectivity, which, as Barthes says, are both “imaginary.” This process is also one in which the agency of the reader and the text is blurred between the two. However, writerly texts present different possibilities; as Barthes points out, “the more plural the text, the less it is written before I read it.”77 However, as we have discussed, the vast majority of all educational texts, whether we talk about textbooks, lectures, or online course sites, are readerly. Typically, these texts presume to hold authority, to possess the answers, and, in too many cases, the student’s role is simply to receive the message, passively and uncritically. We must therefore strive to make our educational texts and experiences more writerly so that students can interact with the course content at the level of meaning making, participating fully in the production of a lesson’s meaning. Indeed, such co-production of meaning should be the only true objective of learning. In addition, these processes should have the freedom to lead in new directions unforeseen at the time the objectives and content were crafted by the instructor. It is currently common practice for instructors to develop their course materials in the form of declarative lectures and explanations. These well-intended efforts, however, produce only what can be read, when instead they need to create the beginnings of their students’ writing. The challenge comes, then, in defining what exactly the writerly is. For us and for Barthes, the writerly is an elusive concept. He claims that “the writerly text is not a thing, we would have a hard time finding it in a bookstore”78 and even that there may be “nothing to say about writerly texts.”79 However, he goes on to say that “the writerly text is ourselves writing, before the infinite play of the world (the world as function) is traversed, intersected, stopped, plasticized by some singular system (Ideology, Genus, Criticism), which reduces the plurality of entrances, the opening of networks, the infinity of languages.”80 The writerly is about a new kind of interpretation that opens pluralities and explodes meanings into multiplicities. Interpreting a text is not about giving it “a (more or less justified, more or less free) meaning,” but about appreciating “what plural

77

Ibid. Ibid., 5. 79 Ibid., 4. 80 Ibid., 5. 78

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constitutes it.”81 In what he calls the ideal text, there are many equal and interacting networks that can be accessed by multiple entrances, the text is made up of signifiers, not signifieds, and meaning is “never subject to a principle of determination.” In some ways, as with all post-structuralist theory, it might all simply come down to the realization that “as nothing exists outside the text, there is never a whole of the text.”82 This concept of writerly texts can become a powerful tool for developing and evaluating teaching and learning in higher education by allowing us a fuller understanding of not only the interpretive nature of the learning process but also of the advantages inherent in empowering students to participate in that process. Furthermore, by providing students agency in the writing of their course texts, higher education can open new avenues to learning and student achievement. It can move toward a practice where education is not merely a measurable product but a generator of new productions that can be meaningfully contemplated and utilized. When we begin to view courses (and all educational experiences) as texts, particularly when we consider the writerly our “value,” the act of teaching becomes an act of writing, an act of writing designed to give birth to our students’ rewriting. Therefore, we must ask along with Barthes, “which texts would I consent to write (to re-write), to desire, to put forth as a force in this world of mine?” 83 And our goal, our sole objective, should then be to make our students no longer consumers but producers of texts.

Bibliography Astin, Alexander W. Assessment for Excellence: The Philosophy and Practice of Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012. Bakhtin, Mikhail M. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. Barone, Tom. Touching Eternity: The Enduring Outcomes of Teaching. New York: Teachers College Press, 2001. Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Translated by Stephen Heath. In Image Music Text, edited by Stephen Heath. London: Fontana Press, 1977. —. “From Work to Text.” In Image Music Text, edited and translated by 81

Ibid. Ibid., 6. 83 Ibid., 4. 82

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Stephen Heath. London: Fontana Press, 1977. —. S/Z [in French]. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1970. —. S/Z: An Essay. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang, 1974. Bonwell, C. C., and J. A. Eison. “Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the Classroom.” ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report 1 (1991). Bowen, José Antonio. Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology out of Your College Classroom Will Improve Student Learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012. Bressoud, David, Vilma Mesa, and Chris Rasmussen. Insights and Recommendations from the MAA National Study of College Calculus. Washington, DC: MAA Press, 2015. Brown, Kathy Laboard. “From Teacher-Centered to Learner-Centered Curriculum: Improving Learning in Diverse Classrooms.” Education 124.1 (Fall 2003): 49-54. Dewey, John. Experience and Education. Indianapolis, IN: Kappa Delta Pi, 1998. Dwight, Jim, and Jim Garrison. “A Manifesto for Instructional Technology: Hyperpedagogy.” Teachers College Record 105.5 (June 2003): 699-728. Eagan, Kevin, Ellen Bara Stolzenberg, Jennifer Berdan Lozano, Melissa C. Aragon, Maria Ramirez Suchard, and Sylvia Hurtado. Undergraduate Teaching Faculty: The 2013-2014 HERI Faculty Survey. Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, 2014. Emerson, Caryl. “The Outer Word and Inner Speech: Bakhtin, Vygotsky, and the Internalization of Language.” Critical Inquiry 10.2 (1983): 245-264. Hativa, Nira. Teaching for Effective Learning in Higher Education. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2001. Holquist, Michael. Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. New York: Routledge, 1990. Jones, Leo. The Student-Centered Classroom. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Lodge, David. After Bakhtin: Essays on Fiction and Criticism. New York: Routledge, 1990. McKnight, Douglas. “Task of the Teaching Life: Self through Bakhtinian Dialogue and Ideological Engagement.” Interchange 35, no. 3 (2004): 281-302. Morson, Gary Saul. Bakhtin: Essays and Dialogues on His Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. National Survey of Student Engagement. “Engagement Insights: Survey

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Findings on the Quality of Undergraduate Education—Annual Results 2015.” Bloomington: Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research, 2015. Rawlings, John. “Jacques Derrida.” Stanford Presidential Lectures in the Humanities and Arts, 1999. Accessed March 5, 2016. http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/derrida/. Sheriff, John. The Fate of Meaning: Charles Peirce, Structuralism, and Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989. Thielens, Wagner, Jr. “The Disciplines and Undergraduate Lecturing.” Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Washington, DC, 1987. Vice, Sue. Introducing Bakhtin. New York: Manchester University Press, 1997. Wagner, Ellen D. “Interactivity: From Agents to Outcomes. Teaching and Learning at a Distance: What It Takes to Effectively Design, Deliver, and Evaluate Programs.” In New Directions for Teaching and Learning Vol. 71. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997. Weimer, Maryellen. “Active Learning: In Need of Deeper Exploration.” In Faculty Focus, Magna Publications, March 9, 2016. Accessed March 12, 2016. http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/ active-learning-in-need-of-deeper-exploration/. Wordsworth, William. “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.” In William Wordsworth, edited by Stephen Gill, 131-136. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

CHAPTER FIVE PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE PRODUCTION OF THE NEW CAMELIA RAGHINARU DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY, IRVINE, CA 92612

Psychoanalysis is one of the theories best suited to expose the dynamics of the classroom, “to turn education inside out, in order to understand something of its emotional situation and its inhibitions, symptoms, and anxieties.”1 Using Jacques Lacan’s four discourses, I will focus on uncertainty as a crucial aspect of pedagogy, particularly as it relates to the production, representation, and apprehension of the new in the university. Deborah Britzman states, “In any learning one feels pressure, without knowing from where it comes, to make knowledge certain and so to stabilize the object lest it escape one’s efforts. This fight with knowledge meets its limits in anguish over the loss of certainty, a loss needed in order to symbolize what is new.”2 Psychoanalysis positions itself uniquely at the center of this struggle because of its stoical, existential dimension: its goal is not to cure anxiety. Rather, it aims for knowledge, especially knowledge of the self, which comes from acting in conformity with one’s desire. Drawing from Lacan’s The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, I will discuss the relationship between teacher and student in the production of knowledge. My aim is to explicate Lacan’s theory of the four discourses through a literary text, just as I would do in a literature class. Thus, in the final pages of this essay, I will discuss Don Quijote to illustrate the pedagogy of desire inherent in the tension between the discourse of mastery and its subversion. 1

Deborah Britzman, The Very Thought of Education: Psychoanalysis and the Impossible Professions (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2010), ix. 2 Ibid.

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In the classroom, moments of encounter with the new and challenges to the status quo are instances of growth. They start with questions that cannot be answered and whose purpose is not the transference of knowledge from teacher to student. Rather than placing student and teacher in a hierarchical relationship, these moments turn both students and teacher toward the world and the unknown by acknowledging that knowledge is no longer limited to a particular content passed from one to another but rather that it can only be attained by each individual’s interaction with the world. When we push our students to puzzle over a conflict or question to which neither students nor teacher has the answer, “we live together, at least fleetingly, with the unknown—and we foster thereby a keen sense of community in our classroom.”3 If pedagogy is to undermine existing knowledge, it also has to disrupt the institutional status quo and allow it a revolutionary dimension. As Britzman puts it, education is fraught with uncertainty because in learning one feels the pressure to stabilize the forces of the unknown and to neutralize the threat of ignorance while also grappling with the loss of certainty that emerges out of an encounter with the new: Learning disrupts the old ideas and, if all goes well, allows for new ideas to be enjoyed. Learning is also an emotional acceptance of our ignorance because we do not really know what will happen with this new knowledge, nor will we be able to prepare for the destruction of the old knowledge. Here is where progress is unconsciously equated with loss. Learning means understanding that knowledge does not exhaust what is unknowable and that we act from not understanding. We may then become receptive to what has not been thought or understood without evacuating the uncertainty. Only then can responsibility emerge. Reality becomes larger, not smaller.4

Before it becomes enjoyment, new learning is charged with anxiety because it is only by remaining in a position of uncertainty that we become receptive to what has not been thought or understood previously. Another dimension to the idea that we “act from not understanding” consists of the fact that, paradoxically, an increase in knowledge also results in a deficit, marked by the awareness of one’s vast ignorance in relation to the infinite field of knowledge. As Britzman points out, the more we learn, the more we become receptive to that which we have not thought, understood, or learned already. The ideal teacher/student is not one who enjoys a feeling 3

T. R. Johnson, The Other Side of Pedagogy (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2015), 31. 4 Britzman, The Very Thought of Education, 40.

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of mastery, having arrived at full knowledge, but one who continues to enjoy learning despite the inevitable feelings of uncertainty and ignorance that accompany it. For Lacan, jouissance5 is fraught with anxiety, and because jouissance is part of learning, the learning process is the sum total of satisfaction and frustration alike. A pedagogy of absolute control produces jouissance in the form of “acute anxiety,”6 a situation in which both teacher and students are held accountable through measurable outcomes such as test scores. This anxiety leads to alienation. In the discourse of the hysteric (Lacan’s term for the student), knowledge is the ultimate form of jouissance, for in the hysteric’s discourse, knowledge occupies the place of jouissance. The hysteric’s desire is to obtain the knowledge of the master because desire is modeled on the Other’s desire or, as Lacan puts it, “man’s desire is the Other’s desire.”7 The hysteric student-learner inserts herself8 in the split between the master signifier9 and knowledge: “In the hysteric’s discourse the subject finds [herself], along with all the illusions that this comprises, bound to the master signifier, whereas knowledge brings about [her] insertion into jouissance.”10 In the hysteric’s search for truth, the path to the Real is uncovered—and this is where learning happens. Truth does not transmit a body of knowledge but instead calls into question the existing body of knowledge of the master signifier, in whose name all knowledge and work are produced. In this sense, “knowledge is what brings life to a halt at a certain limit on the path to jouissance. For the path toward death—this is what is at issue, it’s a discourse about masochism—the path

5

Jouissance is best explained in terms of surplus enjoyment, a sensation that goes beyond pleasure. Lacan defined jouissance as “always in the nature of tension, in the nature of a forcing, of a spending, even of an exploit. Unquestionably, there is jouissance at the level at which pain begins to appear, and we know that it is only at this level of pain that a whole dimension of the organism, which would otherwise remain veiled, can be experienced.” See Jacques Lacan, “Psychoanalysis and Medicine,” Lettres de l’ecole freudienne 1 (1967): 60. 6 Johnson, The Other Side of Pedagogy, 129. 7 Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, trans. Russell Grigg (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2007), 93. 8 I purposely use the feminine pronoun “her” to refer to the hysteric because, from a clinical standpoint, the majority of hysterics are/were women. 9 Philosophy, for example, is a type of university discourse that engenders master signifiers such as the ontologies of “being,” “permanence,” and “becoming,” as well as ethics with its privileging of the “good” or epistemology with its promotion of “knowledge,” “truth,” and/or “reality.” 10 Ibid.

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toward death is nothing other than what is called jouissance.”11 The link between truth, the Real, death, and jouissance organizes the dialectic of frustration and loss in the discourse of psychoanalysis and knowledge. In the relationship between knowledge and truth, the latter causes “a collapse of knowledge.”12 The analytic discourse has as its goal the production of truth at the expense of accepted knowledge. The collapse of accepted knowledge gives rise to the emergence of truth as something new. The new emerges out of the unconscious. Thus, the new functions as both the collapse and the production of knowledge, for “truth causes the collapse of existing knowledge by revealing its limitations[,] thus causing the possibility for the production of new knowledge.”13 Education does not produce truth, but its function is to “organize knowledge to the extent that a certain truth can break through.”14 The acquisition of a new conceptual framework depends jointly on the closing of an old episteme (and thus the end of a fundamental sense of security regarding the preexisting framework) and the enrichment brought about by the new. Although Lacan originally associated the production of the new with the university’s discourse, he later linked it to the hysteric’s discourse in the production of true scientific work. In the context of psychoanalysis, knowledge is generative, and it is related to the student as the dispossessed, the “slave.” The slave’s anxiety is the “central affect, the one around which everything is organized.” 15 The object of this anxiety constitutes the “surplus value” around which jouissance organizes itself. A basic principle of psychoanalytic pedagogy is that “[t]he unconscious is the ‘subject supposed to know.’”16 And, in fact, as Lacan points out, in antiquity the slave was the one who had the know-how and was the “support of knowledge.” 17 In the process of negating the master, the hysteric becomes a divided subject who brings the discourse of the university into crisis—in fact, actual rioting was taking place in France at the time Lacan was developing the four discourses—and thus the hysteric’s discourse is revolutionary. When the university is in crisis, as it was in May of 1968, and its knowledge begins to crumble, the institution

11

Ibid., 18. Lacan, The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, 186. 13 Daniel Cho, Psychopedagogy: Freud, Lacan, and the Psychoanalytical Theory of Education (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 110. 14 Alain Badiou, “Art and Philosophy,” lacanian ink 17 (2000): 61.  15 Ibid., 217. 16 Ibid., 65. 17 Lacan, The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, 21. 12

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requires a new master to resituate and re-stabilize knowledge around a new truth. The discourse of the university, which would have us believe that teaching is about an objective body of knowledge, is that of the master and of bureaucracy. In this discourse, the teacher is a type of bureaucrat, while the student is the product of this discourse. (Consequently, teachers set limits rather than teaching the transgression of limits.) The discourse of the university is about a new form of mastery. It is about extracting knowledge from the slave, who produces knowledge that the master can use. The university/master seeks to cure the student/slave of her desire for truth and return her to the reality of consumerism. This is the failure of the educational institution—i.e., that it wants to cure the student and to make her into a good subject. And yet the hysteric/subject wants to know and thus resists the position of the “good” consumerist subject the university seeks to promote. The end of the discourse of the hysteric is truth (that is, a personal, generative form of knowledge rather than what we call “objective” knowledge). The aim of the university is to eliminate truth and its properly tragic dimension and to live in a world of pure knowledge with no truth. However, truth is produced in relationship with the Real,18 and its effect is the collapse of knowledge. For students to become analysts, they first have to become hysterics,19 subjects of the university. Those dominated by the discourse of the university also get to see how this discourse is exhausted, just as any other type of master signifier is exhausted. The revolutionary kernel of new knowledge seeking to displace old knowledge (in the guise of established master signifiers) is nevertheless maintained under the dominance of the university. Therefore, Lacan’s version of the new is the emergence of another style of master signifier. The problem with the university’s discourse is that it rationalizes its discourse in order to better serve the master signifier: “Working in the service of the master signifier, more or less any kind of argument will do, as long as it takes on the guise of reason and rationality.”20 Rather than serve the master, the hysteric challenges him to prove himself in the way of knowledge. Knowledge remains merely instrumental in the hands of the 18 For Lacan, truth and the Real—the unveiling of truth obscured by language and ideology—are similar concepts, except for the fact that while we encounter the Real, we repress the truth. Castration, for example, is the ground-zero of the Real. 19 The hysteric’s dependence on the master for knowledge is akin to a slave-like position. 20 Bruce Fink, The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 133.

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master, who manipulates it only in view of production and mastery, but for the hysteric knowledge is eroticized as the instrument of jouissance. The hysteric-student pushes, demands, inquires, and seeks to explain the position of the master in order to prove his inadequacy: “Now in the hysteric’s discourse, object a appears in the position of truth. That means that the truth of the hysteric’s discourse, its hidden motor force, is the Real.”21 Under the imperative of the Real, the hysteric is guided by that “which does not work, by that which does not fit,” taking “paradoxes and contradictions as far as they can go.”22 While the hysteric does not care whether things work but whether they are true, the master cares only that things work. The master does not care whether knowledge expresses truth but only that it achieve the purpose of the master signifier: “One might say that, in the master’s discourse, the only knowledge that receives recognition as knowledge is that which is sanctioned by a higher authority.”23 However, for Lacan, the university’s discourse and the master’s discourse are not that different from each other because what is at stake, in each, is the efficient production of knowledge. Because universities fall into the realm of bureaucracy, knowledge itself is also viewed as a matter of regulation and control. However, the hysteric chafes under such pressures. Revolt against authority turns the hysteric against the master and the university alike. The hysteric’s ultimate goal is to determine the truth about the master, and “this truth, to say it at last, is that the master is castrated.”24 The hysteric both seeks to challenge and to preserve the master’s function because, as Lacan claims, “What the hysteric wants . . . is a master”: “She wants the other to be a master, and to know lots of things, but at the same time she doesn’t want him to know so much that he does not believe she is the supreme price of all his knowledge. In other words, she wants a master she can reign over. She reigns, and he does not govern.”25 The hysteric is after the master’s desire for, and enjoyment of, knowledge. Once “the hysteric finds out that the master is not concerned with learning per se but with taking pleasure in the very act of espousing knowledge itself,”26 she would like to question the master’s inherent right to his position even as she continues to believe in the necessity and desirability of a true, unchallengeable master yet to be discovered. 21

Ibid., 134. Ibid., 135. 23 Cho, Psychopedagogy, 50. 24 Lacan, The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, 97. 25 Ibid., 129. 26 Cho, Psychopedagogy, 58. 22

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The student-hysteric’s fixation with mastery has to be worked out in the relationship with the teacher-analyst in order to interrogate the student’s dependency on the Other’s mastery and to steer her to accept the ultimate responsibility for her own learning. In the classroom, Daniel Cho explains, this process of emancipation happens by recognizing the “perverse economy in which there is a surplus of both knowledge and ignorance in circulation. Teachers always possess too much knowledge, and students always possess too much ignorance.”27 The effort to educate is flawed when the teacher makes the “material” or “content” (i.e., a body of established knowledge to be appropriated and mastered) the focus rather than the student’s intelligence. As humans rather than as students or teachers, student and teacher can meet from a position of equality. Rather than making the teacher’s intelligence the focus, both student and teacher can turn with equal inquisitiveness and openness to the unknown of the text. Shoshana Felman’s The Adventure of Insight analyzes the radical pedagogy of psychoanalysis as the process whereby the analysand/student becomes ready to occupy the position of analyst/teacher. This point is premised precisely on the impossibility of teaching—that is, the analysand’s realization that her own analysis is perpetually incomplete and unfinished. This is the point at which the student finally “settles into [her] own didactic analysis—or [her] own analytical apprenticeship—as fundamentally interminable.”28 The moment one recognizes that learning has no end point, one is ready to become a teacher precisely because the position of the teacher is of one who learns, “of the one who teaches nothing other than the way he learns.”29 This way of knowing has to take into account ignorance as the center of its process, the “insistent other-half in a structural dynamic.”30 The unconscious as the site of both knowledge and ignorance is the disruptive force behind our expectations of control and the management of how knowledge is conveyed in the classroom. Jacques-Alain Miller’s Microscopia emphasizes that only nonsense teaches: To make oneself understood is not the same as teaching—it is the opposite. One only understands what one thinks one already knows. More precisely, one never understands anything but a meaning whose satisfaction or 27

Ibid., 64. Shoshana Felman, Jacques Lacan and the Adventure of Insight (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 88. 29 Ibid. 30 Johnson, The Other Side of Pedagogy, 79. 28

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comfort one has already felt. I’ll say it to you in a way you won’t understand: one never understands anything but one’s fantasies. And one is never taught by anything other than what one doesn’t understand, i.e., by nonsense. If the psychoanalyst holds in abeyance his understanding of what you say, that gives you the chance to do the same, and it is from that you may learn something—to the extent to which you take a distance from your fantasies.31

Miller continues to argue that being a dupe of the unconscious is inevitable and necessary in the learning process. Truth is a “vagabond,” and “the subject is naturally erring.” 32 The reference points of the master’s discourse may act as guiding signs, but, ultimately, the student must allow herself to be a fool. In other words, what counts in the learning process is not the solidification of the two positions—teacher and student—but rather their fluidity and constant interchangeability of one for the other. Lacan’s own teaching style, Felman argues, was “pedagogically poetic,”33 stressing its “nonmastery of itself.” 34 The supposed self-possession, mastery, and understanding of teaching have to contend with the blindness, opacity, and incomprehension inherent in the teaching/learning process. Cho traces the process through which desire for knowledge manifests itself as ignorance and “the traumatic knowledge stored in the unconscious.”35 First of all, the analysand/student’s desire for knowledge comes in response to the desire to know what the analyst/teacher knows. The analyst directs the analysand toward the unconscious as the source of knowledge because the analyst’s desire is primarily located there. The analyst’s desire, however, must remain elusive because ultimately the analysand becomes the “subject supposed to know”36 when in touch with her own unconscious. The fact that the analyst and the analysand are both students of the unconscious eliminates the false hierarchical demarcation between their positions relative to knowledge. The analyst’s commitment to his 31

Jacques-Alain Miller, “Microscopia: An Introduction to the Reading of Television,” in Television (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1990), xxvi. 32 Ibid. 33 Felman, Jacques Lacan, 96. 34 Ibid. 35 Cho, Psychopedagogy, 40. While the traumatic knowledge stored in the unconscious is not impossible to access, it is, however, notoriously difficult to access because it is repressed and thus accessible only through analytic interpretation. Repression is masked as forgetting or blissful ignorance, both of which protect the individual from confronting the traumatic knowledge that would bring further pain. 36 Lacan, The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, 65.

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own desire pushes the analysand’s learning process (hence the injunction to remain faithful to one’s desire).37 The definition of learning as a process of acquisition of knowledge has to take into account that what is acquired (and resisted as well as repressed) is traumatic knowledge. The ignorance that underscores the learning process has to do with the intuitive understanding of the student that what is exposed is a traumatic event that is otherwise erased from memory. 38 Cho argues that learning becomes critical when it engages with “socially traumatic knowledge.” 39 He specifically refers to critical theories (such as Marxist, feminist, or race theory) that expose practices of exploitation, oppression, or subjugation. When it comes to the political realities of exploitation, learning does not proceed without some resistance. As subjects of capitalism, students internalize and repress the trauma of their society, and this knowledge becomes both known and obscured by the students’ unconscious. Thus, “knowledge of human misery is not something we carry with us uncritically. . . . Rather, misery is knowledge we do not yet fully comprehend or, more exactly, want to comprehend.”40 Freud observed in his patients a critical resistance to the knowledge of the unconscious, which had to be confronted through remembering and coping with trauma. Freud gave up hypnosis as the medium for remembering trauma when he realized trauma could be uncovered and acknowledged through the analytic process. Cho argues that the analytic process does not focus so much on the traumatic event itself as on the distressing effects it has on the subject. What for some people can be merely a difficult event becomes for others existentially and subjectively traumatic. Traumas are, therefore, supraconscious—not horrible events in themselves but in their consequences to the individual. Forgetting and remembering stand in a dialectical relationship to each other in the analytic process. As Cho puts it, the “unconscious is a paradox: it is the 37

Through the process of transference, the analysand internalizes the desire of the analyst. In fact, the phrase “the desire of the analyst” participates in a double entendre, responsible both for transference and countertransference, in which the analysand desires both the analyst and the analyst’s desire. According to the ethics of psychoanalysis, the analyst is invested in his own desire, while at the same time remaining open to the analysand’s desire. Through identification with the analyst, the analysand comes to identify her own desire. It is, thus, through a profound understanding of his own desire that the analyst can serve as a mirror for the analysand’s desire and point the way to fulfillment rather than to frustration. 38 Cho, Psychopedagogy, 40. 39 Ibid., 71. 40 Ibid., 74. Emphasis added.

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part of consciousness that is no longer conscious,” 41 for the act of forgetting (i.e., repressing) creates an inner split in one’s subjectivity. Unconscious knowledge, therefore, is the form taken by traumatic knowledge. Anxiety is the conscious trace that unconscious trauma leaves in its wake, and it comes from the fact that “learning does not always mean acquiring absolutely new knowledge; it sometimes requires relearning the traumatic knowledge we do ‘not-want-to-know’ but possess all the same.”42 Moreover, the problem troubling the unconscious becomes ubiquitous, perpetually reemerging unexpectedly and insistently as “the return of the repressed.” Freud lists teaching as one of the “impossible” professions,43 but this impossibility and its fruition in the psychoanalytic process (another “impossible” discourse) is precisely what revolutionizes pedagogy. What can be learned from the impossibility of teaching is that it has to start with the analytical process as a type of reverse pedagogy that aims to undo all that has been previously taught. In fact, an awareness of the impossibility of teaching opens up new pedagogical possibilities through revolutionary practices and questions in education. As Felman puts it, “[I]n one way or another every pedagogy stems from its confrontation with the impossibility of teaching” 44 and the fact that “an anti-pedagogue is the pedagogue par excellence.”45 An understanding of analytical pedagogy as anti-pedagogy stems from the fact that teaching hinges on performative speech acts, and because of this, pedagogy as rhetoric is an essential aspect of psychoanalysis. Thus, “psychoanalysis is not a simple object of the teaching, but its subject.” 46 Lacan’s seminars exemplify the kind of teaching that subverts itself and its teacher and that teaches primarily through inverted self-reflection. In his seminars, for example, Lacan illustrates the pedagogy of psychoanalysis by putting himself in the position of analyst and analysand simultaneously. He occupies both positions at the same time in order to challenge the idea that teacher and student are opposites and to show that they are positions on a constantly fluctuating continuum. Thus, the constant inversion of teacher into student 41

Ibid., 43. Ibid., 81. 43 Freud claimed that in his experience he had encountered three impossible professions: education, healing, and governing, to which he added a forth, psychoanalysis—“an impossible profession in which one can be sure beforehand of achieving unsatisfying results.” See Felman, Jacques Lacan, 70. 44 Felman, Jacques Lacan, 72. 45 Ibid. Emphasis added. 46 Ibid., 74. 42

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prevents the analyst from committing the error of thinking that the positions of mastery and ignorance are fixed and inflexible. Instead, the analyst recognizes that the transition between the two positions is not only interminable but also part and parcel of the performative aspect of teaching. As Felman puts it, “Through Lacan we can understand that the psychoanalytic discipline is an unprecedented one in that its teaching does not just reflect upon itself but turns back upon itself so as to subvert itself, and truly teaches only insofar as it subverts itself.”47 This brings psychoanalytic pedagogy into the realm of the utopian and messianic, for as a paradigm that seeks to uncover new knowledge already stored in the unconscious and yet previously denied to the conscious, it is “what it has never ceased to be: an act that is yet to come.” 48 As a revolutionary epistemology of learning, psychoanalytic pedagogy challenges the traditional linear pedagogy of progress: “Proceeding not through linear progression but through breakthroughs, leaps, discontinuities, regressions, and deferred action, the analytic learning process puts in question the traditional pedagogical belief in the intellectual perfectability, the progressist view of learning as a simple one-way road from ignorance to knowledge.”49 Felman understands the impossibility of teaching as stemming from the incongruity between the unconscious and its knowledge of itself, for as the vehicle of unconscious knowledge, it is constitutively the material locus of a signifying difference from itself. Indeed, the unconscious itself is a kind of unmeant knowledge that escapes intentionality and meaning, a knowledge spoken by the language of the subject (spoken, for instance, by his “slips” or by his dreams), but that the subject cannot recognize, assume as his, appropriate; a speaking knowledge nonetheless denied to the speaker’s knowledge. In Lacan’s own terms, the unconscious is “knowledge that can’t tolerate one’s knowing that one knows.”50

What this implies, Felman continues, is that knowledge is “articulated” and “supported” by the ignorance inherent in language, “the ignorance of the excess of signs.” 51 This hampers any possibility of totalization of knowledge or wish to eliminate ignorance. As Lacan notes, “Until further notice, we can say that the elements do not answer in the place where they are interrogated. Or, more exactly, as soon as they are interrogated 47

Felman, Jacques Lacan, 90. Jacques Lacan, “Introduction de Scilicet,” in Scilicet 1 (Paris: Seuil), 9. 49 Felman, Jacques Lacan, 76. 50 Ibid., 77. Emphasis added. 51 Ibid., 78. Emphasis added. 48

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somewhere, it is impossible to grasp them in their totality.” 52 Felman views ignorance as the radical condition of knowledge precisely because its repressive “forgetfulness” serves as a marker for learning as recollection. Lacan’s “passion for ignorance” 53 marks knowledge as performative rather than cognitive. This means, as Felman notes, that ignorance can be turned into an instrument for teaching, and the one who teaches well provokes the desire to know that comes with taking the measure of one’s ignorance. Rather than transmit ready-made knowledge, Felman argues, teaching must create the conditions of new knowledge.54 And as we know, the new emerges particularly out of these moments of resistance to and passion for ignorance, where the analysand/student is most at odds with herself as Other. Because knowledge is posited on the desire for the Other’s enjoyment, the path to learning is dialogical (in the Socratic sense), and this recognition is revolutionary for pedagogy. The circulation of anxiety is also crucial to the learning process, and it encompasses teacher and student alike. The teacher should not view it as an interruption of education but rather as a refocusing of the student’s attention, given that the angst caused by anxiety poses an unspecified threat at an unspecified location. In The Other Side of Pedagogy, T. R. Johnson points out that students who turn anxiety and ignorance into assets gain in learning confidence.55 Students would make the important transition from “falsely knowledgeable” to “truthfully ignorant” more easily if they realized the incongruity between the university’s discourse and its students: “If there were a perfect fit between what school says we are and what we really are, then that would be the end of all dialogue, all struggle, all negotiation, all movement, all the oscillating vicissitudes of consensus, dissensus, and desire, ultimately all humanity—the triumph of the totalitarian machine.”56 In this case, the discourse of the university is the discourse of the master, and the master’s victories are short-lived, as Hegel reminds us, whereas, in serving the masters, the slaves are on an upward trajectory of emancipation and knowledge. Slaves speak from a position of change and development, whereas masters speak from a position that seeks merely to preserve existing privilege. The master’s ignorance is futile and non-generative of change and the new: .

52

Lacan, The Other Side Psychoanalysis, 281. Ibid., 110. 54 Felman, Jacques Lacan, 80. 55 Johnson, The Other Side of Pedagogy, 15. 56 Ibid., 23. 53

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Chapter Five [T]he master sits atop a truth and presumes to repress or transcend that truth, which, in the discourse of mastery, is the truth of unconscious desire, the truth that the subject is always divided, ironic, never quite identical to itself, and thus never quite “in control,” no matter how much he pretends otherwise. In other words, when S1 won the fight that allowed him to enslave S2, the master did so by refusing to acknowledge the terror of death; because he pretended to have no notion of death, he could keep fighting without any possibility of surrender-for-the-sake-of-survival. . . . And what makes the master a master—and the consummate fool—is his repression of this truth that there is something within him that he cannot know or control.57

In psychoanalysis, the master signifier structures reality and maintains the illusion of totality. The master signifier, however, is displaced and subverted by that which it attempts to control and dominate. As Slavoj Žižek puts it, “the supplement and the Master-Signifier are opposites whose tension provides the contours of the textual process: the supplement is the undecidable margin that eludes the Master-Signifier.”58 The illusion of “reality” (as opposed to the Real) is structured around the master signifier of consistent meaning. This illusion makes or breaks the subject’s symbolic relationship with reality, and it is the fantasy of the discourse of mastery. It is also a mark of failure because it annihilates all possibility of conflict or ongoing discovery. By ordering knowledge according to this wish for totalization and self-equivalence, the discourse of the master produces the fantasy of totalization and represses desire. In repressing desire and self-division, the subject believes herself to be whole and undivided but, in the process of repression, loses object a, the object of desire. Mastery is ultimately castrating to the Other (since the master deals with the personal threat of lack through the castration of the slave), and it forbids the slave’s object of desire. In confronting what is repressed by the discourse of mastery, it is possible to subvert the master and identify and reclaim what has been lost. The hysteric tries to accomplish this, but she is too enthralled by the master. At this point, the analyst can teach the hysteric to mediate between alienation and desire and regain her footing in terms of new master signifiers through a radical pedagogy of selfexploration. Radical pedagogy is an adventure of discovery, and Felman compares this pedagogical experience to that of reading, for reading is also a performative experience “that opens up into a reading of the world as well 57

Ibid., 114. Slavoj Žižek, The Metastases of Enjoyment: Six Essays on Women and Causality (Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2006), 196.

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as into a rereading of psychoanalysis itself.”59 In reading the analysand’s unconscious like a text, the analyst looks for a meaning other than what lies in what is said. In pedagogy, the same displacement of meaning occurs when the teacher/analyst gives accepted knowledge another meaning through the act of interpretation, thus transforming the student’s understanding from sameness into difference, from status quo into the new. The student is akin to the unconscious reader who already knows both how to read and what that reading means. As Felman argues, “Unconscious desire proceeds by interpretation; interpretation proceeds by unconscious desire. The unconscious is a reader. The reader is therefore, on some level, always an analysand—an analysand who ‘knows what he means’ but whose interpretation can be given another reading than what it means. This is what analytic discourse is all about.”60 I bring Don Quijote into this discourse on pedagogy as the art of reading and interpreting the unconscious because the novel illustrates particularly well the subversive nature of desire in relation to the signifiers of the master’s discourse. In our collective reading, students and teacher both learn to accept the text as an unreliable transmitter of fixed truth, particularly insofar as its master signifiers (cartography, banditry, and marriage) are constantly subverted and destabilized by contrary forces. Mercedes Alcalá-Galán’s discussion of cartography in Don Quijote sets in contrast the Empire’s discourse of cartographic mastery, as it seeks to inscribe territory, to the poetics of incoherence and desire inherent in the geographical distortions of the novel. One such distortion is the landlocked island of Barataria, which shows the impossible blending of reality and the fantastic. As Alcalá-Galán notes, in the seventeenth century’s new epistemological order, cartography was an expression of the intelligent appropriation of space made legible on a map. Navigation and cartography studies had political implications with respect to the Empire, creating a cartographic revolution. Cervantes appropriates this sense of geography that looks outward and turns it inward, thus showing the impossibility of mastering reality through the experience of being and knowing where one is in terms of geographic consciousness.61 In Don Quijote, the discourse of bureaucracy is subverted by the object a of desire. Alcalá-Galán argues that maps as representations of space are fantasies of control, i.e., fantasies in which physical space is appropriated 59

Felman, Jacques Lacan, 9. Ibid., 22. 61 Mercedes Alcalá-Galán, “Imaginary Cartographies in Don Quijote” in Cervantes and the Politics of Reading (University of California at Los Angeles, Conference, November 13, 2015). 60

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and thus imagined to be controlled and possessed.62 Don Quijote’s vision of geography correlates with the historical moment. Cartographic discoveries were kept secret by King Philip II to protect the Empire. The Ptolemaic model was losing ground to Galileo’s thesis, and notions of geographical limitations were giving way to a frontierless humanity. Geographical knowledge lived in tension with instability. Cervantes captures the destabilized sense of the world by writing a clandestine book. The Arab historian and his manuscript written in Arabic are key to the poetics of the text, given that Arabic was a prohibited language. Don Quijote orders imperial space by subverting imperial knowledge through inverted cartography and imaginary geographies. The episode of the Cave of Montessino acts like the analyst’s discourse and reveals Quijote’s unconscious. The geography of the cave is that of an inverted map, similar to Arabic maps at the time. The descent into the cave is akin to a descent into death (based on images of blackbirds and a sarcophagus) and the unconscious. As Roberto Gonzáles Echevarría63 notes, the descent is an expression of desengaño (i.e., disillusionment). Cervantes’ masterful blow against the problematic objectivity of maps comes in the creation of the space of the Real as a psychological space that strips reality of its illusions and reveals the truth of the repressed. Quijote’s desengaño confronts him with temporality in a way that his fantastic adventures do not. As a knight, Don Quijote lives in a constructed reality in which fictions are alive and elements of the Real that threaten them are immediately repressed. In the cave, reality is stripped of illusion, and the master signifiers fall by the wayside one by one: chivalric romances and adventures are questioned, and courtly love traditions are filtered through natural law. Belerma’s idealized Renaissance beauty crumbles under the reality of old age; rather than sad, she is menopausal: “Real time, and with it, periodic bodily functions, age and aging and decay have crept into the world of fiction contained in the cave. No harsher way to dispel the idealization of a Renaissance beauty than to imagine her menstruating or going through menopause, meaning that she’s already aged.”64 Also, comically, Dulcineea needs a loan because the world of the unconscious (i.e., Lacan’s Real) is a world of necessity: “The world of magic is invaded by needs and physical laws and what ensues are grotesque images.”65 Unencumbered by reason, Quijote’s unconscious reveals the grotesque decay of human flesh in 62

Ibid. Roberto González Echevarría, “Lecture 17: Cervantes’ Don Quijote” (Open Yale Courses, New Haven, CT, 2009). 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid. 63

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temporality. Thus, “Cervantes shows that we relate to the world, including the world of our own experiences, in ways other than what the epistemologists call knowledge, and that all we know of the world cannot be characterized in terms of certainty.” 66 In this episode, Cervantes quixotizes objective reality and turns inward for knowledge and truth. The master signifiers of outward geography and temporality deceive and obscure. It is through a descent into the inverted geography of the unconscious that the trauma of temporality—old age and death—is revealed as generative of truth and new knowledge. Sancho Panza is the hysteric to Don Quijote’s master. Sancho is guided by what he sees and by his subjective experience of being in a certain place, whereas Quijote calculates his coordinates by the equinox, the spheres, parallels, and other known markers of scientific discourse. For the master, scientific knowledge sees clearly even when it contradicts experience. Bruce Fink describes the nature of science as discursive, arguing that there are “as many different claims to rationality as there are different discourses,”67 and some of them—the ones that use science as justification to expand the master’s power—can be subsumed under the university’s discourse. Fink goes on to note that scientific discourse “sutures” the subject, making her irrelevant to the field.68 Truth is reduced to a value, and even though the hysteric’s discourse poses forms of resistance and protest, ultimately her wish for security and stability prevails and reinforces the master’s discourse. It is only within the discourse of the analyst that the subject can assume her alienation and desire and produce her own master signifiers. Thus, the analyst’s discourse is opposed to the will to mastery, meaning, and closure, working instead toward the fulfillment of desire. In his imaginary aerial flight, Sancho experiences the world through a distortion of perspective that breaches the law of physics: the world is as small as a grain of mustard and the people walking it, no bigger than a hazel nut. But his enchanted eye’s perspective is quickly challenged by that of the master, the duchess, who authoritatively crushes Sancho’s truth through the master signifiers of scientific knowledge:

66

Anthony J. Cascardi, “Cervantes and Descartes on the Dream Argument,” Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 4.2 (1984): 109-122, quoted in Echevarría, “Lecture 17. Cervantes’ Don Quijote” (Open Yale Courses, New Haven, CT, 2009). 67 Fink, The Lacanian Subject, 138. 68 Ibid.

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Chapter Five To this the duchess said, “Sancho, my friend, mind what you are saying; it seems you could not have seen the earth, but only the men walking on it; for if the earth looked to you like a grain of mustard seed, and each man like a hazel nut, one man alone would have covered the whole earth.” “That is true,” said Sancho, “but for all that I got a glimpse of a bit of one side of it, and saw it all.” “Take care, Sancho,” said the duchess, “with a bit of one side one does not see the whole of what one looks at.” “I don’t understand that way of looking at things,” said Sancho; “I only know that your ladyship will do well to bear in mind that as we were flying by enchantment so I might have seen the whole earth and all the men by enchantment whatever way I looked.”69

Sancho’s rupture of proportion reveals a cosmological passage perceived under enchantment. As Alcalá-Galán70 notes, in playing with the chimera from outer space, Sancho’s cosmic map and Quijote’s underground map do not represent the outer horizontal world but the inner vertical one. This inner representation of desire forms the discourse of the hysteric, i.e., that of Sancho Panza, whose desire for an island creates a heterotopia in space, the land-locked island—an impossible space where political utopia materializes. This space is both fantastic and impossible—a destabilizing geography that reveals a poetic of incoherence and the instability of meaning in the discourse of the master. The island is an imaginary expanse that also looks like a real-life village, thus blurring the lines between subjective and objective and defining subjective space as the realm of the unconscious—a space of fantasy and trauma. These new geographies make a political commentary on geographical space as immeasurable and cartographically irrelevant.71 Another quixotic character of undecidability is the Catalan bandit Roque Guinart, a figure both central and peripheral.72 The traditional space of the bandit fuses man to nature, but Cervantes’ Roque is portrayed as sensitive, empathetic, and generous, shedding tears and obeying the law of the father.73 Roque is a dislocated, troubled soul, living his life in fear and 69

Miguel De Cervantes, Don Quijote, trans. Charles Jarvis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 733. 70 Alcalá-Galán, “Imaginary Cartographies in Don Quijote.” 71 Ibid. 72 Enrique Garcia Santo-Tomás, “Recasting Roque,” in Cervantes and the Politics of Reading (University of California at Los Angeles, Conference, November 13, 2015). 73 Adapted from psychoanalysis, the concept of “the law of the father” describes the traditional patriarchy that dominated feudal societies. There, political power

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distrust. In Roque, Cervantes subverts the master signifiers of banditry discourse by portraying the gentle bandit as the repressed signifier of the unconscious, out of place in a precarious situation, living solely through his desire for vengeance, in a state of in-between: exiled from the city and not quite at home in the forest. As a social phenomenon in Spanish literature and cinema, banditry is a type of showmanship of the simultaneously heroic and criminal, which presents the bandit in terms of the primitive savage as master signifier. 74 As Enrique Santo-Tomás argues,75 Roque Guinart has a lot of dramatic potential as a figure made up of residues from previous literary creations—a collage of knight, pilgrim, friar, etc. A figure of distributive justice, he is trapped between violence and redemption, civilization and barbarism. The space of the selva itself is invented by culture as exterior to society, showing that one’s relationship with nature is a matter of psychological behavior. The master’s discourse argues that the natural man, homo silvestris, is opposed to society. Wild knights were an unsettling presence in the medieval age, and SantoTomás76 argues that far into the post-Romantic era, they continue to be viewed as an archetype of savage men of desire, emerging from the underworld of the woods. As a nineteenth-century re-appropriated figure, Roque devolves as a violent criminal who is physically imposing—the unconscious of civilization. However, Cervantes’ chivalric bandit undermines both the discourses of banditry and chivalry, unmasking them as impossible categorizations. From barbaric, quasi-animalistic violent types, bandits are easily elevated to become Romantic heroes. The bandit is the object a to the knight’s master, unmasking the knight’s violent and erotic desires. Roque himself, a gentle bandit, is a mythical figure, for in his ubiquitous travels and as a figure of violence and trauma, he destabilizes political spaces, but through his gentleness he also upsets expectations of banditry.77 The master signifier’s discourse aims to put a stop to the slave’s discourse. Individuals are supposed to act and desire in ways that strengthen the master’s discourse. The master’s discourse encompasses everything, including revolt against it. Elements that seek to disrupt this discourse are coopted as master signifiers that reinforce it. Ultimately, however, the discourse of the master must restrict the slave’s desire, which was solidified around the power of the father and was thus extrapolated from the family unit to the state. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid.

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stems from object a, the unsymbolized cause of desire, leaving the slave voiceless and divided, repressing her anxiety and unsatisfied desire. Jouissance is forbidden in the master’s discourse. Cervantes’ 1605 text (the first part of Don Quijote) makes use of imitation as a central Renaissance practice, especially in the genres of the chivalric, pastoral, and picaresque. Georgina Dopico Black argues that imitation (of Amadis de Gaula and Orlando Furioso) reaches its limit in the episode of Sierra Morena, where we descend again into a vision of hell and madness, away from civilization and the order of the law—the despoblado. 78 The stories of Marcela and Grisóstomo, Maritornes, Fernando, Dorotea, Luscinda, and Cardenio are all narratives of thwarted desire. In these stories, as well as those of Gines de Pasamontes and the galley slaves, desire subverts discipline and the law in the formation of subjectivity. Under the mastery of the discourse of chivalry as an ideological structure aiming to consolidate the Empire, these narratives also contain strands of the messianic and imperial expansion fantasy. In all of these stories, desire is postponed, misplaced, and displaced and, Black notes, the interruption of desire begets more desire. Containing the unruly force of sex in marriage reinforces the virtues of Empire. By virtue of law, discipline, and order, the self-conscious subject is both produced and called into question. By the second volume of 1615, the novel as a genre is stabilized, the translator becomes more confident in censoring the Arabic manuscript, and Part Two fully encompasses Part One in its parodic play. Part Two asserts the master’s authorial control in its narrative closure. At the end of the novel, Alonzo Quijana upholds the structures of law and order and asserts that reading invites the dangers of madness and transgression. In so doing, he aligns himself with the apparatuses of power that turn literary discourse into mere spectacle.79 Taking the side of the law (and therefore of the master), Quijote’s “sane” discourse seeks to justify and rationalize Quijote’s madness in order to uphold the existing order. As I hope I have shown thus far, Don Quijote enacts the pedagogy of desire—namely, how the unconscious of the text interferes with one’s reading, and the fictional and meta-fictional ways in which this happens. One way to teach the text is through the prism of desire undermining the master-signifiers embedded in the narrative. For example, at the metalevel, the novel is about readers self-consciously reading texts. Caroll Johnson argues that when Don Quijote reads and interprets chivalric 78

Georgina Dopico Black, “‘Con major plectro’: The Politics of Genre in Don Quijote II,” in Cervantes and the Politics of Reading (University of California at Los Angeles, Conference, November 13, 2015). 79 Ibid.

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romances, his own unconscious is projected onto the material, revealing his particular obsession with erotic episodes (in relation to Lancelot and Guinevere, for example). In its turn, the novel invites the reader to make use of her own elaborate fantasies in interpreting specific episodes. Johnson confesses to a “fantasy of aggressive phallic sexuality”80 in his interpretation of the descent into the boiling lake of Part One, which coincides with Don Quijote’s fantasy, but it is also the result of the critic’s “blind[ing] [himself] to major facts of the text.”81 In fact, he concedes, the fantastic descent could be read as an entry into the womb, with Quijote reduced to “a dependent child” 82 regressing into the comfort of the maternal. Thus, “this revelation renders all the more pathetic his frantic flight from housekeeper and niece into the ruggedly masculine, superphallic world of armor, lances and horses.”83 Johnson takes this revelation as a marker of unresolved personal conflicts in his psyche to be subsequently delved into during sessions with his analyst. In fact, Johnson refers to Cervantes’ text as “the discourse of the Other,” 84 a discourse responsible for bringing to the fore repressed layers of the male reader’s psyche. Cervantes’ text functions, in this case, as Lacan’s “Third,” which is defined by Felman as “a locus of unconscious language, sometimes created by a felicitous encounter . . . between the unconscious discourse of the analyst and the unconscious discourse of the patient.”85 In my own teaching of the novel, I argue that the text invites a proliferation of interpretations in its parodic play with narrative conventions, and thus it facilitates a more direct encounter between readers and text as students discover that the mediation of theory and critical interpretation opens up, rather than closing down, an abundance of possibilities inherent in the text. For example, in our discussion of “The Novel of the Curious Impertinent,” teacher and students responded in radically different ways to Anselmo’s self-made predicament regarding the tryst between his wife, Camila, and his best friend, Lotario. My tendency was to theorize Anselmo’s betrayal as an example of the mediation of desire. While intrigued, my students, on the other hand, preferred a more direct approach, suggesting that Anselmo proves to be a rather insecure 80

Johnson, Caroll, “Cervantes and the Unconscious,” in Quixotic Desire: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Cervantes, eds. Ruth Anthony El Saffar and Diana de Armas Wilson (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 87. 81 Ibid., 87. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid., 88. 84 Ibid. 85 Felman, Jacques Lacan, 126.

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lover as well as a domineering and controlling husband who manipulates Camila’s affections through the perversion of his twisted desire. As my students also noted, feminine voices are responsible for defeating the reader’s expectations of master narratives. In my lecture regarding gender dynamics in the courtly love tradition, I pointed to the silencing of women as essential for that rhetoric. Women’s voices, if heard, could undermine the male representation of them as passive objects of poetic worship and aesthetic adornment. However, in her reading of Marcela, Luscinda, and Dorotea, one student was quick to point out that, in fact, far from being passive and voiceless objects of desire, these women rewrite the male narrative of their motives and actions to exculpate themselves from false representation and charges of provocation to insanity and death. Thus, Cervantes subverts not only the overarching discourses driving the narrative but also the very idea of trusting narration and authority, thereby exposing the structures of the Real. The Real functions as the thing that must both exist and be disavowed so that fantasy can persist. Also, the Real is the new as it emerges unexpectedly from a given situation. The production of the new involves a shift from the universal to the particular. New truths make that shift possible and vice-versa. But because of its nature, the new makes no sense in the context of already established situations, and when it emerges, it is not immediately recognized as something that makes sense but rather as something akin to the insane—hence its revolutionary nature. On the other hand, the new is the process of fulfillment of the old, in the sense that every situation contains its potential for a revolutionary upheaval. To prepare for the outbreak of the new in a pedagogical situation, we have to be open to the hidden potential of that situation. I have looked at psychoanalysis as a pedagogical tool that can be instrumental in casting education as the process through which all subjects gain access to truth. Learning is the irruption of the new in a pedagogical situation and the subject’s encounter with the Real. Truth is always in process. The discourse of the pedagogue is aimed at the divided student/subject and her stores of knowledge, a discourse that aims to reach a point in knowledge that will cause a break-through, resulting in the production of a new truth.

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Bibliography Alcalá-Galán, Mercedes. “Imaginary Cartographies in Don Quijote.” Cervantes and the Politics of Reading. University of California at Los Angeles, Conference, November 13, 2015. Auestad, Lene. “To Think or not to Think: A Phenomenological and Psychoanalytic Perspective on Experience, Thinking and Creativity.” In Psychoanalysis and Education: Minding a Gap, edited by Alain Bainbridge and Linden West, 23-36. London: Karnac Books, 2012. Badiou, Alain. “Art and Philosophy.” lacanian ink 17 (2000): 61-72. Black, Georgina Dopico. “‘Con major plectro’: The Politics of Genre in Don Quijote II.” Cervantes and the Politics of Reading. University of California at Los Angeles, Conference, November 13, 2015. Britzman, Deborah. The Very Thought of Education: Psychoanalysis and the Impossible Professions. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2010. Cho, Daniel. Psychopedagogy: Freud, Lacan, and the Psychoanalytical Theory of Education. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Crockett, Clayton. “The Triumph of Theology.” In Theology after Lacan: The Passion for the Real, edited by Davis Creston, 250-266. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2014. De Cervantes, Miguel. Don Quixote de la Mancha. Translated by Charles Jarvis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Echevarría, Roberto González. “Lecture 17: Cervantes’ Don Quijote.” Open Yale Courses, New Haven, CT, 2009. Felman, Shoshana. Jacques Lacan and the Adventure of Insight. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. Fink, Bruce. The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. Johnson, Caroll. “Cervantes and the Unconscious.” In Quixotic Desire: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Cervantes, edited by Ruth Anthony El Saffar and Diana de Armas Wilson, 81-92. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993. Johnson, T. R. The Other Side of Pedagogy. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2015. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis. Vol. XVII. Translated by Russell Grigg. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2007. —. “Introduction de Scilicet.” Scilicet 1, Paris: Seuil. Miller, Jacques-Alain. “Microscopia: An Introduction to the Reading of Television.” In Television, xi-xxi. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1990.

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Santo-Tomás, Enrique Garcia. “Recasting Roque.” Cervantes and the Politics of Reading. University of California at Los Angeles, Conference, November 13, 2015. Žižek, Slavoj. The Metastases of Enjoyment: Six Essays on Women and Causality. Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2006.

CHAPTER SIX PRIVILEGED SPACE: A PSYCHOANALYTIC PARADIGM FOR PEDAGOGY TAPO CHIMBGANDA INSTITUTE OF CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION, LEEDS TRINITY UNIVERSITY, LEEDS, UK LS18 5HD

A black male student in an undergraduate social sciences class states quite emphatically, with no reservations, “White people are the devil! Them people are evil, man.” His declaration is met with silence. In another undergraduate course, a white female student reacts to the epistemology of white studies, saying, “I’m so glad someone is challenging these ideas of privilege. I’m tired of always having to defend myself. My family and I work just as hard for everything we have. It wasn’t handed to us just coz we’re white.” Her statement is also met with silence. For those of us who have been in a “multicultural classroom,” experience has taught us that the unconscious requires a privileged space rather than a “safe space.” This is not to say the safe space theorem does not offer an immensely preferable learning environment for students to the unbridled hostility that can arise through traumatic pedagogy.1 It does. However, it is important to recognize the difference between privileged space and safe space, a difference that lies in the collective acknowledgment of the unconscious within privileged space. In a privileged space, the unconscious speaks. In a safe space, there is a tendency to silence the unconscious as a defense against the injuries

1

Tapo Chimbganda, “Traumatic Pedagogy: When Epistemic Privilege and White Privilege Collide,” in Racial Battle Fatigue in Higher Education: Exposing the Myth of Post-Racial America, eds. Kenny Fasching-Varner, Katrice Albert, Roland Mitchell, and Chaunda Allen (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2015).

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individuals suffer at the hands of society, or, in the case of the classroom, at the hands of instructors and other students.2 In this essay, I apply a psychoanalytic frame3 of privilege and offer a way of re-imagining privilege in education, making privilege a positive experience rather than one that divides and discriminates between “the haves and have-nots.” I propose that we extend privilege to its extremities, thus perhaps allowing more people to benefit from its positive and favorable aspects. If education must equalize and if we are to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusivity within our classrooms, maybe what we need is more privilege rather than less. To create more privilege, however, we must begin with a re-defining of what privilege means in a pedagogical setting, and this requires a re-construction of its nuances. I propose that we use the psychoanalytic frame to create a classroom space in which privilege cultivates social justice.

Definitions of “privilege” In educational settings, privilege is often viewed as a negative vicissitude of social and occupational oppression. Critical theory highlights situations and positions of privilege as things to be condemned and eradicated in order to make education equitable. Critical lenses such as feminist epistemology, critical race theory, and queer theory view privileged constructions of knowledge as hegemonic. In deconstructing the power imbalances ingrained through hundreds of years of racism, sexism, prejudice, and discrimination, these frameworks challenge society’s reliance on oppressive pedagogies to critique the very structures they seek to dismantle. Clearly, privilege as a critical concept in pedagogy is a domain fraught with tension, conflict, and ambivalence. David Barnett defines privilege as the receiving of an act, service, or material good based upon perceived differences among possible recipients. His definition implies that privilege is a biased human thought process even if it occurs below the level of consciousness and thus becomes habitual, learned, perfunctory, calloused, routine, involuntary, and/or automatic. He argues, too, that it is accompanied by a positive, or favored, result for its recipients.4 2

Lynn Holley and Sue Steiner, “Safe Space: Student Perspectives on Classroom Environment,” Journal of Social Work Education 41.1 (2005): 49-64. 3 Imre Szecsödy, “Framing the Psychoanalytic Frame,” The Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review 20.2 (1997): 238-243. 4 David Barnett, Privileged Thinking in Today’s Schools: The Implications for Social Justice (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010), 4.

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As an alternative to Barnett, and as an asset to pedagogy, epistemic privilege as a brand of knowledge is generated by experience from a position of disadvantage and marginalization.5 We draw this perspective from Black Feminist Theory (BFT),6 which advocates for the recognition and legitimacy of the experiences of black females in society. Through epistemic privilege, we differentiate between 1) those who are privileged because they were born into social, economic, and political power and 2) those who are disadvantaged due to their race, class, or gender but have come to possess a different kind of power through struggle and experience. In her explanation of Afrocentric Feminist Epistemology, Patricia Hill Collins states that there is, for certain people, a concrete experience that extends beyond knowledge into wisdom.7 Black feminist theorists such as Collins advocate seeing those who come from “the wrong side of the tracks,” the bad neighborhoods, and/or “the disadvantaged areas” as potentially wise and knowledgeable because of what they have experienced and therefore learned through their struggles with economic hardships, oppression, discrimination, and social division. Epistemic privilege, if cultivated and nurtured, brings with it better critical thinkers as well as more adaptable and resilient students who see the world from a unique perspective.

The psychoanalytic privileged space Psychoanalysis, rejected by the scientific community, is to the arts, humanities, and social sciences a curious adjunct, not quite embraced nor dismissed but lingering in the shadows like a strange child.8 Like Charles Levin, I focus on psychoanalysis as a social remedy that does not quite fit the bill: “The fact that psychoanalytic treatment or thought has from time to time achieved a kind of grudging social acceptance through medicalization or cultural chic does not really undo this basic tension. . . . Psychoanalysis itself will remain something of a social outcast, an object 5 Sandra Harding, “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What is Strong Objectivity?” in Feminist Epistemologies, eds. L. Alcoff and E. Potter (London: Routledge, 1993), 49-82. 6 Harding, “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology,” 49-82; Marianne Janack, “Dilemmas of Objectivity,” Social Epistemology 16.3 (2002): 267-281; see Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 2009). 7 Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 208. 8 Charles Levin, “The Siege of Psychotherapeutic Space: Psychoanalysis in the Age of Transparency,” Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis 9.2 (2001): 187-199.

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of suspicion. Its basic concepts seem eccentric and therefore threatening in the eyes of the general public and much of the scientific community.”9 Being somewhat of a social and scientific pariah makes psychoanalysis what it is today—a place where privilege can dominate and thrive to the fulfillment of both analyst and analysand. What might be viewed as negative about psychoanalysis is also what makes it resilient. Levin quite aptly describes the psychoanalytic situation, stating, “The ‘space’ in which an analysis takes place thus appears as a foreign territory, full of strange and abject beings, and this will always pose a disturbing challenge to the functional rationality of conventional social values.”10 As negative as it may sound, this is a good thing when considering matters of privilege. A strange space is one where anyone can be anything and still engage in the work of mourning losses, sublimating, and attaining psychic knowledge. In this strange space, psychoanalysis itself is strange, the analyst is strange, and the analysand is strange. What this means is that one fits in by virtue of not fitting in. Strangeness is a unique type of epistemic privilege where knowledge is created in whatever condition it may arise, even abjectly. Levin continues, saying the following: “In a democratic society—that is, in a society that genuinely encourages and protects diversity—the eccentricity of the analytic couple can be tolerated for two reasons. The first is that the private interests of the analysand are considered important by virtue of democratic principle.”11 Herein lies the definition of privileged space in a psychoanalytic frame: i.e., it is democratic in so far as it honors the private interests of the analysand. In an educational setting, we could therefore define privileged space as a democratic honoring of the student’s private interests, which means at the top of the classroom agenda is the honoring of students as private individuals with strange interests. Levin thinks members of society as a whole would benefit greatly from emulating this psychoanalytic exploration and expression of strangeness within themselves. He argues that in psychoanalysis, ordinary sociability is suspended, to whatever degree possible, because the norms of social interaction have a tendency to sponge up all the embarrassing tensions of the unsayable, the unthinkable, and the unbidden, making psychoanalytic work impossible.12 In the analytic session, there are no sanctions against speaking one’s mind, expressing oneself emotionally, or confronting one’s oppressor with affect. Such social dictates—for example, political correctness—create gaps and 9

Ibid., 189. Ibid., 189. 11 Ibid., 198. 12 Levin, “The Siege of Psychotherapeutic Space,” 190. 10

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chasms in education. When emotionality, the unthinkable, and the unsayable are met with silence, the silence maintains social dictates and, by extension, the status quo, thus creating barriers to learning. Privileged space does not suppress strangeness; instead, it seeks out the unconscious, nudging away repressions and coaxing strangeness into the open. And thus it presents us with opportunities for meaningful pedagogy. Privileged space can be viewed as a container for traumatic pedagogy. The trauma is necessary; it has to be. But also necessary is the kind of space that Levin describes: Freud isolated irrationality itself for intellectual investigation by blocking the path of emotional discharge through action and creating a specialized substitute container (the psychoanalytic process). Using this container, he could deliberately foster states of insecurity, uncertainty, and radical selfcriticism. The result was not healing through social integration, in which the culture acts as the container, but the disillusionment of separation through a kind of internal integration, in which a new degree of autonomy is achieved at the level of the individual organism.13

From Levin we gather that social integration through culture comes at the cost of the development of the individual. This view highlights one of the biggest failings of safe space, which is its inability to confront insecurity, uncertainty, and radical self-criticism. However, if we encourage students to learn through the trauma of giving up safety, our students might develop social identifications that make it unnecessary for us to teach in a safe space. To create a privileged space in classrooms, we might begin with the ethical standpoint suggested by Jan Wiener: “Ethics place great stress on the importance of respecting our patients’ rights to confidentiality, emphasizing its link to the relationship of trust, so crucial for creating a space for unconscious exploration.”14 Psychoanalytic efficacy is measured through privilege. In order for psychoanalysis to work, the analysand and analyst must relate in a privileged space where the analysand is assured, first and foremost, of confidentiality but also of other crucial principles like respect and trust in a non-judgmental atmosphere. Levin states that “the analysand’s belief in the security of psychotherapeutic space is essential to its construction.”15 If we were to create similar spaces within 13

Ibid., 192-193. Jan Wiener, “Confidentiality and Paradox: The Location of Ethical Space,” Journal of Analytical Psychology 46.3 (2001): 432. 15 Ibid., 197. 14

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classrooms, what might we achieve? What might a privileged space mean in terms of student engagement and the attainment of knowledge? Not to be confused with privacy or secrecy, confidentiality is, as Wiener points out, a commitment to maintain boundaries and to take no action. 16 According to Wiener, taking no action is not a position of passivity or ineffectuality, nor is it neglect or ignorance. It is containment. Wiener continues, saying, “For analysts, the temptation to take actions to break the boundaries of the analytic container is dependent on personal and moral principles, codes of ethics, clinical judgment and, not least, the role of the law.”17 She also stresses that a failure to contain as well as a failure to maintain confidentiality erodes trust, and thus “a shadow is cast over our profession as a whole.”18 By building professional standards on principles of privileged space—confidentiality, containment, and trust— might we see an improvement in teacher-student relationships? Also advocating for privileged space, Levin states the following: “Confidentiality, in this stronger sense of a privileged space, is uniquely designed to diminish the social pressure to answer to the archaic superego. The purpose of this is to protect the psychic value of the patient’s communication, that is to say, to preserve its ‘capacity to carry the contents of unconscious thought.’”19 Within the security of privileged space, speech is not censored as the analysand can speak without fear of social retribution and the reactive morality of the group.20 Confidentiality, according to Levin, is a very deep kind of psychological bond that is established only in very special circumstances, usually having to do with the invocation of powers transcending secular social authority such as sacred blood ties, spiritual obligations, love, and friendship, all of which have survived modernization in the quasi-transcendental form of constitutionally-protected relationships implying certain residual rights.21 In other words, it is a reciprocal bond between the analyst and analysand that creates the imaginary boundary required for treatment. Privilege also demarcates the boundary between the analytic couple and the rest of society: “The ‘privilege’ of the confidentiality principle depends very much on the quality of social respect for this distinction between the analytic couple and other social relationships; but it also, paradoxically, emerges as a consequence of their 16

Ibid., 433. Ibid., 433. 18 Ibid., 434. 19 Ibid., 199. For more information see Christopher Bollas and David Sudelson, The New Informants (Northvale, NJ: Aronson, 1995), 63. 20 Ibid., 199. 21 Levin, “The Siege of Psychotherapeutic Space,” 196. 17

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differentiation, which produces a highly idiosyncratic form of discourse irreducible to the structures of social communication.”22

Privileged space versus safe space The illusory state of safe space, compared to privileged space, requires that we look below the surface of what is said and done. Privileged space is a holding environment that requires “a robust professional culture steeped in the ethic of confidentiality and capable of maintaining the interanalytic circulation of clinical experience in an atmosphere of frankness and respect[,]” argues Levin. “When some or all of these supporting frameworks are absent in the surrounding culture, psychotherapeutic space begins to collapse into a kind of social black hole.”23 Unfortunately, safe space, appraised by the same standards, is a social black hole full of judgment and social persecution, and thus it is unable to contain the emotionality required of pedagogy. Within the illusion of safe space, we often encounter anxiety and fear driven by sanctions and barriers set up in the name of equity and social justice. The question of socially-constructed and acceptable affects that are designated, political, and constitutive of worlds of relation arises from Barbara Stengel’s analysis of safe space. According to Stengel, “The affect, that is, the felt response to harassment, is constructed as fear (rather than, say, annoyance or anger) through practices that control affect in order to create a particular kind of world.”24 The call for safe space, says Stengel, usually comes from someone perceiving an affect-laden experience, by which she means that the call for safe space comes from someone who thinks that a discussion in a classroom might become affect-laden and thus threatening. Within safe spaces, discrimination vis-à-vis affect further alienates those already alienated through racial, gender, or other prejudices. Some feelings although justified are simply not acceptable in the classroom, and those subject to triggers of affect are prohibited from seeking catharsis through expression. As Stengel points out, when one person invokes safe space, another person is being silenced. For those identified as requiring it, safety means the shutting up and invisibility of those perceived as threatening. “By designating fears, we construct ‘safe space’ for some and unsafe space for others.”25 It also means that we are inevitably labeling people as either 22

Ibid., 197. Ibid., 198. 24 Barbara Stengel, “The Complex Case of Fear and Safe Space,” Studies in Philosophy and Education 29.6 (2010): 526. 25 Ibid., 531. 23

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safe or unsafe, labels that seep into peer relations and thereby propagate divisions and segregation. In safe spaces, silencing further cultivates anxiety and fear, both of which are symptoms of repression. The repressed affect will eventually manifest itself in other ways, as is the habit of the unconscious. On the other hand, a privileged space rejects the notion that a person should feel, talk, and act a certain way by repressing affect that does not comply with societal dictates. It is difficult to balance everyone’s needs and desires, especially when many remain unspoken for the sake of safety. There is a double bind evident in popular conceptualizations of the classroom as safe space, which Stengel sums up in three critical problems: (1) The need for safe space for students who experience social exclusion and harassment is the result of a political economy that was intended to create safe space for others. (2) Students who are able to articulate a need for safe space often don’t need the kind of space separation offers; students who need (if only temporarily) separation often are unable to say so. (3) “Safe space” does not always or only function to defuse fear and establish safety for students; safe space may also function to create emotional relief for adults.26

She alerts us to the teacher’s own need for safety, pointing out that in many educational settings, safety is not an antidote to fear; instead, it is a disciplinary action that suppresses affect rather than uncovering it. Often teachers are left feeling bereft and anxious when emotions explode. Through fear and anxiety, teachers choose to act, often projecting affects of insecurity onto students identified as needing safe space. Stengel further argues that fear does not pre-exist and prompt the call for safe space; rather, the call for safe space establishes fear as the affect present, often hiding other feelings such as anger, annoyance, or even hatred. The affective difficulties identified by Stengel correspond with Linda Powell and Margaret Barber’s statement that both students and teachers struggle with a [discriminating] culture, in almost psychotic anxiety, and with a future created by political, cultural, and environmental inequality. “Some teachers describe an increasing sense of powerlessness,” report Powell and Barber. They refer to one mechanism we use to manage anxiety and the sense of powerlessness as “pathological denial,” stating that “despite the dangerous consequences, individuals and groups cultivate

26

Ibid., 525.

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ways to ‘not know’ and to ‘not learn.’”27 As Stengel points out, there are consequences for this pathological denial: “Affect matters, not because it replaces logic, but because it points to logics at work that are disciplined, covered over. When affect impinges on consciousness, it reminds us to go looking for logics beyond the surface, beyond what is stated.”28 Admittedly, given the harsh realities of professional practice, privilege is easily subverted by ethical and economic predicaments, which Wiener highlights as dilemmas between maintaining the confidentiality of patients while trying to stay in line with the legal and moral obligations of a broader society. According to Wiener, there are “uncomfortable situations” in analytic space that we may wish to avoid so as “to defend ourselves against our beliefs and wishes.” Thus, continues Wiener, “[w]e are caught in a psychic area where distinctions between inside and outside, between what is subjective and what is objective, between fantasy and reality are blurred. The guardian of our everyday beliefs fails and the analytic frame is under threat so that inevitably the nature of the analytic space within it is affected.” 29 Such aspects in clinical practice resist acknowledging that the unconscious operates within this space, for the unconscious does not fit into discourses involving binaries such as morality/immorality, legality/illegality, and normal/abnormal. For example, voicing one’s racial or gender prejudices might result in social retribution. Therefore, allowing the unconscious to speak creates dilemmas that present as “unsafe” to those who are unfamiliar with how the unconscious operates. To address these difficulties, which we can neither ignore nor sanction by creating safe spaces, Wiener turns to a third space, which she refers to as an ethical space.30 Viewed as another dimension of privileged space, “secondary process thinking becomes possible and inner and outer reality may be separated yet remain interrelated.”31 This ethical space within the privileged dynamic distinguishes privacy from secrecy and underpins confidentiality. Creating such a space in classrooms, along with acknowledging the unconscious, produces opportunities in which the pedagogical factors often ignored or silenced in education can be fully disclosed and worked through. 27

Linda Powell and Margaret Barber, “Savage Inequalities Indeed: Irrationality and Urban School Reform,” in Love’s Return: Psychoanalytic Essays on Childhood, Teaching, and Learning, eds. Gail Boldt and Paula Salvio (New York: Routledge, 2006), 43. 28 Stengel, “The Complex Case,” 526. 29 Wiener, “Confidentiality and Paradox,” 438. 30 Ibid., 439. 31 Ibid., 440.

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Full disclosure relies on confidentiality. In classrooms, full disclosure is undermined and/or prevented by what is deemed socially appropriate. Generally, it is not considered appropriate to express one’s emotions, thoughts, and biases as they have the potential to create an unsafe atmosphere—or, at least, they are perceived as having such potential. And while the teacher cannot control what students think, it is generally seen as the teacher’s responsibility to control what they say. And thus, as students cannot say what they think or feel, the status quo remains unchallenged. Everyone comes and goes without actually taking risks or learning. And yet, paradoxically, “[t]he classroom as a ‘safe space’ has emerged as a description of a classroom climate that allows students to feel secure enough to take risks, honestly express their views, and share and explore their knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors.”32 Amongst the challenges of building and maintaining a safe space for learning emphasized by Lynn Holley and Sue Steiner is the complete eradication of conflict or disagreement through democracy. The solution to discrimination within safe spaces is not social democratization. According to Levin, who criticizes democratization as a social principle, “[d]emocratization can itself be transformed into an instrument of repression, to the extent that it confuses the purely formal equality required for the cultivation of individual freedom with the concrete equality of sameness and literal identity.”33 He juxtaposes psychoanalytic space to other social spaces, pointing out that “[a]ny ‘space’ within society that cultivates a challenge to identifications will be suspected of undermining social cohesion and convention; any ‘space’ that invites the retrieval of projections and encourages the critical examination of moral assumptions and idealizing fantasies will inevitably be treated with suspicion, because it will threaten the group identification with the archaic superego.”34 In a safe space, repression becomes the socially-induced norm whereby students cannot learn and cannot experience more than superficial occurrences. As a method of challenging repression, psychoanalysis deviates from social democratization, for when psychoanalysis is brought to bear, identifications protected by safe space are challenged in order to disable repetitions that have created the need for safe space in the first place. The breaking down of these identifications into the underlying mechanisms that maintain the status quo can be traumatic, however. The key to containing the trauma is in personable elements such as the natural warmth and authority of the analyst, derived not from her person but from 32

Holley and Steiner, “Safe Space,” 50. Levin, “The Siege of Psychotherapeutic Space,” 193. 34 Levin, “The Siege of Psychotherapeutic Space,” 193. 33

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her capacity to maintain the [psychoanalytic] frame in reasonably good working order.35 Within a privileged framework relationships are negotiated; and they reflect a level of mutual assumption of responsibility.36 The objective in privileged space, therefore, is not to create an environment that society dictates but to create a space in which transference can be openly sourced and resourced. In privileged space, there is transference and countertransference; and repression is not the order of the day. Both teachers and students are “allowed” to speak from a position of power and mutual responsibility. In a safe space, on the other hand, both teachers and students inevitably repress their fears and negate their privilege. Safe space has become synonymous with silence and seclusion, a space in which there is no confidentiality. Without confidentiality, can we really call a pedagogy ethical?

Pedagogy in a privileged space Like philosophers before him, Freud believed that the attainment of knowledge produced enlightenment. By applying collaborative techniques of knowledge production, education stretches beyond standardized learning outcomes toward enlightenment, something I would say has fallen in short supply. By using psychoanalytic techniques of inquiry, teachers might be able to teach more than what is required by measurable curricula, including creativity and innovation. This can happen when we see what the student brings to the classroom and what we can make of it with the intervention we can provide. Of equal importance is an awareness of the teacher and what she brings to the classroom. Unfortunately, when social difference subverts this pedagogical collaboration, enlightenment is at stake. According to Dawn Williams and Venus Evans-Winters, “The inability for students to separate the message and the messenger in the area of social justice teaching has interfered with the ability for students to become change agents.”37 As two black female teachers, Williams and Evans-Winters juxtapose themselves as other to their white female student teachers (a classification often considered privileged) through recollections of their subjective experiences of learning: “We were usually the smartest when white was not present, visible when testosterone was not present, and usually revered 35

Ibid. Ibid., 195. 37 Dawn Williams and Venus Evans-Winters, “The Burden of Teaching Teachers: Memoirs of Race Discourse in Teacher Education,” The Urban Review 37.3 (2005): 205. 36

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when class privilege was ignored.”38 They acknowledge that their “stories are filtered through lenses that are blurred, and at some moments arguably idiosyncratic, as a result of our age, location, upbringing, experience level, training, etc., but intersect at some point to hopefully contribute to a multivocular epistemology.”39 Williams and Evans-Winters, as they explore matters of race, racism, and [white] privilege in a teacher education program, illustrate the complexities of pedagogy where tensions and underlying beliefs cause resistance. When everyone within the classroom feels threatened or undermined, pedagogy is futile. Transference between teachers and their students or between one student and another is normal. However, when it is poorly managed, the teacher, as other to the students, might project a negative atmosphere, which then results in the need for and subsequent production of a safe space. Williams and Evans-Winters give an example: Once on the day of observance for Martin Luther King’s Birthday, I prompted students with the question, “Do you believe that we have achieved King’s dream?” A white female student responded, “No. I don’t think that it is fair that we have affirmative action for blacks. That is reverse discrimination.” Honestly, I do not believe that anyone in the class was prepared for that type of response, on such an honorable day. As a class, we ignored that comment, sometimes I think simply to save me embarrassment. Personally, I could not help but believe that that comment was directly targeted at me to see how I would respond, as a young African American female instructor and as the only black person in the class.40

It is up to the teacher to manage transference within the classroom. This cannot occur when she is working from a position that does not privilege the student. Teachers would benefit from understanding transference for what it is: a universal and spontaneous phenomenon of the human mind in relation to the other. Transference is a student’s way of relating to the teacher. It might present negatively or positively, but it always seeks a response. It is the unconscious stating its presence. Mismanaged transference curtails relationship and, more importantly, curtails pedagogy. As a component of privilege in psychoanalytic treatment, the psychoanalytic technique of not-knowing is valuable in managing transference. The method of not-knowing is applied as a position by the analyst in relation to an analysand who sees the analyst as the one-whoknows. This analytic relationship works through transference as the 38

Ibid., 203. Ibid., 204. 40 Williams and Evans-Winters, “The Burden of Teaching,” 214. 39

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analysand produces knowledge [signifiers] for the analyst: “The productivity of the transference relationship consists in the fact that the patient ascribes the analyst the position of the-one-who-knows, and that is why the patient produces signifiers, for this Other who-is-supposed-toknow.”41 Through this dynamic, both parties grow in knowledge as the analyst listens and the analysand speaks. The position of not-knowing should not be confused with what is commonly and unfortunately branded as “objectivity,” however. No analyst is ever objective—otherwise we would not talk of transference and countertransference. Instead, the analyst’s position of not-knowing privileges the analysand’s free association by listening and questioning, never instructing or correcting, as she helps the analysand “work through.” As experts in teacher training, Williams and Evans-Winters make connections among the practice of education, race, and racism. However, within a safe space classroom, they encounter resistance to their knowledge; Williams and Evans-Winters and their students encounter underlying tensions and beliefs that take center stage, resulting in oppressive teaching and learning: In this society it is still difficult to have a candid discussion on race and more specifically race relations in the U.S. This information tends to be even more threatening when coming from a female instructor of color. When the underlying message was usually one of white privilege, the students became resistant to receive the message. Their often silent participation in classroom discussions showed their level of discomfort and often times, non-belief.42

Robert Con Davis states that “important to pedagogy, is the sense in which the teacher does not convey information to students but only helps students situate themselves in a certain relation to knowledge.” 43 He further states the importance of pedagogy as scientific positioning, 44 arguing that it is important to understand a student’s relation to a dominant discourse, a discourse the student is constituted by as well as has an effect 41

Paul Verhaeghe, “Teaching and Psychoanalysis: A Necessary Impossibility,” Journal for Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society 2 (2001): 7. 42 Ibid., 209. 43 Robert Con-Davis, “Pedagogy, Lacan, and the Freudian Subject,” College English 49 (November 1987): 749. 44 Rom Harré and Luk Van Langenhove clarify the difference between taking a role and taking a position. In “Varieties of Positioning,” for example, they consider both ontological and epistemological positions and how these types of positions affect the pedagogical approach taken by the teacher.

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on. The discourse itself is unconscious, and when the student imagines the teacher as someone in possession and mastery of knowledge, there is “transference” in effect—that is, the student attributes to the teacher the power and prestige of the entire semiotic system. 45 As such, a teacher often holds the powerful position of “possessor of knowledge.” This knowledge, however, can be perceived as threatening. Knowledge is better exchanged in a privileged space where no imbalance of power is perceived. In the narratives of the two black teachers, the students resisted what was inducing anxiety. They felt defensive and thus responded with silence, and when they did feel able to communicate their feelings, they were scathing and retributive. Privilege was lacking in the relationship between the teachers and students. Privileged space comes about through the establishment of a relationship in which the teacher’s knowledge-aspower couples with the student’s empowered knowledge. In the pedagogical situation, class, race, and the social privileges that come with social status are replaced by a collaborative exploration of knowledge by both parties. What this means is that both parties enter into this situation with a confidence that what they say and do will be protected by the relationship they have fostered. In privileged space, there are essential elements that ensure the full and satisfactory maintenance of the relationship. One such element is the not-knowing position. Teachers can emulate the psychoanalytic position of not-knowing, which allows the analysand to speak from the unconscious through the practice of free association.46 In the psychoanalytic situation, the analysand speaks from epistemic privilege, and the analyst takes up this knowledge for analysis, neither discrediting it nor verifying it but simply privileging it. Traditionally, however, the teacher cannot enter the classroom notknowing. The teacher is expected to know and to act as authority over what is true or false, good or bad knowledge, all of which undermines the acquiring of knowledge for enlightenment. Williams and Evans-Winter bemoan the difficulties of their positions as teachers:

45

Rom Harré and Luk Van Langenhove, “Varieties of Positioning,” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 21.4 (1991): 752. 46 According to Laplanche and Pontalis, free association is a “[m]ethod according to which voice must be given to all thoughts without exception which enter the mind, whether such thoughts are based upon a specific element (word, numbers, dream-image or any kind of idea at all) or produced spontaneously.” J. Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis, The Language of Psycho-analysis, trans. Donald NicholsonSmith (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), 169.

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Unfortunately, my role as the instructor has become ever more complex in a society that is now teaching students to ignore color, and suggests that racism is a thing of the past. . . . Sadly, my students have come to view me as a vehicle of hostility that harbors notions of racism that no longer exist. Much of the illusion is the result of a socio-political climate that masks everyday realities of a racist culture, and over an academic culture that privileges white over black, men over women, rich over poor, and tenured over non-tenured.47

Within safe space, much is being lost to the zeitgeist of post-raciality. For these two teachers and countless others, knowing does not make them good at their jobs. In fact, because of what they know, much gets lost in their efforts to facilitate pedagogy in a safe space, which is incompatible with acquiring knowledge and even more so with acquiring enlightenment. As Paul Verhaeghe states, “The analytic cure is a search for lost knowledge, lost as a result of its becoming unconscious; the aim of the treatment is the re-inscription of this unconscious knowledge into consciousness. The implicit expectation is that the therapeutic effects will follow automatically.”48 The search for knowledge requires both the analyst and analysand to play active roles in knowledge production. Initially, states Verhaeghe, “[i]nstead of a correct knowledge, the child must content itself with the primary fantasies, combining true, false and lack of knowledge into imaginary constructions.”49 Similarly, the student brings to class fantasies that the teacher values in the cultivation of enlightenment. Williams and Evans-Winters write thus: In the beginning of the semester, students are asked to define education and explain what they believe is the purpose of education. As they begin to define their educational philosophy, they are introduced to theorists, such as John Dewey, Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, Lisa Delpit, and Sonia Nieto. They learn to become comfortable with words like cultural diversity, transformation, and social justice, and many times these terms even show up in their educational philosophy papers. Problems usually arise when I begin to challenge their assumptions about issues of race and class.50

Such problems arise due to premature intervention. Teachers encourage students to share their constructions of the world, and then they rip them 47

Williams and Evans-Winters, “The Burden of Teaching,” 215. Verhaeghe, “Teaching and Psychoanalysis,” 1. 49 Ibid., 2. 50 Ibid., 213. 48

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apart before the students can fully articulate their fantasies. The need on the teacher’s part to take action often results in the creation of a problematic space that requires safety. This is not to say that there should be a free-for-all discussion regardless of the consequences but rather that the teacher should not instruct, correct, or challenge at this stage. The teacher must not-know. And the best thing to do when one does not-know is to question. Over time the deprivation of privilege becomes the source of great frustration and eventual failure for many students. On the other hand, listening to the student helps build a relationship that can foster a positive learning environment as it gives the student the assurance that she/he can freely engage with productions of knowledge and that no question or answer is wrong, each one contributing to the attainment of enlightenment and truth as correct knowledge. There is, says Verhaghae, “an abundant associative production. A negative transference, on the other hand, results in silence and must be dispensed with as soon as possible.”51 Within a negative transference, Williams and Evans-Winters found their students’ silence to be a common response. The students were not collaborating in the production of knowledge, for they were “learning” about white privilege without being given the chance to work through their individual positions within the discourse. Such pedagogy presents as an accusation or condemnation rather than as a discourse to analyze. Part of this negative transference was owing to the teachers’ own countertransference as black females to white middle-class female students. The space created could not contain their feelings or those triggered in the students. Williams and Evans-Winters write, “In the midst of these academic conversations about race, teachers find themselves grappling with their own assumptions and lived experiences about the Other.”52 It took Freud some time to understand the importance of the imaginary constructions of his patients in achieving enlightenment. Freud’s initial folly, according to Verhaghae, was assuming the role of the one who knows and owns the knowledge: Freud assumes the role of the master, who knows in matters of desire and jouissance, and who, by way of treatment, teaches this knowledge to the patient; the patient must accept these insights; and so on. And again, the generalization of this conception can be found in his ideas on sexual enlightenment. In 1907 he writes enthusiastically on the subject: the adult may not withhold the necessary knowledge; on the contrary, he has to inform children correctly, in order that their incorrect, fantasmatic birth 51 52

Ibid., 3. Williams and Evans-Winters, “The Burden of Teaching,” 212.

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theories may become superfluous. For Freud, it is obvious that a general enlightenment will result in a drastic drop in the numbers of neurotic adults.53

Freud was a master at discerning the resistances and antagonisms of his patients, thereby pre-empting their learning and depriving them of enlightenment. Teachers careful to avoid making the same mistake see how drawing conclusions for students before they can reach the stage of self-awareness robs them of the opportunity to genuinely develop selfactualization. Verhaghae also points out that Freud could formulate a critique of his patients much better than they ever could have done themselves, each time taking the edge off the argument.54 “Such a strategy can only result in two possible reactions: either one is transformed from a patient into a pupil who says yes and absorbs everything, or one reacts as Dora did, by slamming the door and leaving.” 55 In doing what he did, Freud robbed his analysands of the opportunity to work through their psychic material. A similar practice in seasoned teachers can serve as a barrier to student learning, alienating teacher from student and student from pedagogy. Upon the discovery that “educating” his patients was yielding negative results, Freud came to the conclusion that it is the analysand who must produce the knowledge. The analyst must give up her/his position of master and allow the analysand to learn: Instead of teaching, the analyst has to be taught. Instead of the analyst’s signifiers, those of the patient fill the scene; the patient is the one who knows, only he doesn’t know himself that he knows. Knowledge coming from an external source is merely an inhibiting factor, a point clearly expressed in Freud’s technical advice from this period: ideally the patient should not read analytic works, the analyst should restrain from giving precocious information and interpretation, etc.56

Freud moved from an instructive and intrusive position of “explicative interventions” in Dora’s case to a position of not-knowing in the Rat Man’s case. Elucidating on Freud’s change in technique, Verhaeghae states the following:

53

Verhaeghe, “Teaching and Psychoanalysis,” 2. Ibid., 2. 55 Ibid., 2-3. 56 Ibid., 3. 54

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Chapter Six From a Lacanian point of view, this can be described as the operational character of the transference, i.e., the transference as driving force of the treatment. The analysand expects knowledge from the analyst; actually, at the beginning of the treatment, the analyst doesn’t know anything at all about this particular patient, but he can use his position in such a way that it makes the patient produce signifiers, i.e., knowledge, for the one-who-issupposed-to-know.57

In the same vein, teachers can take up the position of listener in order to extricate from students their brand and extent of knowledge, which is produced through experience, creativity, innovation, and sometimes, quite simply, through questions posed to the teacher who-is-supposed-to-know. These questions will guide a teacher, as they do an analyst, through the complex maze of the student’s educational needs. By being questioned, the students produce signifiers and expose their lack and therefore what they need. The teacher can use these questions as an indication of how much her students know and how much they are capable of learning. Without the analysand’s questions and without the student’s questions, neither the analyst nor the teacher can know where to begin or where not to. In The Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique, Bruce Fink states, “The psychoanalyst’s first task is to listen and to listen carefully.”58 Might we state that it is also the teacher’s first task? Additionally, Fink explains how psychoanalytic listening is different from “regular” listening. Our usual way of listening is centered to a great degree on ourselves, our own similar experiences, our own similar feelings, and/or our own similar perspectives. When we listen this way, we relate to the speaker, uttering phrases such as “I know what you mean!” We empathize, and we sympathize; we even feel pity, and we feel we understand. 59 But what happens when we cannot understand because we cannot empathize, sympathize, or even feel pity, because we do not have similar feelings, experiences, and/or desires? We become judgmental. We consider the speaker to be silly, obtuse, and irrational. Thus, we become baffled, incredulous, and, finally, defensive. We decide that this person needs to be taught, needs correction or direction. Fink maintains that “our usual way of listening overlooks or rejects the otherness of the other.”60 We begin to look for ourselves in the speaker by forcing a bit of our knowledge into 57

Ibid., 3. Bruce Fink, Fundamentals of Psychoanalytical Technique: A Lacanian Approach for Practitioners (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), 1. 59 Ibid., 2. 60 Ibid., 2. 58

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her/him. We strive to educate.61 What falls outside of our expectations is neither seen nor heard, and the most well-intentioned analyst almost always automatically hears what, to her mind, it would make sense for the analysand to be saying in a particular context, as opposed to hearing what the analysand is actually saying, which may be quite out of the ordinary or even nonsensical. Even the most attentive analyst often hears only what the analysand likely meant to say, filtering out the analysand’s slight slip of the tongue or slurred word.62 As Fink notes, “We are used to almost automatically cutting the ribbon up into discrete units on the basis of the language as we think we know it, as well as on the basis of what we are expecting to hear in general and what we have come to expect from a particular interlocutor.”63 Black faculty like Williams and Evans-Winters are assumed to be in possession of power by virtue of their expertise as professors, and yet they often find themselves defending their pedagogy not only to their resistant students but also to colleagues and administrators.64 They testify to the difficulties they encounter at all levels, saying, “Unfortunately, most of us know how it feels to sit in a college classroom full of our White peers and have to defend our competence and right to be there while defending our brothers and sisters who could not be there sitting beside us.”65 Where subjective knowledge takes on the guise of power and tilts the scales favorably for whoever can assume that position of knowing, defense against resistance becomes necessary to safeguard that advantage. On one side of the scales are those who see the appropriation of privilege as an act of disempowerment, especially when they are expected to “check their privilege.” On the other side are those seeking to exercise their epistemic privilege but cannot do so because it is deemed objectionable. Within a privileged space, these opposing affects are not silenced but drawn into the open so that students can learn by working through their insecurities, uncertainties, and radical self-criticisms. To be clear, the privileged relationship is not one of intersubjectivity. Fink explains thus:

61

Ibid., 2. Ibid., 20. 63 Ibid., 21. 64 William Smith, “Black Faculty Coping with Racial Battle Fatigue: The Campus Racial Climate in a Post Civil Rights Era,” A Long Way to Go: Conversations about Race by African American Faculty and Graduate Students 14 (2004): 171190. 65 Williams and Evans-Winters, “The Burden of Teaching,” 215. 62

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Chapter Six As Lacan reminded us, the very existence of transference “constitutes an objection to intersubjectivity.” The analytic situation is not a forum in which two different individuals encounter each other as subjects, because the party of the first part (so to speak) lends herself to any and every projection drummed up by the party of the second part. This means that something essential about her own subjectivity fades in the encounter, stays on the sidelines.66

Dismissing notions of intersubjectivity does not mean that the analyst or the teacher is left bereft, at the mercy of those she seeks to help. It means instead that she recognizes the power dynamics within the relationship and that she seeks to counteract any violence that would eviscerate her charges. Inasmuch as the teacher is a subject who also can produce signifiers, it is important for the teacher to understand that by professional standards the privileged subjectivity should be that of the student. Both teachers and analysts are governed by ethics of care that require them to act in the best interests of the analysand/student. Otherwise, epistemological violence is likely to occur.67 Stephen Frosh proposes that we view psychoanalytic praxis as involving “a kind of tolerance of the other that recognises it as not fully knowable, and hence resists the temptation to appropriate the other through an act of colonisation.” 68 Colonization in this context refers to the forcing of one’s knowledge on to the other; and, as a demand for knowledge, it can be detrimental to both teacher and student. At some point, within a privileged frame, the teacher does more than impart knowledge; she also intervenes at a level of intimacy we often do not encounter in classrooms. Within the psychoanalytic frame, we understand, as Verhaeghe explains, that at some point the analysand cannot stand to produce signifiers as these signifiers have exposed what is lacking in her/him. 69 Similarly, within the classroom, the intensity of trying to create knowledge can become too much for the student. The more the analysand knows, the more she/he hesitates because what is required at this junction is truth. And it is at this junction that intervention on the part of the analyst is necessary in order to prevent the analysand from regressing. Levin gives an apt example: 66

Ibid., 149. Santiago Castro-Gómez and Desiree A. Martin, “The Social Sciences, Epistemic Violence, and the Problem of the ‘Invention of the Other,”” Nepantla: Views from South 3.2 (2002): 269-285. 68 Stephen Frosh, Psychoanalysis Outside the Clinic: Intervention in Psychosocial Studies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 146. 69 Verhaeghe, “Teaching and Psychoanalysis,” 8. 67

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For example, the analysand may desperately long for the analyst’s maternal caress. That this longing can be experienced and communicated with a violent insistence is a function of the holding environment. That it can be thought through to the point where the analysand discovers his own capacity to caress himself with maternal care is the function of the frame. Thus, if the holding environment is an invitation to the analysand to regress, then the frame is an invitation to the analysand to assume responsibility for himself in precisely that area where he believes himself unable to do so.70

The analyst does not chastise or correct the analysand’s infantile needs; instead, through intervention she helps the analysand develop the capacity to cradle herself/himself. This is empowerment! Thus, progression requires a well-formulated response by the analyst within a privileged space. Likewise, a teacher can be seen as intervening in response to a student’s lack once the frame has revealed what and where the lack exists. Lacan defines lack as desire; therefore, lack becomes the desire to learn.71 Without this desire to learn, the teacher is confronted with resistance. Pedagogy should reveal lack in order to generate desire. The teacher now intervenes through teaching, not as a source of knowledge but as a speaker of truth. In other words, her position shifts from not-knowing to one-whoknows-what-is-missing. The teacher has listened carefully in order to reveal the student’s lack. Thus, she can begin to fill in these gaps. If the teacher speaks as the incarnation of knowledge, a regression may follow. If, however, she speaks as one who understands the student’s desire and sees where the student lacks, there may be progress. Learning continues and both teacher and student maintain privilege in the pedagogical situation.

Bibliography Barnett, David. Privileged Thinking in Today’s Schools: The Implications for Social Justice. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2010. Britzman, Deborah P. After-education: Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, and Psychoanalytic Histories of Learning. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2003.

70

Levin, “The Siege of Psychotherapeutic Space,” 196. Jacques Lacan and Jacques-Alain Miller, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991).

71

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—. Novel Education: Psychoanalytic Studies of Learning and Not Learning. New York: Peter Lang, 2006. —. Freud and Education. New York: Routledge, 2011. Castro-Gómez, Santiago, and Desiree A. Martin. “The Social Sciences, Epistemic Violence, and the Problem of the ‘Invention of the Other.’” Nepantla: Views from South 3.2 (2002): 269-285. Chimbganda, Tapo. “Traumatic Pedagogy: When Epistemic Privilege and White Privilege Collide.” In Racial Battle Fatigue in Higher Education: Exposing the Myth of Post-Racial America, edited by Kenny Fasching-Varner, Katrice Albert, Roland Mitchell, and Chaunda Allen. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2015. Davis, Robert Con. “Pedagogy, Lacan, and the Freudian Subject.” College English 49 (November 1987): 749-55. Fink, Bruce. Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique: A Lacanian Approach for Practitioners. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007. Freud, Sigmund, James Strachey, and Angela Richards. On Sexuality: Three Essays On the Theory of Sexuality and Other Works. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1977. Frosh, Stephen. Psychoanalysis Outside the Clinic: Interventions in Psychosocial Studies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Harding, Sandra. “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What is Strong Objectivity?” In Feminist Epistemologies, edited by L. Alcoff and E. Potter, 49-82. London: Routledge, 1993. Harré, Rom, and Luk Van Langenhove. “Varieties of Positioning.” Journal For the Theory of Social Behaviour 21.4 (1991): 393-407. Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 2009. Holley, Lynn C., and Sue Steiner. “Safe Space: Student Perspectives on Classroom Environment.” Journal of Social Work Education 41.1 (2005): 49-64. Janack, Marianne. “Dilemmas of Objectivity.” Social Epistemology 16.3 (2002): 267-281. Lacan, Jacques, and Jacques-Alain Miller. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991. Laplanche, J., and J.-B. Pontalis. The Language of Psycho-analysis, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1973. Levin, Charles. “The Siege of Psychotherapeutic Space: Psychoanalysis in the Age of Transparency.” Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis 9.2 (2001): 187-215.

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Powell, Linda C., and Margaret E. Barber. “Savage Inequalities Indeed: Irrationality and Urban School Reform.” In Love’s Return: Psychoanalytic Essays on Childhood, Teaching, and Learning, edited by Gail Boldt and Paula Salvio, 33-60. New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2006. Smith, William A. “Black Faculty Coping with Racial Battle Fatigue: The Campus Racial Climate in a Post-Civil Rights Era.” A Long Way to Go: Conversations about Race by African American Faculty and Graduate Students 14 (2004): 171-190. Stengel, Barbara S. “The Complex Case of Fear and Safe Space.” Studies in Philosophy and Education 29.6 (2010): 523-540. Szecsödy, Imre. “Framing the Psychoanalytic Frame.” The Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review 20.2 (1997): 238-243. Verhaeghe, Paul. “Teaching and Psychoanalysis: A Necessary Impossibility.” Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society 2 (2001): 271278. Wiener, Jan. “Confidentiality and Paradox: The Location of Ethical Space.” Journal of Analytical Psychology 46.3 (2001): 431-442. Williams, Dawn G., and Venus Evans-Winters. “The Burden of Teaching Teachers: Memoirs of Race Discourse in Teacher Education.” The Urban Review 37.3 (2005): 201-219.

CHAPTER SEVEN EPISTEMOLOGICAL TRAUMA AND THE PRIMAL PEDAGOGICAL SCENE: HENRY JAMES AND THE ACT OF (RE)READING BECKY MCLAUGHLIN AND PATRICK CESARINI DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH ALABAMA, MOBILE, AL 36608

I. In S/Z, Roland Barthes privileges the practice of “writerly” over “readerly” reading, arguing that “the goal of literary work (of literature as work) is to make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text.”1 His argument in favor of writerly reading is meant as a corrective to what he saw in 1970 as “the pitiless divorce which the literary institution maintains between the producer of the text and its user, between its owner and its customer, between its author and its reader.”2 According to Barthes, this “pitiless divorce” has plunged the reader into “a kind of idleness—he is intransitive . . . instead of functioning himself, instead of gaining access to the magic of the signifier, to the pleasure of writing, he is left with no more than the poor freedom either to accept or reject the text: reading is nothing more than a referendum.”3 Although Barthes does not say precisely when this divorce took place, we can argue that it occurred long before the publication of S/Z, for we see a perfect example of idle or intransitive readers in Henry James’s short story “The Death of the Lion,” published in 1894. The story is told in ten chapters by an unnamed first-person narrator who, in the story’s opening

1

Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), 4. Ibid. 3 Ibid. Emphasis added. 2

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pages, reveals that he has just had an article on author Neil Paraday rejected by his editor, Mr. Pinhorn. As the narrator explains, I had been sent down there [i.e., to Paraday’s home] to be personal, and in point of fact I hadn’t been personal at all; what I had sent up to London was just a little finicking, feverish study of my author’s talent. Anything less relevant to Mr. Pinhorn’s purpose couldn’t well be imagined, and he was visibly angry at my having (at his expense, with a second-class ticket) approached the object of our arrangement only to be so deucedly distant.4

According to the narrator, Mr. Pinhorn treats his journal’s celebrity subjects as “prey” or “victims,” and thus the kind of personal journalism he encourages is figured as a kind of hunting and/or killing of the person written about. Obviously, Mr. Pinhorn and the narrator understand the “object of [their] arrangement” as two completely different things, Mr. Pinhorn seeing the object as Neil Paraday himself and the narrator seeing it as Paraday’s book. Although the narrator appears to both read and appreciate books, the divorce of which Barthes speaks has been so pitiless that Mr. Pinhorn has lost sight of the book itself, wanting only to use the producer of the book to satisfy his customers’ appetite for gossip and the “inside story.” During the narrator’s stay with Paraday, the author’s new novel comes out, and upon reading it, the narrator undergoes a change of heart—i.e., a rereading—that he describes as if it were a religious conversion. In the opening pages of the story, the narrator refers to himself as unregenerate, unconcerned with straightening out “the journalistic morals of [his] chief.”5 But after having met Paraday and read his latest novel, he speaks of Mr. Pinhorn’s rejection of his article as a “miracle . . . wrought on the spot to save me.”6 “There had been,” says the narrator, “a great cool stir of the air, the sense of an angel’s having swooped down and caught me to his bosom.” 7 Dropping the language of analogy, he says quite explicitly in Chapter Six that he had “gone down into the country for a profane purpose and been converted on the spot to holiness.”8 A week or two later, as the narrator reports, he had “recast [his] peccant paper” and given “it a particular application to Mr. Paraday’s new book.”9 Because of the narrator’s rereading, he sees his original manuscript 4

Henry James, The Novels and Tales of Henry James, New York Edition, Vol. XV (New York: Augustus M. Kelley Publishers, 1970), 105. 5 Ibid., 101. 6 Ibid., 105. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., 132. 9 Ibid., 105.

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as “peccant,” i.e., sinning or guilty of moral offense, and so he revises it in keeping with what can only be called his newfound “faith” and moral sensibility. As the narrator becomes a more appreciative (re)reader of Paraday, the author offers to share with him a draft of another novel— “something put aside long ago, . . . but that he had lately taken out again to reconsider.”10 Given the narrator’s new appreciation for Paraday’s work, he worries that Paraday, who is old and rather infirm, will not be able to find time or strength to write the final draft. And so the narrator sees himself as a kind of redeemed Judas figure, sent to betray Paraday to the Pinhorns of the world but now desiring to save him from them. Chapter Three ends with the arrival of a copy of The Empire, in which appears a puff piece declaring Paraday’s pre-eminence as a novelist: “The big blundering newspaper had discovered him, and now he was proclaimed and anointed and crowned.”11 As Paraday and the narrator both know, now that Paraday is alive to the public, he is at risk of artistic death. And, in fact, Paraday’s slow physical decline begins with the appearance of Mr. Morrow from The Tatler, who has seen the piece on Paraday in The Empire and has come out to get the “scoop” on Paraday for his “Smatter and Chatter” column. Described by the narrator as “some monstrous modern ship” under whose bows he and Paraday were “tossing terrified,” Mr. Morrow brings about a return of Paraday’s recent illness, and the beleaguered author retreats to his study to lie down. Barely registering the departure of Paraday, Mr. Morrow opens his notebook and says to the narrator, “Now what have you got for me?”12 Clearly, Mr. Morrow wishes to invade Paraday’s privacy, for he says, “I was shown into the drawingroom, but there must be more to see—his study, his literary sanctum, the little things he has about, or other domestic objects and features.” 13 Producing Paraday’s new book, the narrator replies, “The artist’s life’s his work, and this is the place to observe him. What he has to tell us he tells us with this perfection. My dear sir, the best interviewer is the best reader.”14 “Do you mean to say that no other source of information should be open to us?” Mr. Morrow protests, to which the narrator replies, “None other till this particular one . . . has been quite exhausted. Have you exhausted it, my dear sir? Had you exhausted it when you came down here? It seems to me in our time almost wholly neglected, and something 10

Ibid., 106. Ibid., 110. 12 Ibid., 118. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 119. Emphasis added. 11

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should surely be done to restore its ruined credit. It’s the course to which the artist himself at every step, and with such pathetic confidence, refers us. This last book of Mr. Paraday’s is full of revelations.”15

Panting with excitement, Mr. Morrow asks, “Revelations?” “The only kind that count,” replies the narrator. “It tells you with a perfection that seems to me quite final all the author thinks, for instance, about the advent of the ‘larger latitude.’”16 Mr. Morrow, “who had picked up the second volume and was insincerely thumbing it[,]” asks, “Where does it do that?”17 On every page, replies the narrator, suggesting that he and Mr. Morrow begin reading the book together immediately. Upon this suggestion, Mr. Morrow gives the narrator a look “which was as hard as a blow between the eyes; he had turned rather red, and a question had formed itself in his mind which reached my sense as distinctly as if he had uttered it: ‘What sort of a damned fool are you?’”18 Realizing that he is not likely to get the “goods” he is after from the narrator, Mr. Morrow abruptly departs, later publishing in The Tatler “a charming chatty familiar account of Mr. Paraday’s ‘Home-life.’”19 Although Paraday’s book sells only moderately well, the pieces published in The Empire and The Tatler have given him celebrity status, and thus he is taken up by Mrs. Weeks Wimbush, another seeker of quarry, who views Paraday as a figure to add to her menagerie of celebrities-on-display. Because of his generosity and good will, Paraday allows himself to be “caught and saddled” by Mrs. Wimbush even though he knows that no one in her circle has read three pages that he has written. In a letter to a friend, the narrator reports the doings at Mrs. Wimbush’s country home, Prestidge, where Paraday’s latest book appears to circulate among the gathered throng but never gets read past page twenty. As the narrator writes, “Every one’s asking every one about it all day, and every one’s telling every one where they put it last. I’m sure it’s rather smudgy about the twentieth page.” 20 Bemoaning the treatment of the book, the narrator compares the conscience of those gathered at Prestidge to “a summer sea”: “They haven’t time to look over a priceless composition; they’ve only time to kick it about the house.”21 Although Paraday becomes 15

Ibid. Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 120. Emphasis added. 19 Ibid., 121. 20 Ibid., 122. 21 Ibid., 145. 16

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more and more ill the longer he stays at Prestidge, Mrs. Wimbush insists that he give a reading from his current manuscript, but before the reading can take place, the manuscript is lost. In a chain of unfortunate events, Mrs. Wimbush has loaned it to Lady Augusta Minch, who has given it to Lord Dorimont’s maid, who has handed it off to Lord Dorimont, who has left it on the train. The story ends with Paraday’s death at Prestidge and the narrator’s continuing search for the lost manuscript. Given the story’s ending, James might quite justly have titled it “The Death of the Text.” We have indulged in this rather lengthy summary of James’s story because it so beautifully (if also frightfully) exemplifies the plight (and peril) of the text in the contemporary classroom. Like Mr. Pinhorn, our students are frequently more interested in the salacious details of an author’s life than in her/his work. Reading about James’s “obscure wound,” for example, easily generates more discussion than reading The Portrait of a Lady. As teachers, we often find ourselves in the position of the narrator with a roomful of Mr. Morrows. If we were to suggest reading the text together, as the narrator suggests to Mr. Morrow, we might have to ask ourselves, “What sort of a damned fool are you?” since more and more students are failing to bring their texts to class. The classroom seems to have become a version of Prestidge, in which the text is seldom read past page twenty (if that far) and gets kicked about until it completely disappears, having been left on a train or a plane, in a car or at a bar, in a box or with a fox.22 Clearly, this is a rather bleak portrait of the contemporary classroom, but we have found in the recent call for a return to close reading—for what has been referred to as “the return of the text”23—a possible starting point for engaging in an analysis of the symptomatics of the classroom with respect to the text. If the return of the text can be equated with the return of the repressed, we asked ourselves, what is traumatic about the text, i.e., what has caused the need for its repression? Perhaps each of us undergoes, at one point or another, a shift from a pleasurable relation to the text to an unpleasurable one; but, we wondered, is there a “primal pedagogical scene” that has remained unrevised for many of our students, one that continues to haunt them as a narcissistic wound, one that manifests itself 22 Although we have placed ourselves in the position of the narrator, we are not arguing that no student ever assumes his position. On the contrary, we have occasionally seen such “conversion experiences” in the classroom, but they seem to be the exception rather than the rule. 23 We take this phrase, “the return of the text,” from a recent conference we attended, “The Return of the Text: A Conference on the Cultural Value of Close Reading,” (Le Moyne College, September 26-28, 2013).

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in the symptom of weak reading practices? According to New Lacanian Bruce Fink, Freud’s theory of a “primal scene” refers to “a scene that plays a fundamental role in the constitution of the analysand’s sexuality and life in general. The way one reacted to the scene (real or imagined) as a child colors the whole of one’s existence, determining one’s relations to one’s parents and lovers, one’s sexual preferences, and one’s capacity for sexual satisfaction.”24 If we replace the word “sexual” with a form of the words “epistemological” and “pedagogical,” we get the following statement: our theory of a primal pedagogical scene refers to a classroom scene that plays a fundamental role in the constitution of the student’s episteme and life in general. The way one reacted to the scene (real or imagined) as a child colors the whole of one’s existence, determining one’s relations to one’s parents and teachers, one’s pedagogical preferences, and one’s capacity for epistemological satisfaction. In An Experiment in Criticism, C. S. Lewis lends support for the idea of a primal pedagogical scene when he argues that as soon as children learn to read for themselves, the unliterary and the literary are already divided into two groups: “There are those who read only when there is nothing better to do, gobble up each story to ‘find out what happened’, and seldom go back to it; others who reread and are profoundly moved.”25 While it may be the case that each of our students has reacted in her/his particular way to a particular primal pedagogical scene, we have found it fruitful to try to (re)construct a more general primal pedagogical scene to account for the unpleasure we see our students exhibiting vis-à-vis their texts in the classes we teach. Why the failure to buy their texts in a timely manner? Why the failure, day after day, to bring their texts to class? Why the haste to return their texts to the bookstore at the end of the semester? Why the new trend to merely rent texts rather than to own them? Why the resistance to the kind of alert reading that Harold Bloom refers to as an agon, struggle, or fight? For Bloom, meaning is taken only by combat, which “consists in a reading encounter, and in an interpretive moment within that encounter. . . . There is relaxed reading and alert reading, and the latter . . . is always an agon.”26 Ultimately, we have concluded that what is repressed is not the text itself but a particular relation to the text. As psychoanalysis teaches us, the 24

Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 57. 25 C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 13. 26 Harold Bloom et al., Deconstruction and Criticism (New York: The Seabury Press, 1979), 5. Emphasis added.

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child’s repressed Oedipal desire for the Mother is revealed in its disgust at her caresses, i.e., the repressed desire returns in disguised form. It is not the Mother herself who is repressed but a desiring relation to her. Might a parallel be drawn between a repressed desire for the Mother and a repressed desire for the text? Perhaps so, we surmised, for our guess is that most of us recall with pleasure being read to by our parents and having them read certain books to us over and over again. The pleasure of repetition (a form of originary or primitive rereading) was keen before we became readers in our own right. But what caused the shift from pleasure to unpleasure or disgust? Was it a moment of unwitting betrayal on the part of our parents? A moment in which it became apparent that our desire no longer coincided with that of our parents, i.e., that our parents had grown weary of covering the same ground, rereading a book we loved? Perhaps two things happen to create unpleasure. First, we are forced to begin learning to read to ourselves, a form of “weaning” and/or separation that creates a rupture in the reading relation we have previously enjoyed as nonreaders and that leads to a reading practice which generally occurs in isolation. One might recall, here, the anxiety Richard Rodriguez felt as he was learning to read, which he so poignantly describes in “The Achievement of Desire”: “Reading was, at best, only a chore. I needed to look up whole paragraphs of words in a dictionary. Lines of type were dizzying, the eye having to move slowly across the page, then down, and across. . . . The sentences of the first books I read were coolly impersonal. Toned hard. What most bothered me, however, was the isolation reading required.”27 And, second, we are confronted with texts that defy immediate understanding and thus call upon us to read, and of necessity reread, in the more rigorous sense of the word suggested by nineteenth-century German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher: “The more lax practice of the art of understanding . . . proceeds on the assumption that understanding arises naturally. . . . The more rigorous practice proceeds on the assumption that misunderstanding arises naturally, and that understanding must be intended and sought at each point.”28 What the child refuses to understand is that one outgrows the texts of one’s childhood—not that they cease to have value but that as one’s intellectual capacity develops, so too does one’s ability to grapple with more complex texts. As if speaking to this very child, G. B. Shaw says, “You have learnt something. That always 27

Richard Rodriguez, “The Achievement of Desire,” in Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers, 9th ed., eds. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011), 524. 28 David E. Linge, introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, by Hans-Georg Gadamer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), xiii.

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feels at first as if you had lost something.”29 This feeling of loss, then, is something the child wishes to avoid—hence the refusal to let go of the narcissistic wound, which manifests itself in the refusal to read texts other than those offered up by a novelist such as Mrs. Stormer, who appears in James’s short story “Greville Fane.” According to the narrator, Mrs. Stormer “made no pretense of producing works of art, but had comfortable tea-drinking hours in which she freely confessed herself a common pastrycook, dealing in such tarts and puddings as would bring customers to the shop. She put in plenty of sugar and of cochineal, or whatever it is that gives these [novels] a rich and attractive colour.”30 (It is not without interest to note, here, that the word “cochineal” refers to a sessile parasite used primarily as food coloring and for cosmetics, and, further, that when used as an adjective, “sessile” means to be fixed in one place; immobile.) As we continued to think about the cultural value of close reading, we saw emerge two paradigmatic reading practices, each of which suggests two kinds of disgust that, in turn, reveal two types of repression: one, under the influence of reception theory in particular and of the American cult of self-esteem more generally, readers promote their own reading of the text over the text’s reading of itself—or, rather, of authorial intention. This “self-ish” reading reflects a “disgust” at the idea that the author (or the teacher or critic who speaks for the author) matters more than the reader, and it reveals a repression of the reader’s former dependence on the teacher or critic (or any stronger reader) for her/his understanding of the text. And, two, under the influence of various historicist/political theories, critics promote the primacy or agency of context (history, reality, life itself) over the primacy or agency of the author, of the text, of art—all of which become distortions, mystifications, “ideologizations” of the real. This symptomatic reading reflects a “disgust” at the idea that the author matters more than the critic and reveals a repression of the critic’s (once the unprofessional reader’s) former admiration of, devotion to, or love for the artist and for art. Seeing the emergence of these two reading practices underscored our intuition that it is not the text per se that has been repressed but certain relations to the text and to the text’s others such as the author, the critic, and other readers. And so our focus must be on—our return must be to—these relations. One of the theorists we have found most useful in articulating a reading practice that would reinstate these lost social relations is Barthes. In fact, his ideas and Barbara Johnson’s lucid and generous gloss of them 29

G. B. Shaw, Major Barbara (London: Constable, 1964), 316. Henry James, The Novels and Tales of Henry James, New York Edition, Vol. XVI (New York: Augustus M. Kelley Publishers, 1970), 116.

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have been central to our understanding of what might constitute an ethical reading practice. In S/Z, Barthes argues the following: Rereading, an operation contrary to the commercial and ideological habits of our society, which would have us ‘throw away’ the story once it has been consumed (‘devoured’), so that we can then move on to another story, buy another book, which is tolerated only in certain marginal categories of readers (children, old people, and professors), rereading is here suggested at the outset, for it alone saves the text from repetition (those who fail to reread are obliged to read the same story everywhere).31

In “The Critical Difference: BartheS/BalZac,” Johnson implies that Barthes’s take on rereading is useful for fighting narcissism and its hostility toward alterity. As Johnson explains, for Barthes, “difference” means difference within a single book, not difference between two or more books. And thus one could say, as Johnson does, that reading a text only once is a narcissistic experience because “what we can see in the text the first time is already in us, not in it.”32 When we read a book only once, it becomes a mere echo or reflection of ourselves. Wolfgang Iser lends support to Johnson’s inference when he argues that “it is only by leaving behind the familiar world of his own experience that the reader can truly participate in the adventure the literary text offers him”:33 The efficacy of a literary text is brought about by the apparent evocation and subsequent negation of the familiar. What at first seemed to be an affirmation of our assumptions leads to our own rejection of them, thus tending to prepare us for a re-orientation. And it is only when we have outstripped our preconceptions and left the shelter of the familiar that we are in a position to gather new experiences.34

While it may sound rather hyperbolic to say that a failure to reread leads to death, it is precisely our narcissism, our failure to reread, that kills many a relationship. Take, for example, the case of John Marcher in James’s short story “The Beast in the Jungle.” The beast that springs out at him and quite literally lays him low at the end of the story is the recognition of his own 31

Barthes, S/Z, 15-16. Barbara Johnson, The Critical Difference: Essays in the Contemporary Rhetoric of Reading (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 3. 33 Wolfgang Iser, “The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach,” in The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, 3rd ed., ed. David H. Richter (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007), 1006. 34 Ibid., 1011-1012. 32

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narcissism. What he reads on “the open page of his story”35—a rereading that comes too late—is that the “escape would have been to love [May Bartram]; then, then he would have lived. She had lived—who could say now with what passion?—since she had loved him for himself; whereas he had never thought of her (ah, how it hugely glared at him!) but in the chill of his egotism and the light of her use.”36 There is, then, a (bad) sociality of reading, an interpretive community, that makes us swallow texts and people like puddings, as James might say, or throw them away once their story has been “devoured,” and this narrows our scope, intelligence, and palate, making us unfit for anything but tarts and puddings made of sugar and cochineal. As teachers, we should expose this as a sociality of reading, and in the act of doing so we can invite and initiate students into a better sociality of reading, one in which the teacher/critic—along with earlier readers/critics and also along with authors—form a counter-community of taste, i.e., of analysis, understanding, appreciation, and devotion. Good teaching would make these invisible communities and values visible, would return to students not only the text but also the social struggle (and their possible place in it) whereby texts live and die, whereby art forms themselves live and die, whereby the varieties of human experience found through such art forms thrive or decay. For us, James seems enormously helpful in enabling such a refocusing or return because he offers in his own career (especially in the form of rereading suggested by his writing of the Prefaces to the New York Edition) an exemplary historical instance of the difficult importance of these relations for actual readers and authors; and because in an exemplary story about rereading such as “The Figure in the Carpet,” he offers a kind of theory of these relations. In fact, we would like to suggest James himself as a model reader, for as he wrote in a letter to his young friend H. G. Wells, he wanted to read Utopia “with luxurious freedom of mind, rapt surrender of attention, adequate honours, for it of every sort. So, not bolting it like the morning paper and sundry, many, other vulgarly importunate things” but “[surrendering himself] to it absolutely.”37 Texts —the kinds of texts that James considers artful—are difficult, challenging, experimental. These works need advocates, and, according to James, this advocacy is the function of the critic, who directs the reader’s attention to 35

Henry James, Henry James: Complete Stories, 1898-1910 (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1996), 539. 36 Ibid., 540. Emphasis added. 37 Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Vol. II, ed. Percy Lubbock (18431916; Project Gutenberg, 2011), etext 38035, accessed May 29, 2014, http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38035.

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such texts and into them. With the critic’s help, the reader begins to see what’s there, begins to understand and appreciate it, all of which requires a labor-intensive kind of reading. For James, critics do not merely teach us what to read but, by their example, how to read.

II. Early in “The Figure in the Carpet,” Henry James offers two scenes of rereading, both reported by the story’s unnamed narrator, a literary critic who has been invited—or challenged—to discover “the general intention” that lies within the writings of novelist Hugh Vereker. The narrator has recently published a review of Vereker’s latest novel, and, at a weekend party hosted by their mutual friend, Lady Jane, the narrator meets Vereker himself, who tells him that neither he nor any other critic has yet discerned, or described, the novelist’s “secret,” at once his “little trick” and his very “organ of life.” Determined to be the first to find and describe it, the narrator returns to town, where, he says: “I feverishly collected them all [Vereker’s books]; I picked out each in its order and held it up to the light. This gave me a maddening month, in the course of which several things took place. One of these, the last, I may as well immediately mention, was that I . . . renounced my ridiculous attempt. I could really make nothing of the business; it proved a dead loss.”38 George Corvick, the narrator’s friend and a fellow critic, is an even greater admirer of Vereker. When the narrator tells Corvick about Vereker’s undiscovered secret, and his own abandonment of the search for it, Corvick takes up the challenge. Moreover, Corvick shares the information with Gwendolyn Erme, another admirer of Vereker and a novelist herself, and the two of them—as the narrator pictures them—pursue the quest he has given up: “They did as I had done, only more deliberately and sociably—they went over their author from the beginning. There was no hurry, Corvick said— the future was before them and the fascination could only grow; they would take him page by page, as they would take one of the classics, inhale him in slow draughts and let him sink deep in.”39 Teachers of literature can be forgiven for anticipating the results—the causes and effects—of Corvick’s and Gwendolyn’s rereading. Although the practical differences between the ways they and the narrator actually read are not depicted (nor is the least sample of Vereker’s writing 38

Henry James, Henry James: Complete Stories, 1892-1898 (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1996), 583. 39 Ibid., 587.

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provided), the story has already by this early point provided enough evidence of the narrator’s and the couple’s respective actions, motivations, and (as it were) characters to convince us that the narrator should have failed and that the couple (or, at least, Corvick) should succeed. Having spent only a day or two writing the review of Vereker’s latest, the narrator expects us to be impressed that he then spends a month re-examining the novelist’s work, but that time sounds laughably short when we learn a bit later that Vereker’s works comprise some twenty volumes.40 By contrast, despite some “bad hours” re-reading Vereker—when the “new lights” he thinks he sees are “blown out by the wind of the turned page”41—Corvick devotes a year and a half of his life, learning every one of Vereker’s pages “by heart,”42 before he at last discovers Vereker’s secret, the titular figure in the carpet. In his Preface to the volume of tales in which “The Figure in the Carpet” was reprinted, James states that one of the purposes behind the story was “to reinstate analytic appreciation” of fiction among critics and, by extension, among “the public.” 43 But if some pre-requisites for that practice were time, patience, and rereading—even a full or partial learning of the text by heart—the story suggests, and we want to argue, that there are requirements even prior to these. At the same time, however clearly stated in the Preface is James’s hope to redirect critical attention, “The Figure in Carpet” is consummately a work of fiction; as a fiction about the writers, critics, and other readers of fiction, the scholarship on “The Figure in the Carpet” has understandably struggled to maintain a dual focus on the story as story and on the story as containing, illustrating, or dramatizing a theory of literary criticism, and our reading will not depart from that struggle. Indeed, the fact that “The Figure in the Carpet” seems so fundamentally ambiguous either as story or as theory necessitates (to use a Jamesian word) a fairly tormented (if, we hope, not a tortuous) practice of reading, which we would enact as well as describe. The difficulty is signaled by the two prominent phrases cited above, by the questions of emphasis they implicitly put before us. If one calls for “analytic appreciation,” we might assume the emphasis is equally on both terms, insofar as each is required by an ideal criticism. Analysis without appreciation—understanding without evaluation—would seem to leave questions of aesthetic significance unbroached. But appreciation without 40

Ibid., 582. Ibid., 588. 42 Ibid., 592. 43 Henry James, Henry James: Literary Criticism, Vol. II (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984), 1235. 41

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analysis—evaluation without understanding—would render appreciation empty. The phrase “the figure in the carpet” presents a similar question, though on a different axis. Emphasizing “figure,” the phrase says there is a figure in the carpet, or at least it enjoins us to look for the one in the other. But the phrase also suggests, with an emphasis on “carpet,” that the figure is not independent of its ground, and the phrase warns us not to forget that the figure is in the carpet, that it is of it, and could not exist without it. If there is a theoretical undecideability of emphasis in these two terminological pairs, it seems clear that James, in his Preface and in the story, meant that criticism in his time and place too often overemphasized appreciation at the expense of analysis, evaluation at the expense of understanding; criticism needed to be more analytic and less impressionistic. Explaining the situation of both the readers of and the readers in the story, James says that the eyes of criticism (if not of all critics) are open only, “in the presence of the work of art, to a view of scarce of half the intentions embodied, and moreover but to the scantest measure of these.”44 Readers so “numbed,” James says, “stand off from such finely-attested matters, on the artist’s part, as a spirit and a form, a bias and a logic, of his own.”45 James’s finest testament to such matters— to his own spirit, form, bias, and logic—was offered years earlier, in “The Art of Fiction,” where he famously sketched out a simultaneously artistic and critical principle of organicism. Confronting the commonplace notion that such fictional components as description, dialogue, and incident have “a kind of internecine distinctness,” James declares: I cannot imagine composition existing in a series of blocks, nor conceive, in any novel worth discussing at all, of a passage of description that is not in its intention narrative, a passage of dialogue that is not in its intention descriptive, a touch of truth of any sort that does not partake of the nature of incident, or an incident that derives its interest from any other source than . . . that of being illustrative. A novel is a living thing, all one and continuous, like any other organism, and in proportion as it lives will it be found, I think, that in each of the parts there is something of each of the other parts.46

Even if we allow that James’s criteria for artful fiction—loose as they are—do not apply to all fiction that is worth discussing, we might usefully 44

Ibid., 1234. Ibid., 1235. 46 Henry James, “The Art of Fiction,” in The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, 3rd ed., ed. David H. Richter (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007), 470. 45

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adopt his principle as a heuristic, enabling us to ask certain kinds of questions, if not determining our answers. In this sense James’s organic principle becomes a kind of test, and it is interesting that he described the characters in “The Figure in the Carpet” as “a group of well-meaning persons engaged in a test. The reader is, on the evidence, left to conclude.”47 “Conclude,” we would argue, not only whether any of the characters has “passed” the test but also what kind of a test it is. We think the test is not, and literature is not, like taking an examination in which the purpose is to reveal what we already know, what we have learned, but rather like a set of directions which can help us to discover what may and what may not be known, what we are capable of learning. Reduced to a manageable heuristic, the Jamesian test would be something like this: See in what ways every part or aspect of the story is necessary to the life of the whole, and say how it is so. But criticism is inevitably, necessarily partial—it must convince us of the centrality (the relatively less-partial partiality) of the particular parts it selects. Our reading of “The Figure in the Carpet” will attend, far more than most readings we have seen, to the story’s earlier chapters. Since our ultimate interest is pedagogical, we do so because it is there that we find the clearest articulation of the pedagogical conditions, stakes, motivations, and consequences of reading. We also find some warrant in James’s essay “Criticism”: Literature, he says, “lives essentially, in the sacred depths of its being, upon example, upon perfection wrought; . . . like other sensitive organisms, it is highly susceptible of demoralization, . . . and nothing is better calculated than irresponsible pedagogy to make it close its ears and lips.”48 Our own experience as teachers, if not as critics, frequently bears out James’s dire image of “puerile and untutored” approaches to literary study. These, according to James, deprive literature “of air and light”: “and the consequence of its keeping bad company is that it loses all heart. We may, of course, continue to talk about it long after it has bored itself to death, and there is every appearance that this is mainly the way in which our descendants will hear of it. They will, however, acquiesce in its extinction.”49 If it seems safe to say that criticism has, by now, made itself over in James’s image, and that there is little risk of literature’s extinction at the hands of his critical descendants, we also believe that the circumstances that gave rise to James’s original pessimism have not been 47

James, Henry James: Literary Criticism, 1235-1236. Henry James, “Criticism,” in The Art of Criticism: Henry James on the Theory and Practice of Fiction, ed. William Veeder and Susan Griffin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 233. 49 Ibid., 234. 48

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eliminated so much as displaced. The ways of reading and the kinds of reading—the kinds of literature—whose continued existence James feared for have found a preserve in various literary “institutions” (in a word, in School), but increasingly the visitors to the preserve (students) are bored to death, do not know what they are looking at, cannot tell the differences among the things they see, and cannot see the point in the telling or even the looking. When Vereker tries to explain to the narrator of “The Figure in the Carpet” what that figure is, how it relates to the work itself, he offers a quite varied set of metaphors; and one scholarly game with the text has been to decide which of those figures is central, is the right one. We suggest that one of the homeliest and least discussed among Vereker’s figures for the figure is the most useful. “It’s stuck into every volume,” Vereker says, “as your foot is stuck into your shoe.”50 Almost inevitably this phrase suggests to us another: “If the shoe fits, wear it.” And, of course, if it doesn’t, don’t. If Vereker’s figure of foot and shoe works for him as a figure for the relationship between form and content, outer and inner, it also works as a figure for the situation of the readers in, and of, the story. That is, if you are the kind of reader who is capable of discerning figures in carpets, then you will find them in Vereker (and in James); if you are not, you will not. But the story is structured in such a way that its readers will want their foot to fit into the shoe, whether that means making the story fit the way of reading they already possess, or adjusting one’s way of reading to accommodate this story. And the story tries to do this, we think, by inviting us to compare our ways of reading with the narrator’s and with Corvick’s. Moreover, the story is structured (through the lens of the narrator’s first person perspective) so as simultaneously to invite and repel our identification with him (that is, he is the fictitious writer of the only story we actually read, and so we must rely on his reading of Vereker’s stories as well as his reading of Corvick’s readings). Thus, the “test” for readers is to decide “on the evidence” whether the narrator’s own ways of reading are adequate. Returning to the two scenes of rereading cited above, we note that when the narrator describes his failed effort to discover Vereker’s secret as “the business” and “a dead loss,” he highlights (in a rereading) the fact that, from the first line of the story, he is a kind of economic creature: “I had done a few things and earned a few pence,” he tells us with seeming diffidence.51 His friend Corvick is highly placed at The Middle, presumably 50 51

James, Henry James: Complete Stories, 581. Ibid., 572.

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one of the more prestigious British periodicals, and the kind of economy in which these men and their work is enmeshed is suggested by the narrator’s remark that Corvick “had done more things than I, and earned more pence, though there were chances for cleverness I thought he sometimes missed.”52 There seems to the narrator to be a misalignment among the entities circulating in this economy—among pence, things, and cleverness. The things are reviews or critical writings (the difference is real but subtextual), and if their immaterial substance is cleverness, then, the narrator implies, even though Corvick has had more material success—his greater number of reviews also earning him more money—nevertheless the quality of cleverness may be proportionally greater in the narrator’s own, thus far less remunerative, productions. But Corvick sees their work in different terms. Although Corvick wants to write the review of Vereker’s new novel, circumstances force him to assign the job to the narrator, with some vague but telling instructions: “Of course you’ll be all right. . . . I mean you won’t be silly.” “Silly—about Vereker! Why, what do I ever find him but awfully clever?” “Well, what’s that but silly? What on earth does ‘awfully clever’ mean? For God’s sake try to get at him. . . . Speak of him, you know, as I should have spoken of him.” “You mean as far and away the biggest of the lot—that sort of thing?” Corvick almost groaned. “Oh, you know, I don’t put them back to back that way; it’s the infancy of art!”53

The narrator essentially ignores this advice, for he seems to remain convinced that “getting at” an author means getting up to or even ahead of him, as if critics and authors were not engaged in fundamentally different activities. While his review of Vereker (which we do not see) nominally avoids the cliché of crude measurement, it is clear, as the narrator anticipates its success, that he cannot go behind the cliché of cleverness: He [Vereker] was awfully clever—I stuck to that, but he wasn’t a bit the biggest of the lot. I didn’t allude to the lot, however; I flattered myself that I emerged on this occasion from the infancy of art. . . . He had . . . become in a manner the fashion; the critics at least had put on a spurt and caught up with him. We had found out at last how clever he was, and he had had to make the best of the loss of his mystery. I was strongly tempted . . . to let him know how much of that unveiling was my act.54 52

Ibid., 572. Ibid., 573. 54 Ibid., 573, 575. 53

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As these early scenes proceed, James’s complex interlacing of incident, dialogue, and description enriches his “illustration” not only of his several characters but also of the several “literary circles,” as the narrator later puts it, in which “we were all constructed to revolve.”55 The effect is like the combination of a carousel and a hall of mirrors. The nameless office employees at The Middle laconically tell the narrator that his review is “all right,” 56 which is what Corvick had wanted it to be (though of course in a different sense); but when Corvick reads the review, he tells the narrator he “hadn’t at all said what he [Vereker] gave him [Corvick] the sense of.”57 A few days later, during the weekend at Lady Jane’s estate, the narrator’s review is reviewed again (just before Vereker’s revelation to the narrator that there is a figure in his fictional carpet). Because his review is unsigned, and because the narrator does not want to be forward about it, he is pleased to learn that Lady Jane has read it and excited to see her recommend it to Vereker, who takes the review to his room. But when Vereker returns to render his verdict, he says (echoing the voice of The Middle), “Oh, it’s all right—it’s the usual twaddle!”58 The only enthusiastic response to the narrator’s review of Vereker comes from Lady Jane herself, but even her praise is severely qualified. Before she learns that the narrator is the author of the review, she holds the paper up at dinner and (ironically echoing Corivick) declares to Vereker: “‘The man has actually got at you, at what I always feel, you know.’ Lady Jane threw into her eyes a look evidently intended to give an idea of what she always felt; but she added that she couldn’t have expressed it. The man in the paper expressed it in a striking manner.”59 When Vereker goes off to read the review, the narrator tells Lady Jane that he is its author, and even before Vereker’s dismissal of it she discovers that she now likes the review less, knowing who wrote it. As the narrator reports her sentiments: “If the author was ‘only me’ the thing didn’t seem quite so remarkable. Hadn’t I had the effect rather of diminishing the luster of the article than of adding to my own? Her ladyship was subject to the most extraordinary drops.” 60 Finally, Vereker’s elaboration of his response to the review renders Lady Jane’s earlier identification with the narrator especially mortifying: Vereker says the reviewer “[d]oesn’t see anything,” and when another guest, Miss Poyle, says, “[H]ow very stupid,” Vereker replies, 55

Ibid., 605. Ibid. 574. 57 Ibid., 574. 58 Ibid., 576. 59 Ibid., 575. 60 Ibid., 576. 56

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“Not a bit. . . . Nobody does,” upon which Miss Poyle “cheerfully” concludes, ‘Nobody sees anything,’”61 which would seem to translate as “Everyone is stupid.” And then, bringing the circulation of fast-emptying terms and values back to the beginning, Vereker tells the narrator what it has been like to see his “general intention” missed by so many readers. He explains that the intention has become “a secret in spite of itself—the amazing event has made it one. . . . I only became aware little by little, and meanwhile I had done my work”: “And now you quite like it?” I [the narrator] risked. “My work?” “Your secret. It’s the same thing.” “Your guessing that,” Vereker replied, “is a proof that you’re as clever as I say!”62 Before this revelation of his unknowingness, the narrator had imagined, regarding his review, that “whatever much or little it should do for his [Vereker’s] reputation I was clear on the spot what it should do for mine.”63 In the Preface, James “ruefully grant[s]” that to his narrator he has “impute[d] a developed wit”64; and part of his wit is to see that, even though, within a year, “a reputation for acuteness had overtaken me,”65 he also admits (presumably to us alone) that ever since this meeting with Vereker, he has been “as much in the dark as ever, though I’ve grown used in a sense to my obtuseness.”66 The narrator thought Vereker would be impressed by him, and he wanted Vereker’s approval, but only as the most concentrated form of affirmation—of his cleverness—that he is capable of registering. When he does not get it, as we have seen, he tries to reread Vereker. But he has made of Vereker’s direction a misdirection; he thinks the secret might be a preference for a certain letter of the alphabet, or an “esoteric message,”67 and his month-long holding up of Vereker’s books “to the light” suggests a child (or a pirate) scanning for invisible writing. And so when the narrator inevitably fails in his search, he finds to his dismay that Vereker’s books no longer give him any pleasure, even in the old ways, and that they are no longer even a “resource”: he is convinced he “has no knowledge” of the books—“nobody had any” (echoing Miss Poyle)—and so he can no longer write about them.68 Corvick, in contrast, finds Vereker’s secret, and for him the novelist’s work becomes “all gold 61

Ibid., 577. Ibid., 580. 63 Ibid., 572. 64 James, Henry James: Literary Criticism, 1235. 65 James, Henry James: Complete Stories, 589. 66 Ibid., 579. 67 Ibid., 581. 68 Ibid., 583. 62

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and gems. Now that it was there it seemed to grow and grow before him; it was in all times, in all tongues, one of the most wonderful flowers of art.” 69 The ensuing tragicomedy whereby Corvick’s discovery is never divulged to the narrator (or to us) might distract us, but it should not, from the fact that the narrator remains “in the dark”70 because he remains in the conditions that perpetuate darkness: he stops reading himself and waits for others to read for him, to read him to himself. This, then, seems remarkably like the situation—the system—in which we and our students find ourselves. In response to our political and economic climate, our educational system relentlessly structures learning as the assessable acquisition of marketable skills. English is treated (e.g., in the recent report of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences71) as either the handmaiden of the social sciences or as the place for fostering “creativity and expression.” Given the proliferation of creativity (entertainment) with which our students come freighted, even collegelevel creative writing programs become engines for the mass production (or self-publication) of whatever popular fashions reign. Faced with anything remote—remotely difficult, unfamiliar, old—even English majors are baffled (the Miss Poyles), speechless (the Lady Janes), indifferent (the men at The Middle), or (as James’s narrator winds up) hostile. They have been trained to think that any reading is better than no reading, that the number of words you read is more valuable than considering how they are put together, that because you cannot say anything “true” about literature, you should either say whatever you want or nothing at all, and that the point of studying literature is to get a degree, and so papers must be written and grades of “A” must be given (maybe grades of “B”). If criticism is not responsible for creating this state of affairs, it is arguably complicit. No less than in James’s time, criticism has become a kind of industry, writing to ourselves and—with respect to our students—keeping “dummies” in the “seats” (as James said about modern rail travel) because the “trains” have to run.72 But we, as members of a profession, should devote the same energy and creativity to our teaching that we do to our research. Teaching students to recognize the variety of poor and impoverishing reading practices mirrored in a text like James’s “The Figure in the Carpet” would be a first step, and the intent would not 69

Ibid., 595. Ibid., 608. 71 The Heart of the Matter, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2013 accessed June 26, 2014, http://www.humanitiescommission.org/_pdf/hss_report.pdf. 72 James, “Criticism,” 232. 70

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be to induce shame. Beyond critical exposure, stories like James’s can engender in readers what Michel Foucault called problematizations of the self.73 The self-as-reader is arguably the best way of naming the subject in her/his most salient contemporary situation, and so the problematization of reading may be the most urgent task for educators. But the point of problematization would be some form of redress. Thus, as a counterpoint to all of the Mr. Pinhorns in James’s world, we have the narrator of “The Death of the Lion,” Corvick and Gwendolyn in “The Figure in the Carpet,” and other heroic readers—all, alike, figures of the passionate reader as a type of ethical subject. Students, too, can be led to aspire to the disciplined care of reading selves (or what Barthes would refer to as the writerly) that these characters enact in their fictional devotion to texts such as those of Paraday or Verecker, and led to emulate the socialities that these characters form in the service of that pursuit. Moreover, with our help, as our students work on themselves (as it were) through the discipline of reading and rereading James’s (or any artist’s) work, they will discover that the “gold and gems” found therein are hardly more valuable than the power discovered in themselves to locate and appreciate such riches. Perhaps, too, they will rediscover the pleasure of reading and thus of a long-lost epistemological satisfaction.

Bibliography Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang, 1974. Bloom, Harold, Jacques Derrida, Geoffrey Hartman, Paul de Man, and J. Hillis Miller. Deconstruction and Criticism. New York: The Seabury Press, 1979. Fink, Bruce. A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Foucault, Michel. The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality: Volume Two. London: Penguin Books, 1986. Iser, Wolfgang. “The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach.” In The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. 3rd ed., edited by David H. Richter. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. James, Henry. “The Art of Fiction.” In The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, 3rd ed., edited by David H. Richter. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. 73

On the problematization of the self, see Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality: Volume Two (London: Penguin Books, 1986), 26-28.

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—. “Criticism.” In The Art of Criticism: Henry James on the Theory and Practice of Fiction, edited by William Veeder and Susan Griffin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. —. Henry James: Complete Stories, 1892-1898. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1996. —. Henry James: Complete Stories, 1898-1910. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1996. —. Henry James: Literary Criticism, Vol. II. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984. —. The Letters of Henry James, Vol. II. 1843-1916. Edited by Percy Lubbock. Project Gutenberg, 2011. Etext 38035. Accessed May 29, 2014. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38035. —. The Novels and Tales of Henry James. New York Edition, Vol. XV. New York: Augustus M. Kelley Publishers, 1970. —. The Novels and Tales of Henry James. New York Edition, Vol. XVI. New York: Augustus M. Kelley Publishers, 1970. Johnson, Barbara. The Critical Difference: Essays in the Contemporary Rhetoric of Reading. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. Lewis, C. S. An Experiment in Criticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961. Linge, David. Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics. By HansGeorg Gadamer. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. xilviii. Rodriguez, Richard. “The Achievement of Desire.” In Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers, 9th ed., edited by David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. Shaw, G. B. Major Barbara. London: Constable, 1964. The Heart of the Matter. Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2013. Accessed June 26, 2014. http://www.humanitiescommission.org/_pdf/hss_report.pdf.

CHAPTER EIGHT A NEW PEDAGOGY OF LOVE FROM PLATO TO BADIOU: RHETORICAL HERMENEUTICS AND EVENTAL TEACHING PAUL DAHLGREN DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND MODERN LANGUAGES, GEORGIA SOUTHWESTERN STATE UNIVERSITY, AMERICUS, GA 31709

As scholars as different as Simon May and Deidre Lynch have demonstrated, “love,” a peculiar affect applied to both persons and things, has a history.1 Indeed, as The Dictionary of Untranslatables demonstrates, there are at least two distinct etymologies for “love” in modern European languages.2 The word “amour” in French, “amar” in Spanish, and “amore” in Italian are likely descended from the Latin verb “amare,” which likely comes from “amma” meaning “mother.” In contrast, Germanic words such as “lieben” and “love” are likely descended from “libido” or Greek roots associated with “eros.”3 These contrasting etymologies represent two of the many affective dimensions of “love” as that term is used in modern languages. The object of love may be a sexual partner, a spouse, a child, a friend, an object, God, one’s neighbor, chocolate, trouble, a view, a feeling, or just about anything else we can imagine. The feeling of love 1

Simon May, Love: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011). Deidre Lynch, Loving Literature: A Cultural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). 2 Barbara Cassin, Clara Auvray-Assayas, Charles Baladier, and Philippe Buttgen, “Love,” in Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon, trans. and ed. by Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra, and Michael Wood (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 595. 3 Ibid., 595.

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may last a lifetime, be gone in passing, or represent the one thing that lives on beyond death.4 It may be something that is impossible to control but entails a web of ethical relationships and community entanglements. Indeed, while tracing the history of this term from the Middle Ages to the present, the authors of this entry in The Dictionary of Untranslatables seem to throw up their hands and exclaim, in a subheading no less, that “In Modern Languages ‘to Love’ Means Everything.”5 It is hard to disagree with them. Talking about love, figuring out exactly what we mean when we use this word, is a basic interpretive challenge just about everyone faces at sometime in one’s life. I ask my students to face this challenge in my classroom. At some point in time—I think in graduate school, but I am not entirely sure—I started incorporating the study of love into my classroom and thinking of my classroom in terms of love. I began doing so in an attempt to engage a few lackluster students whose potential I could see but whose interest was flagging. I did not want them to think that nothing we did in English classes applied to them, so I started talking about a subject I knew might catch their interest—love. Love is everywhere in the discipline of English, and because many of my students found something to say about it, I have progressively incorporated the study of it into more and more of my classes. In composition classes, we look at popular music, examining what lyrics imply about the meaning of love, as well as works of philosophy and theory that explore this subject directly or indirectly. I ask students to write about what the term means and how it should or should not figure in their own lives and relationships. In literature classes, we analyze how literary works employ tropes related to love and how characters in those works use rhetoric to convince one another that they are in love; we also evaluate whether these tropes and rhetoric are successful and, if so, why. In classes on theory or rhetoric, I point out how discussions of love are often in the background in major philosophical texts and seem to color how major thinkers understand their own ideas. In classes grounded in cultural studies, my students interrogate hegemonic ideas about love, which are often embedded within sexist, racist, and ableist ideologies. These are the kinds of things anyone with a serious background in English studies or the humanities can do. However, an interrogation of love need not begin or end here. When we talk about love, we are not merely talking about our relationships to or with other people. The language of love infiltrates much of what we do, and if we take our commitment to love in 4 5

Ibid., 596. Ibid., 595.

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tandem with our commitment to critical thought and critical theory, we find ourselves rethinking the way we go about our business, including the business of teaching itself. This essay is an attempt to do just that: to rethink the way we go about the business of teaching. The language of “love” permeates our discussions of the classroom, often in troubling ways. Movies like Stand and Deliver suggest that major economic hurdles can be at least partially overcome by a teacher who loves her/his students sufficiently, and this sentiment is often echoed in political discourse of all kinds.6 At the same time, legislatures and university boards across the US are at work making sure that the “love” professors might feel for students falls well within prescribed boundaries for individuals with power over others. Sexual harassment policies are being reviewed, and clearer boundaries are being drawn between students and teachers, a task worth supporting when done well. And yet we know that certain kinds of love are not only wanted but also needed in the classroom. All of the professors I know encourage their students to share their love of the subject matter as it appears in individual classes, and the scholarship on teaching and learning is replete with similar discussions of love, albeit rarely pursued in a systematic fashion. In the best-selling What the Best College Professors Do, Ken Bain argues that love, among other things, should be a guiding principle of teaching. According to Bain, the best college professors “found affinity with their students in their . . . love of life and beauty, in their mixture of respect and fear, and in that mix they discovered more similarities than differences between themselves and the people who populated their classes.” 7 The love Bain advocates helps create good relationships between students and professors, and although it is an abstract love that students feel toward “life and beauty,” it is love nonetheless. Bain is hardly alone in his discussion of love; we find such discussion in all kinds of educational thinkers from radical pedagogues to educational reformers. As teachers, we are asked to “love our subjects” and “love our students.” We might bristle at this affective labor, but most of us perform it in one way or another. I am not the only person who finds these demands for love a bit troubling, however. As Lynch explains in her history of the love of literature, “There can be something irksomely normalizing about the way people inside and outside academe mobilize the concepts of love and aesthetic pleasure and invigilate both as ethical 6

Stand and Deliver, DVD, directed by Ramon Menendez (1988; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2010). 7 Ken Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 144.

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obligation and as an index of psychological normality.”8 Lynch goes on to explore how the emotional practices of love developed during the emergence of the literary canon in England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In a more limited way, my essay explores how love impacts our understanding of teaching and the classroom. It does so by tracing how Plato’s Symposium has been received in twentieth-century philosophy and thus how we use love rhetorically in discussions about teaching. My methodology is a form of what Steven Mailloux calls “rhetorical hermeneutics.” As he explains it, rhetorical hermeneutics “uses rhetoric to practice theory by doing history.” 9 In this case, I am using rhetoric to practice a form of affect theory, which takes account of how unconscious emotions impact our thinking and being in particular contexts, and to argue that love can be profitably used in the classroom by paying attention to how it has been employed in history. In essence, I argue that if we take our own rhetoric about love seriously, we will find that it can be an unpredictable force, one that has the power to transform lovers for the better. Love, in many of the texts I examine, is almost always a kind of excess that both regulates a subject’s connection to truth and threatens it. It is tempting, therefore, to domesticate love so as to guarantee proper classroom management. However, I argue that it behooves us as educators to embrace the excesses of love so as to create more meaningful educational experiences. In order to make this argument, I draw from a number of thinkers including Plato, Lacan, Freire, and Badiou. I also argue that love is a rhetorical act, something that happens only through language. For it to exist in the world, we must interpret ourselves and others as beings-in-love, and we must name our feeling “love” and declare the significance of that emotion to others. At the same time, I believe that as teachers we should not kid ourselves about the gift of love, which can and should transform our students in unpredictable ways. Not every student will take this gift if offered it, and we must be careful to offer it in a manner that will give students the ability to develop as their own persons, realizing that they may develop in ways that we may find troubling. Our students may declare that their love for a particular subject means they are no longer able to examine it critically or in an academic context. Or they may say that their love for something brings them to a political stance we might not approve of or that we find a bit 8 Deidre Lynch, Loving Literature: A Cultural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 12. 9 Steven Mailloux, “Rhetorical Hermeneutics Still Again: Or, On the Track of Phronesis,” in A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism, eds. Walter Jost and Wendy Olmsted (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 457-72.

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repugnant. If we take both love and our students seriously, I am not sure we can deny our students these new-found beliefs, no matter how much they trouble us. Historians of love suggest that the deep ethical commitment we have toward love comes from several different intellectual traditions. Undoubtedly, one of the most important of these is Hebrew Scripture. There, we learn that love can be a kind of submission and an ethical commitment to God and, via God, to one’s neighbor. Equally important, however, are the works of Plato, especially the Symposium, in which he writes most extensively about love or erǀs. Significantly, Plato’s most important dialogues on love—Lysius, Symposium, and Phaedrus—are also dialogues about education. Love is what guarantees that philosophy is the pursuit of truth rather than an unethical pursuit of gain such as Plato accuses the sophists of engaging in. Indeed, it is in Plato that we first catch a glimpse of the linguistic excess of love. It is tempting to blame Plato for the bipolarity of the concept of love in modern languages. Unlike modern languages, ancient Greek distinguished several different kinds of love, two of which are eran and philein. Eran, from which we get erǀs, is usually understood as love “that comes from the outside,” something closely connected with desire and longing. Philein, in contrast, is an inward feeling that one is able to freely consent to.10 It suggests a relationship that is “mutual and reciprocal” and might be described alternatively as “friendship” or “companionship.”11 In several of Plato’s dialogues not only do we find the dominant western ideas about love, but also we see a deliberate effort on Plato’s part to confuse erotic love and friendship. As Barbara Cassin et al. suggest, “In Lysis . . . Socrates’s whole operation consists in treating erǀs as if it meant philia or, to put it another way, in eroticizing philia.”12 This strategy is continued in the Symposium, in which Plato explores the ethics and erotics of love at greater length. The Symposium relates two stories about love: one by the comic playwright Aristophanes and the other by Diotima, the (presumably) fictional seer or priestess who is an instructor for Socrates. Although these stories are well known, it is worth reviewing their particulars. Aristophanes gives us a myth about why love might make us feel whole and is such a profound emotional force. As he tells the story, some time ago, humans were self-sufficient creatures with two faces, two pairs of legs, arms, genitals, eyes, and ears. They came in three kinds: male, 10

Cassin et al., “Love,” 602. Ibid., 602. 12 Ibid., 603. 11

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female, and hermaphrodite. 13 These beings were so wondrous that they decided to challenge the Gods, but they did not succeed in their attempt to overthrow the Olympians. After much debate, the Gods decided that to punish the humans, they would rend them in twain, and Zeus threatened to split them further if they continued to rebel.14 From this point on, humans have searched the world over for their missing halves, longing to be reunited. This longing is more than mere sexual desire, which the pairs clearly have; it is so profound that couples want to spend their whole lives together, and they refuse to separate even when their survival is at stake. For this reason, Aristophanes argues, love is really “the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole” or the search for something that can “complete” us and make us feel whole.15 Aristophanes’ myth has no obvious pedagogical implications, but it can help us orient ourselves toward some of the ethical power of love. The desire to make ourselves feel whole and complete is a strong one, which many thinkers, including Lucretius, Schopenhauer, and Freud, appropriate in their own works and one that our students should recognize in themselves. Certainly, no one thinks we should emulate ancient Greek sexual mores, but understanding that love can be imagined as a primordial force is an important task for us. It is surprising how often we forget this when discussing love and pedagogy. Instead, we often focus on another notion of love in the classroom, a fact that Plato’s other story brings to light. As is often the case, Socrates is not satisfied with Aristophanes’ story precisely because the definition of love Aristophanes gives is seemingly incomplete. For Aristophanes, love is caused by a primordial loss. According to Socrates, however, love is not based on loss but on lack. In other words, we desire what is lacking in ourselves, specifically, a certain beauty or goodness that we wish to see procreated. Several things are worth observing here. First, Socrates’ definition of love as a kind of lack is informed by Greek sexual norms. Ancient Athenians tended to see love as one-sided and primarily of benefit to the lover, for the beloved was not 13

Many translations of this dialogue render what I call “kinds” as “genders” or “sexes.” But, as Stella Stanford points out, this is a mistranslation. The term Plato uses is “gene,” which means “type,” and this is where the word “genre” comes from. Aristophanes’ humans do not properly have sexes as they do not reproduce sexually or have sexual identities. See Stella Stanford, Plato and Sex (London: Polity Press, 2010), 60. 14 Plato, Symposium, trans. Walter Hamilton (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1951), 191D, 62. 15 Ibid., 192E, 64.

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seen as suffering from any kind of lack.16 For the ancient Athenians, the expression of love was in many ways more important than its consummation, a fact that Jacques Lacan will exploit in his own reading of Plato. Second, although primarily discussing homosexual love, Socrates sees a dimension of procreation in all love or, at least, a desire for procreation. While this might lead to the amusing image of Socrates suffering the woes of the third trimester, what he is interested in is the creation of beauty as a form of higher truth, an idea explored at length by Diotima. She describes love as follows: This beauty is first of all eternal, it neither comes into being nor passes, neither waxes nor wanes. . . .[it is] not like the beauty of a face or hands or anything else corporal. . . . [We] will see it as absolute, existing alone with itself, unique, eternal, and all other beautiful things as partaking of it. . . . What may we suppose to be the felicity of the man who sees absolute beauty in its essence, pure and unalloyed, who, instead of a beauty tainted by human flesh and colour and a mass of perishable rubbish, is able to apprehend divine beauty where it exists alone?17

This description of the beauty of the forms represents the apex of the socalled “ladder of love,” which begins with lustful attraction and ascends to a pure love of moral goodness. This image of love is startling not only for how far removed it seems from Aristophanes’ story but also for how far removed it is from any kind of earthly attraction. For Diotima, the only love worth loving is love of the forms. However, loving perfection is not something that necessarily comes naturally; it requires education and training. 18 Love begins as sexual desire for a beautiful body, gradually ascends to love of beautiful souls, and ends with love of beauty itself. It is no wonder, then, that Plato invented the title “philosophy” or “love of wisdom” to describe his profession. Although our personal attention to the various subfields of academic philosophy can vary considerably depending on our own disciplinary locations, most academics whom I know profess an affective relationship to the objects of their knowledge similar to the one Plato claims to hold toward truth. Indeed, it is this relationship that we often wish to share with our students whose diffidence to our subject matter can sometimes cut a little deeper than it should, as if we ourselves were spurned lovers.

16

May, Love: A History, 40-42. Plato, Symposium, 211A-E, 93-95. 18 Ibid., 210A, 92. 17

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It hardly needs to be said that Plato’s narrative about the ladder of love has been deeply influential on the way we think about education even today. Although we have learned to be skeptical of the kind of foundational truths Plato is usually credited with describing, it is not uncommon to see even radical pedagogues slip into a Platonic frame of mind, especially with regard to love. Although Paulo Freire eschews foundational epistemology, he frequently uses the term “love” in a rhetorical manner reminiscent of Plato. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire states, “From these pages I hope at least the following will endure: my trust in the people, and my faith in men and in the creation of a world in which it will be easier to love.”19 Indeed, from a certain perspective, Freirean pedagogy might be understood as an attempt to inject epistemological skepticism into a kind of Platonic pedagogy informed by anticolonial discourse. Throughout much of this book, Freire is concerned with conscientizaçao, often translated as “critical consciousness,” and with how to get students to properly question the nature of their historical, social, and political positions. Through this questioning, both student and teacher participate in the act of learning by investigating their relationship with the world. In other words, much as Socrates attempts to orient his students toward the higher truth of philosophy, Freire attempts to orient his students to the evils of imperialism. The similarities between Freire and Plato run deeper than this comparison, however. Just as Diotima attempts to orient Socrates toward a love of truth, Freire is often at pains to make sure his audience is affectively oriented in a manner that will lead to some form of political liberation. For example, in the first chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he argues that “[d]ehumanization, which marks not only those whose humanity has been stolen, but also . . . those who have stolen it, is a distortion of the vocation of becoming more fully human. . . . Indeed, to admit to dehumanization as an historical vocation would lead either to cynicism or total despair.” 20 Freire does not make an argument against “dehumanization,” a term with an obviously negative meaning, but instead suggests that embracing it will lead educators and students onto the wrong emotional path (toward cynicism or despair). Arguments such as this one occur many times in Freire’s work. A few pages later, Freire makes a similar remark, this time about generosity and charity: “True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the ‘rejects of 19

Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th anniversary ed., trans. Myra Ramos (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010), 24. 20 Ibid., 30.

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life’ to extend their trembling hands.”21 Indeed, Freire frequently evokes love, as in the following passage where he states quite explicitly that “this fight, because of the purpose given it by the oppressed, will actually constitute an act of love opposing the lovelessness which lies at the heart of the oppressors’ violence, lovelessness even when clothed in false generosity.”22 Love, in this book and in others, is the thing that promises to lead toward an emancipatory form of teaching. Despite the frequent references to love, Freire never gives anything like an explicit definition of this term, and a number of his followers have attempted to address this omission. The thinker who embraced this project most successfully is bell hooks, who develops a conception of what love without oppression might mean in several books, including All About Love, Communion, and The Will to Change. In All About Love, she defines love as a combination of “care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust.”23 This definition gives us a better of understanding of what love means, but it does not really give us a sense of what love does in the classroom, a subject hooks discusses at more length in Teaching Community. There, hooks argues that “[w]hen these basic principles of love form the basis of teacher-pupil interaction the mutual pursuit of knowledge creates the conditions for optimal learning.”24 Teachers learn while teaching, and students share knowledge. For hooks, love becomes a kind of overriding ideal that helps regulate learning in the classroom. In fact, she makes the following claim: “contrary to the notion that love in the classroom makes teachers less objective, when we teach with love we are better able to respond to the unique concerns of individual students while simultaneously integrating those of the classroom community.” 25 From this perspective, love becomes a powerful tool for making sure education lives up to its highest ideals, much like the ones Diotima espouses in the Symposium. If we were to fault Freire’s and hooks’ understanding of love for anything, it might be that they underestimate how difficult it is to control this affective force. For her part, hooks insists that attention to love of students does not pose a serious risk for the instructor, and, if anything, helps in the educational process. While hooks’ argument for love as a regulatory principle is an admirable one, she underestimates how difficult 21

Ibid., 31. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 31. 23 bell hooks, All about Love: New Visions (New York: Harper Perennial, 2000), 5 24 bell hooks, Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (London: Routledge, 2003), 131. 25 Ibid., 132. 22

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it can really be to manage love. Hers is a narrative that consists entirely of Diotima’s story while omitting Aristophanes’. To correct this omission, it helps to turn to a very different thinker, Jacques Lacan. Lacan engages most explicitly with Plato’s Symposium in his 1960-1961 seminar Transference.26 Here, he offers a unique take on the Symposium by reading it as if each of the speeches given by different characters is part of a series of psychoanalytic sessions. 27 Such a reading suggests that contradictory arguments about love can often be reconciled in ways that most readings of Plato avoid. A number of valuable insights about love emerge from his reading. Following Greek thought, Lacan suggests that the lover is defined by a lack, which the lover thinks can be filled by the beloved. This lack is the source from which desire springs, and for Lacan, it is the result of symbolic castration—in other words, we are symbolically castrated because we must express our needs in a language we did not make and because we must sacrifice some of our pleasure to become part of society. Symbolically castrated, the lover has nothing to give the beloved, and so, paradoxically, all he can give is his own lack. This leads Lacan to his famous pronouncement: “love is giving what you don’t have.”28 Lacan’s observations on love can be a very useful supplement to hooks and Freire. Freire famously argues against what he calls “the banking concept of education.” Traditionally, and perhaps stereotypically, we have thought of teaching as imparting knowledge to our students, as if when we lecture, we were downloading information into their heads. But these days there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that this is not how learning happens. Students must create their own knowledge, for if the teacher creates it for them, it is knowledge soon forgotten. A whole industry has emerged promoting what are now called “active learning techniques,” with significant success. However, not all active learning is created equal, and it is not uncommon for instructors to face resistance from students who have become accustomed to taking a more passive approach in the classroom. For instance, several years ago, when I was the instructor for a class on Shakespeare, I broke students up into groups and had them discuss several passages in Richard III that were related to a critical controversy we were investigating. One student objected to doing the group work, which I thought was a rather innocuous request, saying, “You love this subject matter, you should be teaching it to us, not us to you.” At the time, the 26 Jacques Lacan, Transference: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Bruce Fink (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015). 27 Bruce Fink, Lacan on Love: An Exploration of Lacan’s Seminar VIII, Transference (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016), 34. 28 Lacan, Transference: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII, 129.

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comment surprised me, but I responded with a quick explanation as to why I thought this particular assignment would help him develop his own ideas when it was time to write papers. He grudgingly acquiesced, and class went on, but I confess to having been disproportionately disturbed by this particular experience, which, as class disruptions go, was fairly inconsequential. I believe the reason I found this interaction so disturbing is because it demonstrated how profoundly a student could misunderstand my love for the material. For him, if I really loved the material, I should be able to lecture on it for hours without real concern for what my students might be getting out of the lecture. Evidently, he was expecting to merely parrot back this material to me in exams and papers. My knowledge would fill his lack of knowledge. But, truth be told, I was presenting my students with an interpretative conundrum to which I did not have a definitive answer, a conundrum that had challenged many critics, and I wanted my students to wrestle with it to see what they came up with. For me, the assignment was less about getting my students to find the answer than it was about encouraging them to develop a love for interpretation and criticism. All I had, as the teacher, was the same kind of lack my students had, albeit accompanied by a much more profound understanding of what I did not know. Like the lover’s gift, the only thing the teacher can give her/his students is a lack from which they might develop their own desire to pursue the true object of love in the classroom—the material that the class is mutually exploring. Lacan’s insights about love and their relevance to our exploration do not end here. In Transference he makes a number of other observations that are worth exploring. Love, for Lacan, is not a phenomenon that is limited to two people engaged in sexual congress or even two people engaged in developing a lifelong partnership; instead, it happens every time we use language of any sort. For example, he argues that every time we use language, we articulate some kind of lack, and thus every use of language, which is implicitly a demand to be heard, is a demand for love.29 Paradoxically, when I use language, thereby expressing my lack and demand to be loved, I am, in effect, demanding that I be loved “for the very thing about myself that I detest and wish to know absolutely nothing about.”30 This leads us to what Lacan calls “the miracle of love” in that our love ends up being returned. 31 He gives us the image of our hand reaching out toward an object of desire and of a hand inexplicably 29

Lacan, Transference, 356. Fink, Lacan on Love, 41. 31 Lacan, Transference, 356; Fink, Lacan on Love, 51-52. 30

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reaching back, also desirous. From the viewpoint of the lover, nothing can explain why or how this hand reaches back, for whatever motivates this response is something that does not exist The concept of the miracle of love is also a very useful metaphor for what goes on in the classroom. I do not mean to be cheeky when I say that I think it is a miracle that students ever learn. They enter into our classrooms not knowing what they do not know, a problem compounded by the fact that the teacher may have only a vague sense of what they do not know—and further compounded by the teacher’s own lacunae. And yet when a class session is set up well—say, with an intriguing conversation or an engaging activity—everybody learns. Students gain a better grasp of the material, and the teacher does, too. If we are lucky, we gain a better grasp of the world, perhaps even developing some critical consciousness as Freire and hooks advocate that we do. Something very basic about teaching is very strange indeed—it is inexplicable, and yet it happens. We manage to both change our students and ourselves. Unfortunately, Lacan does not give us a sense of what this change really means. For that, we need to turn to another philosopher who spent much of his career wrestling with Plato: Alain Badiou. For Badiou, love is an event, and, I would argue, so is good teaching. But to understand what I mean by this, we will need to spend a bit of time understanding Badiou’s philosophical lexicon, which requires knowledge of a few persistent questions Badiou’s philosophical project asks: how can something radically new appear in the world? How, after the rise of postmodern philosophy, is it possible to embrace a kind of universalism?32 What does it mean, in other words, to talk about “truth” after postmodern skepticism seemingly erases the possibility of any simple understanding of such a topic? Whereas many other thinkers who are interested in these same questions end up rejecting epistemological skepticism entirely, Badiou develops a rigorous philosophical account that embraces epistemological skepticism while also accounting for change and difference in the world. He accomplishes this task through a complex ontological project which argues that mathematical set theory is able to represent the multiplicity inherit in a post-theological world. Set theory, a branch of mathematical logic used to designate collections of objects, serves as both a theory of ontology and representation. Sets, by their very nature, contain multitudes, 32

Badiou argues that the only way to revitalize what he sees as moribund French philosophy is through a return to universalism. See Alain Badiou, Logics of Worlds: Being and Event II, trans. Alberto Toscano (London: Continuum, 2009), 1-9.

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or, in Badiou’s language, “multiplicity.” They cannot be reduced to their common parts, but they do contain these through an arbitrary form of representation. Remarkably, set theory works linguistically in much the same way semiotic theory works according to Derrida. Sets create meaning through deferral, albeit deferral that can be formalized in mathematical language. For Badiou, somewhat differently from Derrida, this deferral creates the need for us to make decisive interventions in the world—deciding, in effect, both how the world is represented to ourselves and how we are represented to others. He outlines this theory of ontology in his monumental Being and Event and expands on it in several other works, most notably Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism; Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil; and Metapolitics. He has also presented a major revision (what he calls “a sequel to Being and Event”) in his work Logic of Worlds.33 In these works and elsewhere, Badiou defines what he calls “an event” in various ways, but we might think of it as a departure from the current “state” of the world as it is, or, to use his terminology “a break with the situation.”34 According to Badiou, true “events” are extraordinarily rare, and when they do occur, the world ceases to be the same place for those who participate in them. This happens only when a “truth procedure” or “condition” puts enough pressure on a particular element of the situation so that change becomes a necessity, at least to those who witness the event—who in turn must name the event and declare their fidelity to it in such a way that many others do so as well. According to Badiou, there are four areas, which he calls conditions, from which events can emerge through what he calls “truth procedures.” These are politics, art, science, and love. Through a complex process called “forcing,” Badiou demonstrates how a situation can become “evental” and thus how radical change can be created in relation to one of the four conditions. However, when Badiou proclaims that he is interested in ontology and how it can be represented in mathematical language, he neglects the rhetorical dimensions of his own project, and so scholars often seek to supplement his understanding of ontology with an understanding of rhetoric. Substituting Badiou’s concept of a “situation” with the concept of a “rhetorical situation” goes a long 33 See Alain Badiou, Being and Event, trans. Oliver Feltham (London: Continuum, 2005); Alain Badiou, Conditions, trans. Steven Corcoran (London: Continuum, 2008); Alain Badiou, Logics of Worlds: Being and Event II, trans. Alberto Toscano (London: Continuum, 2009); Alain Badiou, St. Paul: The Foundations of Universalism, trans. Ray Brassier (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003). 34 My discussion of Badiou’s use of set theory is limited to his most basic application. For a more in-depth study of Badiou and set theory, see Hallward.

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way toward addressing this apparent neglect. For Badiou, a situation is simply an ontological representation of the world or a part of the world. Situations, in other words, represent the world as it is represented to those who are in it. In rhetorical theory, a rhetorical situation is any situation in which a rhetor feels the need to respond to an exigence, which can be either pre-given or invented by the rhetor, by using rhetoric. In other words, a rhetorical situation is the world as it is understood by language. The rhetorical situation, in short, is a concept that demonstrates the importance of context for understanding rhetorical discourse. The most important conception of the rhetorical situation was outlined by Lloyd Bitzer in 1968, but since then it has been modified by a variety of critics including Vatz, Consigny, and Grant-Davie. Rhetoricians are familiar with this debate, which essentially revolves around how much power a particular rhetor might have to define what constitutes a particular situation. Leaving aside questions of agency, Badiou’s concept of the situation maps surprisingly well onto this idea, especially when we consider his work on St. Paul. For Badiou, the Christian subject, which he uses as a model for the event, appears when Paul proclaims the Word and declares his faith. That declaration both creates Paul’s identity (that is, the movement from Saul to Paul) and creates the conditions for a universal subject (anyone can become a Christian regardless of birth, wealth, etc.). I am not particularly interested in Badiou’s peculiar take on universalism, but I find the idea of transforming identity as a means of changing the rhetorical situation quite useful. Badiou’s ontology gives us an ecological model of the rhetorical situation that demonstrates how changing one element of a situation can impact the situation in its entirety. It is a powerful model of agency that has real explanatory value. Scholars working on the rhetorical situation suggest a dynamic interaction among rhetor, exigency, and audience but nothing quite the equivalent of Paul’s conversion. Paul’s essential act, according to Badiou, is to discover and declare the “truth” of the Christ event and, in so doing, create a new form of subjectivity. Naturally, a truth does not appear just because people say so. Rather, there must be an aporia that cannot be resolved using the logic internal to the situation itself (what Badiou calls “the inexistent”). The only way to overcome this aporia is to fundamentally redefine the situation by rearticulating how it is defined. According to Badiou, Paul does this by forcing provincial Jewish law to become open to everyone and thus universal, at least in theory.35 In Badiou’s mathematical 35 It is worth noting that Badiou claims to be an atheist and uses the example of St. Paul only for its metaphorical value.

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language, these aporias are designated as the “null set,” that is, the set that includes nothing except itself and which is present in all sets. Paul, then, is subjugated by what he understands to be the evental “truth,” which is radically different from the veridical “truth” that exists within the situation before the event is declared. Both Paul and the world, or at least the situation, are changed by this process. This particular example from Badiou’s own work can be usefully supplemented with some observations on love. In Paul’s case, the rhetorical act of conversion changes both his own identity and his world. Saul becomes Paul, and the Christian event becomes available to everyone. A similar, though less revolutionary, thing happens when two people declare their love for each other. According to Badiou, before a declaration of love, the two lovers exist apart from each other, but their declaration of love for each other brings them together as a unit (or set) forever supplementing each other’s position within the world. Badiou does not discuss love as frequently as the other generic procedures (art, science, and politics), but when he does, he emphasizes the necessity of risk as an important element in love as an event.36 This is because love inevitably changes not merely the lovers but the world itself, for it brings something new into the world that was previously not there. It is this emphasis on risk and change that suggests how Badiou’s conception of love may help us understand the classroom. Much like the radical pedagogues Freire and hooks, Badiou sees love as a transformational force for individuals and, potentially, society. To encourage love, however, we must create a pedagogical situation that is “evental.” That is, we must find ways for students to have a dialectical relationship with the material being assigned, to become invested in it, and to let it transform them. If they are truly in love, with time and work they themselves will transform this material, perhaps in the way they approach and understand it. To encourage this, we must eschew the belief that teaching is only about the transmission of information—that kind of teaching would be what Badiou call “veridical.” Badiou distinguishes “truth,” which leads to an event, from “veracity,” which is only able to explore the situation as it is (and thus not change it). Something is “veridical” if it leads only to “veracity.” Veridical teaching, therefore, is teaching that does not lead to an event and does not even have the possibility of doing so. For Badiou, truth articulates something about a given situation that the situation itself 36 Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love, trans. Peter Bush (New York: The New Press, 2012), 11.

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is unable to articulate. In the classroom, this might mean having a student approach the material in a manner that the teacher would be unable to anticipate and then pursuing that approach—say, an interpretation of a novel—to its logical conclusion. To find a real truth is a tall order, however. The student must not just surprise her/his teacher but point to the inexistent—something that is implied by the current situation but not represented by it. This is pretty rare, but it does happen. Students, through their questions or actions, often make us look at a text or idea in a new light. Setting them up to do this successfully takes careful organization, high expectations, and the ability to grant students enough autonomy to realize that their intellectual decisions matter. Classes that focus on our own expertise are often designed to prevent just this kind of thing from happening—we let our voices drown out that of our students, oftentimes without meaning to. However, we could design classes differently. Rather than emphasizing settled disciplinary knowledge, a class could be designed to emphasize intellectual problems, challenges, or the general contingency of knowledge in such a way as to ask students to develop their own provisional answers. Such a class would have to go well beyond Gerald Graff’s “teaching the conflicts” to asking students to create or imagine conflicts where they do not fully exist, but should! For example, we might ask students to do more to integrate their knowledge across core curricula and to find ways of challenging our own disciplinary paradigms. Designing such a course would be tricky indeed; however, I do have several suggestions for how one might go about it. Role immersion games such as Reacting to the Past ask students to play the role of historical figures engaged in important debates at particular historical moments—for instance, the founding of democracy in Athens or the beginnings of the American Revolution. What makes Reacting so exciting and controversial is that if students play the game well, they may end up enacting a history that never happened. Advocates of Reacting love this aspect of the game because it teaches students just how contingent history really is, and it helps them develop empathy for historical figures. There is no reason we cannot develop similar games that make us think about the contingency of our interpretations of literature, philosophy, or other aspects of the humanities. Indeed, Reacting games are already interdisciplinary although they are skewed heavily toward political history. A really good Reacting-type game might even help us understand the contingencies of our interpretations of love. Whether we develop this kind of class or others is going to depend on how we understand our love for our students and for our subject matter.

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My hope is that more of us will embrace a notion of love as a kind of event, as Badiou asks us to do. The payoff is a new relationship with our subject matter, our students, and ourselves as professionals. Events mean change. To reject change and embrace the status quo is not an act of love, at least not one that I can take part in.

Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Badiou, Alain. Being and Event. Translated by Oliver Feltham. London: Continuum, 2005. —. Conditions. Translated by Steven Corcoran. London: Continuum, 2008. —. In Praise of Love. Translated by Peter Bush. New York: The New Press, 2012. —. Logics of Worlds: Being and Event II. Translated by Alberto Toscano. London: Continuum, 2009. —. Plato’s Republic: A Dialogue in 16 Chapters. Translated by Susan Spitzer. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. —. St. Paul: The Foundations of Universalism. Translated by Ray Brassier. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003. Bain, Ken. What the Best College Teachers Do. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Berlant, Lauren. Desire/Love. Brooklyn, NY: punctum books, 2012. Bitzer, Lloyd. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy & Rhetoric 1.1 (January 1968): 1-30. Cassin, Barbara, ed. Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon. Translated and edited by Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra and Michael Wood. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. Cassin, Barbara, Clara Auvray-Assayas, Charles Baladier, and Philippe Buttgen. “Love.” In Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon. Translated and edited by Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra and Michael Wood. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. Consigny, Scott. “Rhetoric and Its Situations.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 3 (Summer 1974): 175-186. Dewey, John. “Those who Aspire to the Profession of Teaching.” In The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 13, 1938-1939. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008. Fink, Bruce. Lacan on Love: An Exploration of Lacan’s Seminar VIII, Transference. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016.

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Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th anniversary edition. Translated by Myra Ramos. New York: Bloomsbury, 2010. FitzSimmons, Robert, and Satu Uusiautti. “Critical Revolutionary Pedagogy Spiced by Pedagogical Love.” JCEPS: Journal for Critical Education and Policy Studies 11.3 (2013): 230-243. Garrison, Jim. Dewey and Eros: Wisdom and Desire in the Art of Teaching. New York: Teachers College Press, 1997. Grant-Davie, Keith. “Rhetorical Situations and their Constituents.” Rhetoric Review 15.2 (1997): 264-279. Gross, Daniel. The Secret History of Emotions: From Aristotle’s Rhetoric to Modern Brain Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. hooks, bell. All About Love: New Visions. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000. —. Communion: The Female Search for Love. New York: William Morrow, 2002. —. When Angels Speak of Love. New York: Atria Books, 2011. Lacan, Jacques. Transference: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. Translated by Bruce Fink. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015. Lanas, Maija, and Michalinos Zembylas. “Towards a Transformational Political Concept of Love in Critical Education.” Studies in Philosophy and Education 34.1 (2015): 31-44. Lynch, Deidre. Loving Literature: A Cultural History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Mailloux, Steven. “Rhetorical Hermeneutics Still Again: Or, On the Track of Phronesis.” In A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism, edited by Walter Jost and Wendy Olmsted, 457-472. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. May, Simon. Love: A History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011. Ngai, Sianne. Ugly Feelings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005 Plato. The Symposium. Translated by Walter Hamilton. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1951. Shor, Ira. Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Stand and Deliver, DVD. Directed by Ramon Menendez. 1988; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2010. Stanford, Stella. Plato and Sex. London: Polity Press, 2010. Terada, Rei. Feeling in Theory: Emotion after the “Death of the Subject.” Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

CHAPTER NINE TEACHING DANGEROUSLY: ASSEMBLAGES OF CANON AND FANDOM, MICHAEL DRAYTON, “W. S.,” AND HILARY MANTEL LAURIE RINGER DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, BURMAN UNIVERSITY, LACOMBE, ALBERTA, AB T4L 2E5

“I can see no good Reason, to alter my Opinion, for excluding such Books, as Almanacks, Plays, and an infinite Number, that are daily Printed, of very unworthy matters and handling. . . . Haply some Plays may be worthy the Keeping: But hardly one in Forty . . . . This is my Opinion, wherein if I erre, I think I shall erre with infinite others: and the more I think upon it, the more it doth distaste me, that such a kind of Books, should be vouchsafed a room, in so Noble a Library.” —Sir Thomas Bodley, letter 1612 “Perhaps they do not matter—after all, these are only novels. Except that they are not: they have somehow become a cultural phenomenon.” —David Rundle, blog 2015 “Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange.” —William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Could humanities pedagogy benefit from a “sea-change” that integrates the “something rich and strange” of popular fandom into humanities study? There are ethical, theoretical, and existential reasons not to dismiss this question with a quick, defensive “no.” Prevailing ideologies have disdained popular literature as an object of academic or cultural value, from Sir Thomas Bodley’s seventeenth-

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century letter prohibiting “Baggage Books” in his newly founded Bodleian Library1 to historian David Rundle’s twenty-first century blog dismissing Hilary Mantel’s “Cromwellian novels.”2 Bodley and Rundle may well see themselves as guarding the value and status of the humanities against popular culture. Eileen Joy has described the humanities as a “guarded (and self-regarding) competitive-agonistic staging ground of cultural authority.”3 Authorization has been effected in binary terms opposing the canonical, tasteful, and elite against the non-canonical, distasteful, and popular. Such agonism has formed the basis of literary criticism, which Terry Eagleton has characterized as a type of class-based, taste-based, authoritarian criticism that divides and discriminates. 4 Its judgments are accepted on a type of faith in the critic’s aesthetic taste or “distaste” for what “may be worthy the Keeping”5 or worth the excluding. In a letter dated 15 January 1612, Sir Thomas Bodley sought to exclude popular literature or “Baggage Books”6 from the Bodleian Library. Bodley’s use of “baggage” to describe popular literature is a multilayered insult denoting “spoken or written trash, rubbish, rot” and pathogenic “purulent or corrupt matter, pus.” Festering in this usage is anti-Catholic sentiment as it was “contemptuously applied after the Reformation to the rites and accessories of Roman Catholic worship.” Also lurking in Bodley’s “baggage” is a class-based view of vernacular publications as “dregs, offscouring, riff-raff”7 or useless residue, sediment, excrement, or 1

Thomas Bodley, Reliquiae Bodleiane: Or Some Genuine Remains of Sir Thomas Bodley, Containing his Life, The First Draught of the Statutes of the Publick Library at Oxford, (in English) and a Collection of Letters to Dr. James, &c. (London: John Hartley, 1703), Google Books, http://bit.ly/20NReUa, 277-278. 2 David Rundle, “Cromwell on the Box,” Bonæ Litteræ: Occasional Writing from David Rundle, Renaissance Scholar (blog), January 25, 2015, accessed November 21, 2015, https://bonaelitterae.wordpress.com/2015/01/25/cromwell-on-the-box/, paragraph 3. 3 Eileen Joy, “Nothing Has Yet Been Said: On the Non-Existence of Academic Freedom and the Necessity of Inoperative Community,” punctum books (blog), May 1, 2015, accessed November 21, 2015, http://punctumbooks.com/blog/nothing-has-yet-been-said-on-the-non-existence-ofacademic-freedom-and-the-necessity-of-inoperative-community/, paragraph 10. 4 Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2008), 20-24. 5 Bodley, Reliquiae Bodleiane, 278. 6 Ibid. 7 Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “baggage,” accessed November 21, 2015, http://www.oed.com.ezproxy.achcu.talonline.ca/view/Entry/14622?redirectedFrom =baggage.

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scum. Bodley hoped to bar such “riff raff Books” from his library shelves,8 and although “Bodley’s restrictive acquisitions policy did not prevail for long,”9 distrust of popular literature in academic circles has continued. In a blog dated 25 January 2015, historian David Rundle seems baffled at how a living, popular novelist like Hilary Mantel has eluded the gatekeepers of the British Library. Mantel’s painted likeness hangs “at the top of the stairs to the British Library’s Manuscripts Reading Room. How has she become such a household name? Has she filled a gap left by the end of J. K. Rowling’s time as favourite author?” 10 Rundle’s leading questions imply that Bodley’s worst fears have been realized in the library and in contemporary culture. Proliferating on the scale of Bodley’s “infinite Number, that are daily Printed,” popular authors achieve a level of influence unmatched by authoritative academically-mediated culture. Traces of the agonistic contest between academically-mediated culture and contagiously-circulating popular culture exist in Rundle’s reference to Mantel as “a household name,” suggesting that a name everyone knows may be less authoritative for its notoriety: if a book is popular in the home, is it “worthy the Keeping”? Linking Mantel’s historical fiction to Rowling’s fantasy fiction insinuates that Mantel’s Tudor England is as fantastic as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It is understandable that a historian would bristle at an inaccuracy like the printing date of Niccolò Machiavelli’s Il Principe; however, a date-based quibble does not diminish the deeply human impact of Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell narratives.11 Suggesting that Mantel’s status as “favourite author” is something like a passing fad diminishes the new and the popular merely for being new and popular without articulating how the older, authorized humanities sources actually impact twenty-first century human beings. Behind Rundle’s bemusement at the popular impact of Rowling and Mantel may be larger and understandable concerns for humanities programs, which, ironically, have yet to more fully engage with the 8

Bodley, Reliquiae Bodleiane, 82. Lukas Erne, Shakespeare and the Book Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 194. 10 Rundle, paragraph 3. 11 Hayden White, “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact” in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 1715-1717, 1722-1723. The power of stories is not necessarily in their coincidence with fact, and the operations of academic historians may be closer to storytelling than to science as the work of Hayden White has shown. Historians “emplot” a narrative from historical evidence, and how events are emplotted changes the narrative arc. 9

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complex diversity of human experience that should constitute humanities study. People queue up to buy popular fiction and to attend fan conventions like Comic-Con in ways they have not been queuing up for humanities study. We could hide from this trend, but what would happen if we worked to change it? Dichotomous thinking reduces humanities studies into either/or binary contests when humanities could be enriched by the more inclusive “and . . . and . . . and” approaches of affect theory.12 What sea-changes could be effected by employing and deploying theory rather than criticism? What if we ask not if a text is “worthy the Keeping”13 or worth the excluding but how texts move people? In their “magic” of moving people, Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell narratives and Rowling’s Harry Potter narratives are a lot like William Shakespeare’s dramas. A pop-cultural dramatist before he became a central figure in the literary canon, Shakespeare’s popularity derives not from his historical accuracy (which can occasionally be as incredible as Hogwarts 14 ) but from his human impact. Like Mantel and Rowling, Shakespeare moves people, not only to read/watch but also to actively engage in fandom. Fandom is an amorphous and flexible community of people who share a common devotion to literary, film, or television works, and they often express their devotion through creative para-textual assemblages. For example, fans create art depicting their favorite characters; they retell their favorite episodes, dress up as their favorite characters (cosplay), and they fill narrative gaps in/between/across beloved works by writing fanfiction. Fanfics circulate, rekindling interest in canon by building the fan-base and by inciting debate. Through active, spirited, and even dangerous engagements, fans preserve canon through the work of fandom. This work includes artistically- or corporate-driven television and film productions like The Tudors or Wolf Hall, A Man for All Seasons, or The Other Boleyn Girl. 12

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1987; reprint Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2011), 25. 13 Bodley, Reliquiae Bodleiane, 278. 14 William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington, 3rd ed. (New York: Pearson/Longman, 2008). For example, The Life of King Henry the Eighth airbrushes four of Henry’s wives out of history, and through the magic of Shakespeare’s hindsight, Cranmer, in christening the infant Elizabeth, foresees Queen Elizabeth’s prosperous reign and future death as “the maiden phoenix . . . [whose] ashes new-create another heir” (V.4.41-42). In Henry IV (Part 1) Shakespeare transforms Owen Glendower into a sorcerer, magicking him into an “‘unhistorical’ scene; as invented by Shakespeare, Glendower is host throughout” (note on V.1 805).

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Regardless of historical accuracy, these productions raise awareness of and interest in Renaissance England. Instead of seeing fandom as a threat to humanities studies, what if we think of fandom as an opportunity? Fans invest a great deal of time, effort, thought, and money in the stories and fandoms they love, and fandom’s ethos, enthusiasm, and effort could be a model to humanities faculty and students. Academic fandom is a type of co-performance in which texts, whether canon or “fanon,” become a live event or a playing field.15 Bringing texts to life through (re)performing, (re)reading, (re)writing, and/or (re)viewing them can be dangerous. Enacting this type of fandom decentralizes authority through active co-performativity in which it is not possible to isolate academic, popular, group, and personal influences. In the classroom, we focus on creating enriching connections rather than getting it right. We cultivate “danger” by embracing Shakespeare’s Henry the Eighth alongside our experiences with The Tudors and The Other Boleyn Girl, by illuminating Shakespeare’s Wars of the Roses dramas with Game of Thrones, by inviting our experiences with Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies to resonate through our readings of Renaissance depictions of Thomas Cromwell. This type of co-performativity worlds a stage/field/ classroom on which text and reader work together to create not authorized and agonistic but personalized and open-ended meanings that involve and evolve beyond the closure of a given text. This means there is no single text and no single reader but assemblages of texts and readers that unfold and infold readers and texts, bodies and ideas, in intellectual and creative experiences. The “something rich and strange” of popular fandom is what students hope to find in their university study; they hope to experience the study of literature as fandom that both takes them out of this world and empowers them to change the world. Such observations are not condemnations of students; instead, they are opportunities for teachers. Fandom is not purely recreational or imaginative; it is also socially conscious, engaging in the work of holding texts and society to account. Teaching dangerously both challenges and affirms the continued relevance of early modern texts in the contemporary world by empowering students to ask questions like these: To what extent, if any, do early modern texts matter in a diverse, complex, and unequal world? How exactly are the writings of (mostly) European men who lived in a classist, misogynist, homophobic, xenophobic, and religiously intolerant world still relevant 15

Text denotes any narrative form from Drayton’s poem to W. S.’s drama, Mantel’s novels, television adaptations of Wolf Hall as well as series like The Tudors. Text also includes fan fiction, song lyrics, personal blogs, and student writing.

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today? 16 How can these old problems and old texts help to reimagine academic study and contemporary society? This chapter describes one example of teaching dangerously through assemblages of canon and fandom, traditional and non-traditional literary depictions of the historical character Thomas Cromwell (c.1485-1540): Michael Drayton’s poem The Legend of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, the apocryphal “W. S.” drama The Life and Death of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, and Hilary Mantel’s novels Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies.

Early modern canon and fanon Michael Drayton and the mysterious “W. S.” are writers of fan fiction: that is, fiction written about previously written works, settings, or characters by someone other than the original author. Shakespeare’s history plays are similarly a type of fan fiction about Plantagenet and/or Tudor characters whose stories are reopened and retold; for example, the monstrous character of King Richard III in Henry VI (Part Three) and Richard III or the spider-like character of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in Henry the Eighth. Like fan fiction writers, Drayton and “W. S.” re-open the character of Thomas Cromwell and retell his story, while printers and later editors contribute to the Cromwell fanon by recirculating and publishing, broadening the fan base. Whereas an anthology authorizes a version of a text, teaching dangerously empowers students to decentralize the authority of anthologists and editors by performing as unauthorized anthologists and editors and by considering the politics inherent in anthologies and editions. Performing as anthologists, students seek out Renaissance texts about Thomas Cromwell; performing as editors, students grapple with multiple versions of Drayton’s Legend of Thomas Cromwell and the “W. S.” drama The Life and Death of Thomas Cromwell available through Early English Books Online database, Google Books, and Project Gutenberg.17 As they anthologize and edit, students consider the similarities among the various versions and think about how/if these differences suggest an “authorized” text and the limitations of authorizing a single text over creating a textual assemblage; they also consider which text versions would be more likely

16

Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 105. Students also compare the biographical accounts of authors in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography with the changing biographical accounts accompanying printed and/or anthologized versions from the eighteenth century through the early twentieth century. 17

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to appeal to audiences and to what extent they might inspire fandom and/or fanfics. As students perform as anthologists and editors, they also uncover the history of anthologizing and editing. Both Cromwell texts have experienced two popular afterlives, first in the late eighteenth-century flowering of the English literary canon that sought to inspire a type of popular fandom in Englishness through classic English texts. Thomas F. Bonnell has described the explosion of multi-volume poetry collections and author biographies that mass-produced and marketed English classics to the public between 1765 and 1810. This textual explosion cascaded into Victorian projects like the Oxford English Dictionary and the Early English Text Society, while the late twentieth- and early twenty-first century have seen the mass, digital re-publication of these canonical English works in online versions and platforms.

Michael Drayton and The Legend of Great Cromwell First published in 1607 and 1609, Drayton’s Cromwell is a poetic fanfic in ottava rima.18 It was anthologized in A Complete Edition of the Poets of England volume the third containing Drayton Carew and Suckling 1794.19 In the index to the 1794 printing, 20 Cromwell is curiously sandwiched between twelve heroic epistles and an eclectic group of ten poems ranging from the historical to the fantastic. 18 Drayton’s poem and the “W. S.” drama were OCR-ed and concordanced for further textual analysis. Drayton’s Cromwell is 7,369 words in length. The “W. S.” drama is 14,821 words in length. 19 Michael Drayton, The Legend of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex in A Complete Edition of the Poets of England Volume the Third Containing Drayton Carew and Suckling (Edinburgh: Bell and Bradfute and L. Mundell, 1793), Google Books, http://bit.ly/1oijQ9S, 217-226. Thomas F. Bonnell, The Most Disreputable Trade: Publishing the Classics of English Poetry 1765-1810 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 205-206. Bonnell has noted the change in printers and titles from A Complete Edition of the Poets of England to The Works of the British Poets, which he has characterized as “a biographical muddle” because the ESTC lists these works separately, respectively under t2891 and t152376, “while noting these works are probably the same.” Compounding the muddle, the date listed on the cited version is 1793 although Bonnell dates publication to 1794. 20 Francis Meres, Palladis Tamia: Wit’s Treasury: A Comparative Discourse of our English Poets with the Greek, Latin, and Italian Poets (1598), accessed November 21, 2015, http://www.elizabethanauthors.org/palladis.htm, paragraph 16. Meres observes that Drayton’s “Heroical Epistles” were modeled on Ovid’s Heroides: “Michael Drayton doth imitate Ovid in his England’s Heroical Epistles.”

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In Drayton’s poem, Cromwell is a posthumous narrator who comes back from the dead to protest his untimely death in the manner of Mantel’s chapter title: “The Dead Complain of their Burial.”21 Drayton’s Cromwell should not be resident in “the sad dwelling of th’ untimely dead.” His ghostly self cannot rest quietly, and he speaks to ease his “troubled heart” and to defend his “hated name.”22 Cromwell is mis-categorized as base by the social hierarchy, but Cromwell exposes the baseness inherent in the socalled nobility. Cromwell suggests the hallmark of nobility or baseness is not a hierarchic label but how people engage with the world, how they move. Drayton’s Cromwell makes a similar observation that “to be always pertinently good, / Follows not still the greatnes of our blood.”23 The new generations of nobility do not support the Reformation for spiritual reasons but for base and ignoble acquisitions. Nobles like the Duke of Norfolk and the Duke of Suffolk merely wish to reappropriate “What their great zeal had lavished before, / On her strong hand violently lay’d, / Preying on that they gave for to be pray’d.”24 Cromwell calls out the baseness of their actions as “ignorant and vile . . . giving yourselves unto ignoble things, / Base I proclaim you, though deriv’d from kings.”25 Though Cromwell is derived from Putney rather than from kings, he is “Belov’d of heaven, although the earth doth hate him.”26 Too generous or politic to fully blame Henry, Drayton’s poem ends swiftly: Cromwell is arrested and executed in a space of eight lines. He moves from the council chamber to Tower Hill where “Thus the great’st man of England made his end.”27

“W. S.” and Thomas, Lord Cromwell Evocatively tagged with “written by W. S.,” the drama The True Chronicle of the Whole Life and Death of Thomas Lord Cromwell was entered in the Stationer’s Register on 11 August 1602. Thomas, Lord Cromwell was printed twice, in 1602 and in 1613, presumably to capitalize on the popularity of Henry VIII. In the late nineteenth-century, Thomas, Lord

21

Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2008), 272. Drayton, The Legend of Thomas Cromwell, 217. 23 Ibid, 218. 24 Ibid, 223. 25 Ibid, 218. 26 Ibid, 219. 27 Ibid, 226. 22

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Cromwell was printed in William Hazlitt’s Shakespeare’s Doubtful Plays.28 The “W. S.” drama depicts the young Cromwell as a talented scholar whose father works “to keep . . . [him] like a gentlemen.”29 He values books and study above wealth,30 saying that “the time will come I shall hold gold as trash.”31 Headhunted by the English merchant Master Bowser to serve as secretary for the Antwerp merchants, Cromwell embarks on his European travels.32 In a sub-plot, the evil English merchant Bagot seeks to ruin fellow merchant Master Banister and his entire family. In Bagot’s despicable plot, Banister’s body will “rot in prison,” and Bagot hopes to “after hear his wife to hang herself, / And all his children die from want of food.”33 Having fled to the continent, Mrs. Banister briefly pleads her case to Cromwell, who offers to speak to Bagot on her behalf and gives her “angels” to ease her family’s poverty.34 As Bagot is a jewel-thief, this subplot resolves in his apprehension and execution.35 Cromwell’s travels take him to Italy with his servant Hodge. Robbed, Cromwell and Hodge seek alms, and the merchant Frescobald offers them assistance. While in Italy, Cromwell helps the Duke of Bedford escape. Back in England, Cromwell’s status rises, but he does not forget his poor background, publicly inviting his father, the Seeleys, and Frescobald (who has fallen on hard times) to a resplendent feast. Although the Duke of Bedford does try to send Cromwell a letter warning of danger, false witnesses hired by Stephen Gardiner accuse Cromwell, and Cromwell’s own law prevents his speaking out. Cromwell is executed shortly before Rafe Sadler arrives with a reprieve.36 Just as Cromwell inspired Drayton and the mysterious “W. S.” to reopen and retell fan versions of his story, Cromwell’s character has likewise inspired more contemporary writers such as Robert Bolt and Hilary Mantel to contribute to Cromwell fandom. Rather than fetishizing the early modern texts and rubbishing popular texts, teaching dangerously 28

Anonymous, The Supplementary Works of William Shakespeare Comprising his Poems and Doubtful Plays, ed. William Hazlitt (London: Routledge, Warne, and Routledge, 1860), Google Books, http://bit.ly/1Q23y1u, 165-205. 29 Hazlitt, The Supplementary Works (I.2.169/1). 30 Ibid (I.i.168/10). 31 Ibid (I.1.169/15). 32 Ibid (I.2.1-31). 33 Ibid (II.2.1-7). 34 Ibid (II.1.1-5; II.1.26-29). 35 Ibid (II.3.46-49). 36 Ibid (V.5.7).

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puts the past into play with the present, implicating students as directorsactors-writers-players-fans in the unfolding drama of the course via the “logic of the AND” of affect theory.37 In the classroom the “logic of the AND” means breaking out of binary logic. Breaking out of the either/or means adding options that transform agonistic struggles into learning opportunities. To break out of oppositional power struggles in binary pairs, we embrace triads and exponentiate them—for example, the “W. S.” drama, Drayton’s poem, and Mantel’s novels, or the jobs of anthologist, editor, and fan. Initially, students find all the extra variables slightly disorienting if not unsettling. Then, as students venture beyond either/or methods, they begin to appreciate the sheer complexity of human experience and the activist potential of academic fandom. In thinking about what matters in the classroom, students veer into thinking about what matters beyond the classroom because they do not have to choose either the classroom or the world. How exactly are the writings of (mostly) European men who lived in an intolerant world still relevant today? How can these old texts and old inequalities empower our classrooms and our societies to effect humane and creative sea-changes? Although we discuss the politics and perils of thinking outside the arborescent, phallologocentric methods dominating academic study, overwhelmingly students embrace the sheer creative opportunity that teaching dangerously affords. Students regularly comment that this is the type of study they hoped for when they signed up as English majors. They note that these approaches inspire them in ways that ordinary literary study does not. Students express joy at not being forced to choose between “geeking out,” “fanboying,” and “fangirling” or being a proper scholar. Affect theory’s “logic of the AND” embraces knowledge not as a final product and the study of that knowledge not as an either/or dichotomy but as processes that keep opening new questions, performances, and fandoms.

Theorizing popular and academic fandom: keeping it real Rather than asking what a text means, affect theory describes how textual bodies move and consequently how they move other bodies, human and non-human, ideal and real. Deleuzo-Guattarian strands of affect theory are revolutionary in the ways that a virus is revolutionary to an organism: “A virus . . . can take flight, move into the cells of an entirely different species, but not without bringing with it ‘genetic information’ from the 37

Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 25.

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first host (for example . . . a type C virus, with its double connection to baboon DNA and the DNA of certain kinds of domestic cats).”38 Ideas are also viral bodies, and the viral transmission of ideas can have material impacts on real organisms. Cardinal Wolsey fights the outbreak of heresy by burning textual bodies: “a holocaust of the English language, and so much rag-rich paper consumed, and so much black printers’ ink.”39 Sir Thomas More, in contrast, burns textual and human bodies in his efforts to eradicate the virulent outbreak of Protestantism that eventually changes the religious and political structure of England. Because students have grown up in a world of viral culture, affect theory’s contagious connections make sense to them. More’s arborescent efforts to contain and control heresy are limited just as are contemporary efforts to regulate the viral circulation of online content. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari begin “with movement rather than stasis, with process always underway rather than position taken.” 40 In literary terms, we would call this in medias res, in the middle of things, but it is not a middle between binaries like beginning/end; this processual middle is an ongoing collision of bodies—viral, textual, ideal, material— in constant change. Change is not a representational idealized image or a binary opposition to stasis; rather it is paradoxical forces that operate simultaneously yet asynchronously through bodies, culture, and nature: the arborescent, the rhizomatic, and change are one of Deleuze and Guattari’s complicated and complicating triads. These non-static and always changing triads make processual middles. In the classroom, the moving middle created by the arborescent, rhizomatic, and change (also called the line of flight) can be illustrated by the different Cromwells we encounter. Arborescent structuring forces are in action as Cromwell moves toward someone we think we know or understand; however, what we think we know of Cromwell in the “W. S.” drama deterritorializes with the Drayton poem, and again with Mantel’s two novels and the televised Wolf Hall. Cromwell is not a single body but an assemblage of bodies. In these texts, Cromwell’s movements often eclipse his identifiable features. His transversal or rhizomatic movements allow him to think outside the tree and behave more like grass or the weather. Rhizomatic movements are like superpowers that allow a body to move in unscripted and unpredictable ways only describable in retrospect. 38

Ibid, 10. Mantel, Wolf Hall, 40. 40 Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, “An Inventory of Shimmers,” in The Affect Theory Reader, eds. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 4. 39

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But alongside Cromwell’s many bodies and rhizomatic superpowers, there is another “and”: change is always happening on numerous fronts in the different time zones of Cromwell’s narratives and in the “now” of the classroom that is always constituting a different, immanent reality for each student. If arborescent approaches limit, grid, and foreclose Cromwell’s story or reality into plottable points, as some academic approaches do, adding rhizomatic potential and ongoing change means that Cromwell’s story is, like reality, never authorized or closed but open to new performances whether on stage, in class, or through fandom. We are in the moving middle between what has happened, what is happening, and what could happen. The arborescent focuses on what has happened and limits what is possible to what has already happened. Deleuze and Guattari challenge the dualistic/dichotomous thinking of arborescent systems. Tree-type bodies have dominated Western thought, and these systemized bodies duplicate themselves through code, whether DNA, language, or ideas. Codes are also called tracings, and they reproduce models of subjectivity, genealogy, and memory that despotically impose “the verb to be” 41 on bodies. Arborescent systems are like the social hierarchies of Tudor England based on ancient genealogies of family or religion: filiation. The problem with Thomas Cromwell is that he “is increasingly where he shouldn’t be,”42 defying the expectations of filiation. No one quite knows what or who he is, 43 and the Cardinal delights in fabricating stories about Cromwell’s origins. 44 Stephen Gardener dismisses Cromwell’s lack of filiation by saying, “whatever it is you call yourself, these days.” Cromwell responds, “‘A person’ . . . ‘The Duke of Norfolk says I’m a person.’”45 As a person cropping up where he should not be, Cromwell is like a virus in the way he forms unscripted, non-hierarchic conjunctions with other bodies. Also called a plateau or multiplicity, 46 the rhizome creates alliances that effect real change. The easiest way to illustrate both the alliances and the types of changes that take place in the classroom is with a quote from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Harry is questioning whether his conversation with Dumbledore is real or just in his head. Dumbledore replies: “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should 41

Ibid, 12-13, 16, 20, 25. Mantel, Wolf Hall, 255. 43 Ibid, 168. 44 Ibid, 73, 218, 247. 45 Ibid, 232. 46 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 22. 42

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that mean that it is not real?” First, rhizomatic alliances like a Harry Potter quote to explain Cromwell do not follow the arborescent rules of genealogy. Not following the arborescent rules is the only way to create anything new. Second, students often wonder if they have figured out Drayton’s “real” intention or if they have discovered who a character like Cromwell really is, as if their internal experiences with the texts are somehow not real, as if textual reality is external to what is in their heads. Reality, however, is not just in constant movement: what is real now will be a memory later that will be real but will not necessarily coincide with exterior reality. In affect theory, reality is immanent and co-composed (not just written but made) by each body’s movements with itself (arborescent, rhizomatic, and change), other bodies (human, textual, ideal), and worlds (classroom, office, society). Memories are bodies; texts are bodies; we are bodies. In this way, bodies are always unpredictably multiple in their conjunctions with other bodies. Unlike the tree, which is reproducible and localizable, the rhizome is irreducible and un-localizable like the well-traveled Cromwell: “He is a person, he is a presence. He knows how to edge blackly into a room so that you don’t see him.”47 Anti-genealogy and anti-memory, the rhizome is “detachable, connectable, reversible, and modifiable,” with “multiple entryways and exits.”48 Rhizome-like, Cromwell survives “Walter’s boots,” “Cesare’s Summer, and a score of bad nights in back alleys.”49 Although Cromwell is known for his accountancy and memory, he is likewise known for his radical creativity and flexibility: “There are some people in this world who like everything squared up and precise, and there are those who will allow some drift at the margins. He is both these kinds of person.”50 Like Cromwell, the rhizome is made up of conjunctions: “the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, ‘and . . . and . . . and . . .’ This conjunction carries enough force to shake and uproot the verb ‘to be.’”51 Cromwell not only changes the “to be” for his own life, he eventually forges the language-based tools to change the law, as former Queen Katherine observes: “‘I begin to understand you.’ She nods. ‘The blacksmith makes his own tools.’”52 Like the rhizome, Cromwell embraces “a logic of the AND,” overthrowing “ontology, do[ing] away with

47

Mantel, Wolf Hall, 163. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 21. 49 Mantel, Wolf Hall, 92. 50 Ibid, 228. 51 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 25. 52 Mantel, Wolf Hall, 291. 48

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foundations, nullify[ing] endings and beginnings”53 in his own life and in Tudor England. The power of affect theory comes from forming rhizomes that deterritorialize arborescent power structures. Both Deleuze and Guattari sought to deterritorialize power relationships in their work: Deleuze was a philosopher who resisted the philosophical patriarchy to cite fringe figures like Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), while Guattari challenged the psychoanalytic patriarchy. Through abolition of the doctor/patient hierarchy, Guattari sought to “promote human relations that do not automatically fall into roles or stereotypes.”54 Teaching dangerously is less authoritarian and more experimental, moving away from the teacher/student relationship to co-composers in learning. Cromwell exasperates the king by refusing a pedigree constructed by the heralds,55 choosing instead to create his own family assemblage. When his son Gregory is born, Cromwell decides thus: “I shall be as tender to you as my father was not to me. For what’s the point of breeding children, if each generation does not improve on what went before?”56 Cromwell welcomes alliances—nieces, nephews, wards, kitchen boys, and women like Helen Barr—into his family assemblage. When his nephew Richard asks to take the Cromwell name, Cromwell reflects, “It matters what name we choose, what name we make.”57 Without a birthdate, Cromwell does not have an astrological fate, 58 and he takes the opportunity to change reality. For someone like Thomas More, the arborescent system totalizes reality and imposes it on bodies. More is fixated on beginnings and endings; for someone like Thomas Cromwell, reality is immanent, unfolding in/with/through the body as it encounters other bodies in the ongoingness of lived experience. Through Cromwell, students engage with the not-yet-ness of what he/they can do in the present.

Affect theory and language Under the influence of affect theory, literary studies can sound more like science, and sentences become more like bumper cars, particle colliders, or pinball machines with words piling up, colliding with, and bouncing off each other in unpredictable directions that release unforeseeable energies. 53

Ibid. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, x. 55 Mantel, Wolf Hall, 218. 56 Ibid, 43-44. 57 Ibid 178. 58 Ibid, 334-335. 54

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Compound prepositions such as “in/with/through/beyond” convey complex movements that happen at greater speeds and in more directions than language can express. Hyphenation signals co-performance of word forms and the contingency of play underway like “a-structure,” “a-system,” “this-ness,” “not-yet-ness”; similarly, abstract nouns like “ongoingness” and “unboundedness” help articulate an ongoing state of play and/or an unfolding experience beyond words. Present progressive tenses play catchup with movement as it flies past. Finally, the light-switch feature of the forward slash flicks words on and off like roll/role, exploiting both the “either” and the “or” potential, while prefixes like “re-” bend time or initiate process, redirecting words to articulate beyond their normal denotations. Like the “re-” prefix, the prefix “em-” allows arborescent language to move more rhizomatically, adding force and more fully potentializing the noun and verb forms of play.59 With play, “em-” can “put (something) into or upon what is denoted by the n[oun]”; for example, in Wolf Hall, Cromwell emplays Cardinal Wolsey’s eviction from York Place: “It’s hard to escape the feeling that this is a play, and the cardinal is in it: the Cardinal and his Attendants. And that it is a tragedy.”60 The prefix “em-” can “bring into a certain condition or state” or “furnish with something,” thus bringing texts into a state of play and/or furnishing them with movement. As a prefix, “em-” can express “an additional sense of in.” This additional sense would be described as “so meta” on social media. In a news article, Ben Zimmer remarks on “the meta-ness of our current culture, where everything, it seems, can instantly become self-referential, self-conscious, and self-parodying. Observing the frenzied feedback loop of social networking and electronic communication can feel like looking through a dizzying hall of mirrors.”61 In the tragic emplayment of the York Place eviction and the Cardinal’s humiliation, there are additional “meta” moments for Cromwell. In the barge, Cromwell imagines their drama as an “allegory of Fortune” in which “Decayed Magnificence sits in the centre. Cavendish, 59

Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “em,” accessed November 30, 2015, http://www.oed.com.ezproxy.achcu.talonline.ca/view/Entry/60686?rskey=6xr6bc& result=4&isAdvanced=false. 60 Mantel, Wolf Hall, 51. 61 Ben Zimmer, “Dude, This Headline Is So Meta,” The Boston Globe, May 6, 2012, accessed November 30, 2015, http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2012/05/05/dude-this-headline-meta-dude-thisheadline-meta/it75G5CSqi82NtoQHIucEP/story.html.

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leaning at his right like a Virtuous Councillor, mutters words of superfluous and belated advice, to which the sorry magnate inclines his head; he, like a Tempter, is seated on the left.”62 When the barge journey ends in Putney, “the cardinal kneeling in the dirt”63 takes on a dizzying “meta” afterlife in two emplayments: the Gray’s Inn drama64 and a year later “‘The Cardinal’s Descent into Hell’” performed at Hampton Court.65 Although the Gray’s Inn and Hampton Court performances are farces, for Cromwell they are self-referential reminders of the Cardinal’s downfall. Finally, the prefix “em-” can express “more or less intensive force,” as it will later in Bring up the Bodies when Mantel’s Cromwell emplays the drama that sends to their own real-world hells the play-acting “handdevils” and “foot-devils” who carried the cardinal off.66 As affect theory focuses on forces operating on bodies rather than representational meanings, these linguistic special effects like the “em-” prefix are essential as language scrambles and torques to convey multivalent, resonating forces. With this background and with the theory to follow, our classroom fandoms begin. Depending on the students’ year, this background and theory is followed up by Deleuze and Guattari’s “Rhizome” chapter, selections from The Affect Theory Reader, and selections from Parables for the Virtual.

Affect: how things move Affects are not just emotions. They are the beyond-words, non-human forces of the natural world like gravity, tides, or forces that shift tectonic plates, create weather systems, or cause calamities: these affects flux, creating and destroying, organizing and disorganizing. These natural forces reverberate in/with/through the forces driving human cultures, and their complex interference patterns make distinctions like nature or culture impossible. In Drayton’s poem and in the “W. S.” drama, Cromwell’s birth exerts a gravitational force on his world. At Cromwell’s birth “Twice flow’d proud Thames, as at my coming woo’d / Striking the wond’ring borderers with fear, / And the pale genius of that aged flood.”67 In the “W.S.” drama, it is Wolsey’s birth that impacts the world, and Cromwell reflects on the raw, non-human forces that create and destroy culturally 62

Mantel, Wolf Hall 55. Ibid, 64, 57-61. 64 Ibid, 174-176. 65 Ibid, 266-270. 66 Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2012), 268. 67 Drayton, 218, 17-19. 63

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defined hierarchies, which are subject to forces greater than themselves.68 Whether they are called “time and fortune” or “fate,” these raw structuring and de-structuring forces of affect mean the world is always a moving, processual middle. In this middle, “riff-raff” and “minions” are rising like the tide; “noble trains” are receding in the swirling, Thames-like ebb and flux of affect. Mantel’s Cromwell senses these reverberative and reverberating affects when the mathematician Kratzer outlines Copernicus’s theory: the world is turning on its axis, and nobody in the room denies it. Under your feet you can feel the tug and heft of it, the rocks groaning to tear away from their beds, the oceans tilting and slapping at their shores, the giddy lurch of Alpine passes, the forests of Germany ripping at their roots to be free. The world is not what it was when he and Vaughan were young, it is not what it was even in the cardinal’s day.69

Affects are not just external forces operating on or registering in Thomas Cromwell’s bodily experience. Affects are also forces arising from his body as it encounters other bodies of all kinds: textual bodies, ideal bodies, animal bodies, object bodies. These body-based affects are a complex and unknowable envelope of forces tethered to individual bodies, and not just human bodies. These affects move the body and “put the drive in bodily drives.”70 Classroom mini-lectures describe the body’s envelope of affects as a swarm of bees, a halo of angels (not all of them good), or a cloud of mythological beings. This envelope is far more complex than psychoanalytically-narrated drives like sex or death. These body-emergent affects are beyond language and, in that way, are unknown because the unconscious cannot be known through language; it emerges through movement: “The issue is never to reduce the unconscious or to interpret it or to make it signify according to a tree model. The issue is to produce the unconscious . . . the rhizome is precisely this production of the unconscious.”71 External and body-based affects operate in/through/with bodies above and below the conscious level. 72 Because affects swarm, flux, and imbricate, finding an original cause for any single affect is impossible: affect is another moving middle in which bodies are embroiled. When a body with its own envelope of affects comes into 68

Hazlitt, The Supplementary Works, (I. 2.30-48). Mantel, Wolf Hall, 495. 70 Gregg and Seigworth, “An Inventory of Shimmers,” 6. 71 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 18. 72 Ibid, 281. 69

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proximity with another body with its envelope of affects, the swarms of bees, halo of angels, or mythological beings interact and move each other, toward or away from actions, experiences, things, or bodies.

Bodies: how we roll/role Bodies, and not just human bodies but animals, objects, and texts, are constantly being impacted but also impacting others. In affect theory, this is the body’s ability “to affect and be affected.”73 The openness of a body to affect catalyzes the immanent and personal engagement with the body. Affect theory allows students to personally engage with course content because it accepts that embodiment is not just about thinking but feeling and moving. Bodies are irreducible to points on a grid, to names in a story, to positions in a hierarchy; they are always in process, in the middle. Deleuze and Guattari have argued that signifying systems, which they call “the great dualism machines,” have falsely divided the ideal from the material, the mind from the body: “The question is fundamentally that of the body—the body they steal from us in order to fabricate opposable organisms.” 74 This assertion, based in the philosophy of Spinoza, has catalyzed affect theory. Whereas Western philosophy has privileged consciousness (what the mind can do) over the body, Spinoza famously focuses on what the body can do. “We speak of consciousness and its degrees, of the will and its effects, of the thousand ways of moving the body, of dominating the body and the passions—but we do not even know what a body can do.”75 Deleuze and Guattari assert: “We know nothing about a body until we know what it can do, in other words what its affects are, and how they can or cannot enter into composition with other affects.”76 These external and internal affects compose a body’s reality, playing roles and rolling in/with/through emplayments. Through emplayments, bodies become live stages on/with/through which the class unfolds through co-performance. With students, bodies like Cromwell’s in Wolf Hall and in the TV series are where possibility (arborescence), potential (rhizomatic), and change unfold through ongoing collisions with other bodies like the “W. S.” drama, Drayton’s poem, or Bring up the Bodies: this is academic fandom.

73

Ibid, 261. Ibid, 276. 75 Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (1970), trans. Robert Hurley (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988), 17-18. 76 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 257. 74

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Arborescent signifying systems stop movement and miss reality because they position bodies according to systematic and hierarchic grids: their narratives are set to develop linearly through the biological time-line attached to their materiality, through the cultural time-line attached to their emotional, interpersonal, intellectual, economic, and/or social development. In Wolf Hall the Duke of Norfolk cannot connect Cromwell to any social hierarchy: “Damn it all, Cromwell, why are you such a . . . person? . . . He waits, smiling. He knows what the duke means. He is a person, he is a presence. He knows how to edge blackly into a room so that you don’t see him.”77 Cromwell finds it amusing that Norfolk cannot categorize or grid him any more than Cromwell can categorize or grid himself, and he enjoys being off the grid and “where he shouldn’t be.”78 This externally-imposed subjectivity is directed, mediated, and explained by language; however, it can only explain a version of what happened to some people after it has happened. Brian Massumi calls this back-formation. 79 Because Thomas More cannot think outside the hierarchic grid, he never sees Cromwell as a threat until too late: “He [i.e., Cromwell] thinks, I remembered you, Thomas More, but you didn’t remember me. You never even saw me coming.” 80 David Rundle has taken umbrage at Mantel’s depiction of More “as a man so ensnared in his conservatism that he cannot tolerate modernity. By some paradoxical twist, that cosmopolitan scholar becomes a parochial stick-in-the-mud, suspicious of Cromwell’s well-travelled career.”81 As a humanist, More thinks in arborescent terms and fails to adapt to a rhizomatically-changing reality. Embodied subjectivity moves, and for Deleuze and Guattari and Massumi, the body is non-unitary and always in process. Conscious knowing moves between moments when bodies, like Thomas Cromwell, are self-aware and agential and moments when they are lost in an experience beyond the self in a process called becoming. In becoming, a body temporarily loses a sense of self in connecting with the forces, bodies, and things in non-language based experience. These moments are like vortices. Everything is implicated: weather, space, mood, matter in a temporary thisness (a haecceity): a magical creative act in which map becomes a verb that creates a new world. Like the magical world of Hogwarts, affect theory moves and worlds the impossible 77

Mantel, Wolf Hall, 163. Ibid, 255. 79 Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 7. 80 Mantel, Wolf Hall, 640. 81 Rundle, “Cromwell,” paragraph 3. 78

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through the magic (sometimes dark magic) of becomings, the spontaneous and transitory movements of texts and what these movements world in the classroom. Because becomings are achronological, non-verbal, and nonscripted, bodies are only aware of them when returning to self-awareness. As memories, becomings are bodies that can feed into future action to change arborescent systems. Through discussions, students explore moments when they lose a sense of themselves and get caught up in the story; students also do short writing assignments that give becomings to characters, metaphors, or events that are foreclosed by arborescent ways of thinking. Elements from Drayton’s poem and the “W. S.” drama collide with Mantel’s novels; this collision begins with an in-class emplayment prompt: “Find bodies in these texts and make them move like the flying keys in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. How do these bodies move beyond their arborescent roles of being and into unpredictable becomings? How do they take you beyond basic symbolic meaning? How do you form a rhizome with them, and how can they form rhizomes with other bodies to world something completely different?” Students remark that exercises like this help them move with/in/through the unpredictable dangers of affect theory. What would an example of the dangerous fandoms created during an in-class emplayment that drops us in the middle look like? In Wolf Hall the peacock-feather wings that Cromwell weaves for his little daughter Grace initiate a becoming-angel but also a becoming-immortal. Becoming is not about “imaginary resemblances between terms or symbolic analogies”82 nor about playing a role but about rolling or moving at the speed of what a body is becoming, and in becoming-angel, the angel becomes something else: us. 83 We give Mantel’s Cromwell and James Frain and Mark Rylance wings. Our in-class employment plumes move us with Cromwell’s peacock feathers at the speed of unmaking and loss: bright feathers unfurling darkness. “She walked up the staircase, her plumes rustling, her feathers fading to black.”84 Grace in Mantel, Grace on TV, Grace in/with/through us. For Cromwell, as for Daedalus, wing-making moves at the speed of mortality; Icarus, like Grace, plummets out of being, imploding Cromwell into a black hole, without Grace/outwith grace. At the speed of murder, we abet Cromwell’s peacock-feather wings torturing Mark Smeaton into

82

Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 260. Ibid, 258. 84 Mantel, Wolf Hall, 176. 83

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confession,85 while Grace also transmigrates into a killer in her becomingfalcon.86 Cromwell worlds his lost daughters, his wife, and his sister as falcons in his mews; his long-dead loved ones return to him as predators. Grace returns to grip Cromwell’s glove, while Anne Cromwell’s becoming-falcon allows her to return to Rafe Sadler’s glove.87 Becoming-falcon engenders a “riot of dismemberment” 88 that fluxes into Queen Anne’s own heraldic animal: the falcon. For Anne, the falcon is not symbolic but real; predation is what she does. Like hunting falcons, she takes prey: the head of Sir Thomas More, the “umbles and tripes” of “recalcitrant friars at Tyburn scaffold.” 89 The hangman’s work carving “innards,” “tripes,” and fat beads moves into becoming-fashion as Anne’s gown ruffles and the macabre pearls. Anne’s queenship moves at the speed of the executioner’s blade, sprouting hideous inflorescence (“umbles”) or corpse flowers. These grotesque flowers, the hideous inflorescence, blossom at the speed of predatory and carrion birds in the Bring up the Bodies chapter titles “Falcons” and “Crows.” Anne’s becoming-falcon torments heretics into immortality; her talons carve out the “false hearts” of dissenters.90 During the predatory summer, the king’s hat flies off his head while he is hunting, and our becoming-Cromwell worlds it into a bird of paradise.91 In Cromwell’s becoming-demiurge, he stands on uncreated ground recreating Eden/Hell, reworlding the political and spiritual world as he knows it. This becoming-demiurge, becoming-bird flits back into his becoming-angel, the angel of death, uncreating all who disagree with the King’s marriage to Anne and all who disagree with the King’s new role as head of the church. Cromwell’s becoming-angel, becoming-churchman catalyzes the king’s becoming-pope, while the Italian pope endures a becoming-snow in the Cromwell household.92 In their becoming-snow, the pope and the cardinals melt, evanesce into the afterlife of post-Catholic England. To the young boys that construct the snow pope and cardinals, Cromwell moves at the speed of an angel who transforms their lives with education, safety, shelter, and home. In the “W. S.” drama, Cromwell moves like an angel in his generosity to the Banisters, Seelys, Frescobald, 85

Ibid, 274-279. Mantel, Bring up the Bodies, 3-4. 87 Ibid, 3. 88 Ibid, 3. 89 Ibid, 38. 90 Ibid, 46-47. 91 Ibid, 26. 92 Ibid,131-132. 86

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and his father. Cromwell’s becoming-angel veers into finance when he gives a post-rider “two angels, to buy you spurs and wands. / Post: I thank you, Sir, this will add wings, indeed. / Crom: Gold is of power to make an eagle’s speed.”93 These becomings-angel, becomings-wing engender types of immortality: Cromwell’s loved ones live on, while his enemies enter the afterlife. As Drayton’s premature angel, Cromwell moves beyond his untimely end. Rhizomatically, Cromwell is where he should not be, ignoring the “to be” of arborescent timelines. Cromwell lives on in Renaissance and contemporary texts, in the canon and fanon of Drayton, “W. S.,” and Mantel, resisting being history for becoming-history. These becomings are unstable, unfixed, and always moving; they can spawn other becomings or direct the body back to moments of selfawareness. These movements toward and away from a sense of self depedestal anthropocentric idealism in classroom emplayments.

(Re)leveling the playing field Western thought and humanist culture that (re)arose in the Renaissance are idealistic and representational rather than real. Mediated through language, art, film, memories, objects, and symbols, representation cannot capture either the movement of lived experience or the immanent materiality of real life. Representational, language-based narratives/objects are not reality, even though the arborescent systems seek to construct an overarching view of the world. This overarching view is hierarchical and unequal. Symbols or archetypes like demons, witches, sorcerers, vampires, and werewolves are not real but represent the fears of arborescent society. These are the others that the system shuns, the unprivileged half of the self/other binary, and Deleuze and Guattari use these types of “other” to promote social consciousness. As symbols or archetypes, animals represent what humans fear in themselves, and they function as scapegoats for unacceptable human desires; however, these symbols are not real in the Deleuzo-Guattarian sense but merely projections of bad human behavior.94 These representations reveal the inhumanity IN humanities systems. At least three binaries emerge: first, the human/animal binary that gives humans Adam-and-Eve-like power over creation and power to use and abuse the non-human. Second, the normative/other binary that excludes non-normativity as inferior and, third, the superior/base binary that 93 94

Hazlitt, The Supplementary Works, (II.1.16-18). Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 239-251, 259-260.

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separates those of humanist taste and education from those who are not educated humanists, marking the former as superior and the latter as inferior “baggage” or “riff-raff.” 95 Deleuze and Guattari employ/deploy animals, women, and children, and marginalized others to de-pedestalize anthropocentric knowledge. Becoming-animal, becoming-vampire, becoming-werewolf are all about getting off one’s humanist high-horse.96 All of these becomings involve the shunned, different others who are perceived as inferior by inhumane systems. Deleuze and Guattari make us move away from the flat symbolism of representation/mediation and into inclusive experiences of reality where everyone and everything is equal in becomings. Witches, sorcerers, vampires, werewolves, rats, wolves, “baggage,” and “riff-raff” co-participate in reality-generating experiences of alliance and affinity in an interplaying and em-playing fandom. This type of “magic” is not so far removed from J. K. Rowling’s wizardry. Affect theory empowers classroom fandoms that preserve canon: “Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange.”97 For humanities teachers and students, there are ethical, theoretical, and existential reasons to effect a “sea-change” through teaching dangerously.

Bibliography Anonymous, [“W. S.”]. The Life and Death of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex. In The Supplementary Works of William Shakespeare Comprising his Poems and his Doubtful Plays: With Glossorial and Other Notes, edited by William Hazlitt, 165-205. London: Routledge, Warne, and Routledge, 1860. Google Books. http://bit.ly/1Q23y1u. Bodley, Thomas. Reliquiae Bodleiane: Or Some Genuine Remains of Sir Thomas Bodley, Containing his Life, the First Draught of the Statutes of the Publick Library at Oxford, (in English) and a Collection of Letters to Dr. James, &c. London: John Hartley, 1703. 276-279. Google Books. http://bit.ly/1KxcnxW. Bonnell, Thomas F. The Most Disreputable Trade: Publishing the Classics of English Poetry 1765-1810. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Champion, Larry S. “Dramatic Strategy and Political Ideology in The Life and Death of Thomas, Lord Cromwell.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 29 (1989): 219-236. 95

Bodley, Reliquiae Bodleiane, 277-278, 82. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 292-294, 299-303. 97 Shakespeare, The Tempest, in The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington, 3rd ed. (New York: Pearson/Longman, 2008), (I.ii.403-405). 96

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Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. 1970. Translated by Robert Hurley. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2011. Drayton, Michael. The Legend of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex. In A Complete Edition of the Poets of England Volume the Third Containing Drayton Carew and Suckling, 217-226. Edinburgh: Bell and Bradfute and L. Mundell, 1793. Google Books. http://bit.ly/1oijQ9S. Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2008. Erne, Lukas. Shakespeare and the Book Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Furness, Hannah. “Hilary Mantel Portrait a Living First for the British Library.” The Telegraph, February 10, 2014. Accessed November 30, 2015. http://bit.ly/20Xrybn. Gray, Melissa. “From Canon to Fanon and Back Again: The Epic Journey of Supernatural and Its Fans.” Transformative Works and Cultures 4 (2010). Accessed November 30, 2015. doi:10.3983/twc.2010.0146. Gregg, Melissa and Gregory J. Seigworth. “An Inventory of Shimmers.” In The Affect Theory Reader, edited by Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, 1-25. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Mantel, Hilary. Bring up the Bodies. Toronto: HarperCollins, 2012. —. Wolf Hall. Toronto: HarperCollins, 2009. Massumi, Brian. Parables for the Virtual. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. Prescott, Anne Lake. “Drayton, Michael (1563–1631).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by Lawrence Goldman. Accessed November 30, 2015. http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.achcu.talonline.ca/view/article/80 42. Ringer, Laurie. “The Silence between Words: Events of Becoming through Trauma in A. L. Kennedy’s ‘What Becomes.’” Journal of the Short Story in English 62 (2014): 131-147. Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Edited by David Bevington. 3rd ed. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2008. White, Hayden. “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact.” In The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, edited by Vincent B. Leitch et al., 1712-1729. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001.

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Zimmer, Ben. “Dude, This Headline Is So Meta.” The Boston Globe, May 6 2012. Accessed November 30, 2015. http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2012/05/05/dude-this-headlinemeta-dude-this-headline-meta/it75G5CSqi82NtoQHIucEP/story.html.

CHAPTER TEN BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA: POWER, CONTROL, AND AUTHORITY IN THE CLASSROOM CHARLOTTE KNOX-WILLIAMS PORTLAND PLACE SCHOOL, LONDON W1B 1NJ

The teacher walks into the classroom. Put your bags on the floor. You’ll need a pen or a pencil. Don’t swing on your chair, please. All right, settle down. You need to listen, or you won’t know what you’re being asked to do. Pedagogies that place students in control of their own learning can be traced back to the 1930s and have become an accepted part of the mainstream constructivist canon. It seems clear that such approaches are certainly beneficial to students; however, exactly how the shift in power and control might be brought about requires deeper consideration. Gilles Deleuze traces interconnections between Nietzsche and Foucault, redefining and extending notions of will, force, and power, offering insight into how it might be possible to move toward a sharing of authority in the classroom. Student-centered and more traditional, didactic teaching approaches form opposite poles of a spectrum, placing either the pupil or the pedagogue in control. Between these extremities lie the shifting sands of power that govern learning—an unpredictable, dynamic, and limitless set of possibilities. What follows is a discussion that considers how alterations in the structures and habits of the classroom environment might allow for the redistribution of power and for some of this intermediary zone to begin to be mapped. We must start by asking why it might be desirable to effect a shift of power and authority away from the teacher, thereby positioning students themselves in control of learning. Teachers might wish to escape the fixed

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role and set values imposed upon them by their institution in pursuit of greater authenticity or faithfulness to their own beliefs and values. 1 In eschewing control over the learning environment, they might also seek to engage their students in sharing leadership, encouraging them to take control over classroom proceedings. The origins of pedagogical theories in which students take control of their own learning can be traced back as far as 1938 when John Dewey wrote of the importance of process over outcomes, the advantage of engaging a student’s own interests and of drilling and repetition in learning as ineffective. 2 Student-centered learning is currently widely encouraged and supported as an approach that allows students to become actively engaged in their learning by making decisions about what they learn and how they go about it. This fits loosely with constructivist theories; however, precise definitions of exactly what constitutes studentcentered learning vary. The key features that are consistent across the literature are the following: 1) an equality or interdependence in the relationship between teacher and student, evidencing a shift in strict classroom hierarchy; 2) an emphasis on active rather than passive learning; and 3) an expectation of reflexivity, with teachers adjusting and responding to students as they, in turn, react to the learning situation. The benefits of enacting such a shift in power away from the teacher seem clear, for this shift engages students in tasks that are meaningful to them, thereby eliciting genuine investment and engagement. Despite the clear benefits, a nagging doubt remains regarding the extent to which such a redistribution of authority might be possible as well as how it might be brought about. Even where student-centered learning is the aim, are outcomes and learning methods really decided by students, or do they merely choose from within a limited palette offered to them? Is nonstudent centered instruction masked by what appear to be free choices and an openness of direction? Does non-student centered instruction crouch behind the insubstantial screen of leading questions, limited choices, and the teacher’s final say? Under scrutiny, student-centered learning situations might only give the appearance of placing authority in the hands of the students, disguising the unchanged power of the teacher beneath the illusion of choice. After all, classrooms are environments where strict hierarchies are enforced and, indeed, reinforced by the power structures of the institution itself. In order for power to be redistributed, these frameworks must be disrupted: the regime must be broken. 1

David Cooper, Authenticity and Learning: Nietzsche’s Educational Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2012). 2 John Dewey, Experience and Education (London: Pocket Books, 1938).

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The following example is drawn from a classroom situation in which the teacher sought to unsettle the distribution of authority in the classroom. This example will be used throughout this essay as a means of exploring definitions of power, force, and authority. *** The teacher will not speak for the duration of the lesson. All communication from the teacher will be written in short notes on post-its. One boy arrives ahead of the rest. He asks about a few things before commenting that the teacher has not said much since he came in. The teacher smiles and writes the first post-it: It’s difficult not to talk, especially when you’re expected to be in charge. The boy asks if this is one of those lessons where the teacher does not speak so that the class can manage their own learning. News has spread. The teacher nods. More students arrive. The first boy explains the situation to those who arrive after he does. Initially, there is some confusion. There are materials on the table, along with the students’ work from previous lessons. The teacher passes a number of post-its out to the students. Everyone sits around a large table. Each note offers an idea or question relating to how to proceed. Some students read the notes aloud, and there is conversation amongst the students about what to do. Some students chat about other things, slowing down proceedings. They forget what they said they should do, losing track of the lesson and what they had planned. The teacher says nothing. One boy asks a question: Isn’t writing just a slower form of speaking? One boy becomes interested in the post-it notes, recognizing that even though the teacher is not speaking, these notes represent authority. He begins writing post-it notes to the other children, issuing orders: No singing. No swinging on your chair. Get on with your work. And even Shut Up. The teacher says nothing. ***

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In our example, the teacher attempts to relinquish power over the lesson by refusing to speak. In this way, the teacher denies herself the primary tool of direct instruction, thereby causing an alteration in the established patterns of teaching and learning. We see the attempt made by one of the students to take power or to establish authority over the proceedings by issuing prohibitions on post-its. Our question is this: does the example show student-centered learning? To begin to evaluate the extent to which this question may be answered affirmatively, an understanding of the alteration in the dynamics of power and authority must first be sought. Nietzsche writes of two kinds of individuals: strong and weak. According to Nietzsche, weak individuals cluster together, keeping their views and actions cohesive so as to gain protection from one another. They believe in safety in numbers. The power of the members of this group to act is limited by their desire to preserve cohesion with their fellows. The resulting herd is ruled over by a few “strong” individuals. The herd is controlled by fear—of punishment by the state or by a religious deity—and they biddably follow instructions. For Nietzsche, this kind of hierarchy results when those who have the power to act have control over those whose power to act is restricted. He writes of this herd instinct as a “need” to be ruled over, a longing that is so powerful that it does not care from which source direction comes. Nietzsche writes, “this need seeks to be satisfied . . . and accepts whatever commander—parent, teacher, law, class, prejudice, public opinion—shouts in his ears.”3 That this separation between strong and weak might be evident in a classroom seems clear: the teacher is strong and has the power to act, whereas the students are weak and follow instruction. Fearing reprimand, they do as they are told. In terms of student-centered learning, we might state that students exercise passive consumption rather than active participation under these conditions. Power, then, is the power to act, and it separates the weak from the strong. In the example offered earlier, speech is the action that the teacher relinquishes. In becoming silent, the teacher more closely resembles a member of the herd. The teacher is passive and leaves the students free to choose their task and select how to go about it. They may go off track, be distracted from their aim, and then find it again according to their own determination. Consequently, the power to act is transferred from the teacher to the students through this silence, thereby transforming them into a group of strong individuals rather than a passive herd ruled over from without. 3

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (London: Penguin, 1973), 120.

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It could be argued, however, that while it is true that the teacher has decided not to act, it is only in one particular way. Although the teacher does not speak, she retains the power to act in other ways. For example, the teacher writes and passes notes, makes eye contact and uses facial expressions or bodily postures to express her will. Furthermore, the decision to stop speaking belongs, in the first instance, to the teacher and is therefore an expression of her power to act. Perhaps the example shows a feigned abdication, with the teacher’s voice merely transferred into other actions. As one student pointed out, Isn’t writing just a slower form of speaking? Even if this is the case, it remains clear from the example that something has been changed; this is no longer the usual classroom dynamic, and the students seem to have some power to act differently. They arrive at solutions in their own time and by their own reckoning; they discuss the purpose of the lesson openly and challenge the authority of the teacher. One student even attempts to step into a role of authority over the others, a transformation that would be highly unlikely to occur within a more usual classroom situation. It might be possible to argue that these alterations in the usual classroom dynamic are of value in terms of the learning of the students just as it might be possible to consider them ethically problematic. But, however they are judged, the shifts in control that are present in this example reveal a novel perspective that permits a further questioning of the concept of power. Nietzsche develops the division between the strong and weak (those who have the power to act as opposed to those who do not), characterizing them as “active” and “reactive” forces.4 Deleuze pursues this development, usefully defining reactive forces as those whose actions are restricted. Reactive forces operate through “adaptation,” changing themselves in response—or in reaction—to the limitations imposed upon them. Rather than opposing that which controls them, they elect to alter themselves so that they might operate within these controls. Reactive forces deform their own power to act in response to restrictions placed upon them, and they function under an expectation that all individuals will abide by the same rules, adapting to limitation rather than seeking to break from it. Deleuze also insists that reactive forces seek to prevent active forces from achieving that which they are capable of by removing their power to act. Active force, on the other hand, is designated as “plastic, dominant and subjugating.” Whereas reactive forces altered themselves in response to limitation, active forces are the catalysts for their own transformation. 4

Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy (London: Continuum, 2006), 59.

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They are the instigators, taking control over others as well as themselves. These active forces are not without limitation, however, but they respond by pushing these boundaries as far as they are able to. An active force is one that “goes to the limit of what it can do.”5 These definitions suggest a need to reconsider our early attribution of teachers as strong: a teacher gains authority through the structures, habits, and prescribed patterns of behavior that dominate the classroom and permeate the school. Is the teacher, by Deleuze’s definition, not more reactive, or weak, than active? Operating within bounded restrictions, perhaps the teacher prevents those who would be strong—i.e., the students—from reaching their true capabilities. It could even be argued that, in our example of the silent teacher, she prevents achievement by operating in a subverted manner—not openly, with force and power, but in a wheedling way, hidden under the cover of pretense. Perhaps our example demonstrates the rule of weak or reactive forces over (strong) individuals, a covert rule that prevents their active force from realizing its true potential. In this example, the students are not released to put themselves in positions of control over their learning, and so while the strong are no longer seen to rule over the weaker herd, the kind of control structure that is presented here is still hierarchical. Deleuze writes that for Nietzsche, “Hierarchy also designates the triumph of reactive forces, the contagion of active forces and the complex organization which results . . . where the slave who has not stopped being a slave prevails over the master who has stopped being one: the reign of law and virtue.”6 Through rules, and the expectation that they will be followed even when the way in which they are enforced has shifted, the weak or reactive establishes hierarchical control. In other words, teachers lead from underneath, disguising their control of the students and preventing them from being active forces. Where does power reside in our example? Who is taking it from whom? Who is active and who reactive? Who is leading, and who is following? Three possible answers have emerged: 1) the teacher is a strong, ruling force, leading students as an obedient herd; 2) a shift of control away from the teacher to the students has occurred, and thus the students become active, transformed through a redistribution of power; or 3) the teacher has become reactive, leading the proceedings from “underneath,” controlling and restricting even as she presents the appearance of relinquishing authority. Although any one of the three might be considered a valid answer, the possibility of a deeper understanding of 5 6

Ibid., 59. Ibid., 56.

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what is occurring lies in moving beyond merely designating either party as strong or weak, active or reactive. In order to make this move, we must examine the transitions between these opposing extremities. The notions of active and reactive present in Deleuze’s writings on Nietzsche strongly parallel a similar struggle between subjugation and escape, which appears in his work with Félix Guattari. In the opening pages of A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari illustrate their discussion of de- and re-territorialization in reference to the relationship between a certain kind of orchid and a particular species of wasp.7 The orchid flowers just before the female wasps emerge from their hiding places underground. The flowers closely resemble the female wasps and are supremely attractive to the male wasps, which have yet to be sated in encounters with genuine mates. The males accost the orchids, attempting to grab the “female” and fly away with her. Instead of claiming this ideal mate, they find themselves trapped in a bobbing embrace that brings their bristling bodies into repeated contact with the orchid’s reproductive organs. Having transferred the pollen to the wasp, the orchid eventually allows the wasp to extricate itself from the orchid’s clutches. The male wasp, still overcome with desire, spots another irresistible female, and a similar struggle ensues, resulting in the pollination of the flower. Although Deleuze and Guattari do not directly describe it as such, this interrelationship between insect and plant seems to be concerned with power. Each seems to be taking control of or staking a claim upon the other; the orchid’s imitation controls the actions of the wasp, “forming an image, a tracing” of the insect, while the wasp eventually escapes, taking the pollen and its power to act to another flower. 8 The two roles here parallel the strong/active and weak/reactive pairings already discussed, while at the same time offering a deeper insight both into the stances that each takes in opposition to the other and into the ways that power passes between the pair during the struggle. Deleuze and Guattari explore the interchange of power between the flower and the insect through the paired concepts or territorialization and deterritorialization. To territorialize is to restrain, to impose boundaries or measurements: to make useful. In explaining how restraint can be made useful, Deleuze and Guattari give the example of an unexplored and unmapped land. It is only through the constraints of mapping and charting that this place might become known and therefore useful. To deterritorialize, on the other hand, is to make an escape or enact release, erasing, bending, or permeating 7

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (London: Continuum, 2004). 8 Ibid., 11.

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boundaries. Operating within boundaries and limitations, reactive forces might be shown to correspond most closely with the processes of territorialization. At the same time, deterritorialization constitutes an increase in mobility, and thus it can be drawn into parallel with forces becoming active. The difference between territorialization and deterritorialization, here, is that we are invited to understand this opposing pair as denoting processes of alteration rather than states that have been arrived at. The orchid can be understood to be a strong or active force; it goes to the limit of what it can do, transforming its shape to such an extent that it appears no longer to be plant but to be insect. This could be viewed as an escape or release from the restraints of its form and species, as the orchid renders itself interior to another creature’s desire. At the same time, however, this deterritorialization simultaneously instigates a level of control over the wasp. No longer free to act according to its natural will, the wasp behaves under the restriction imposed by the flower’s ruse. Deleuze writes, “The orchid imitates the wasp, reproducing its image in a signifying fashion (mimesis, mimicry, lure, etc).”9 In this way, the flower exerts power over the wasp, making it act against its will: this is an act of subterfuge and manipulation. If we can parallel active forces with deterritorialization, then it follows that territorialization, here, represents the opposing force of restriction; in other words, in exerting control over the wasp, the orchid engages in territorialization. And, thus, Deleuze and Guattari’s example reveals that deterritorialization and territorialization are not mutually exclusive but co-exist within and alongside each other. One of the characteristics of student-centered learning referred to at the outset was equality between teacher and student. Seeking a more equal distribution of power, the silent teacher imitates the students. The teacher takes on the role of a member of the herd, sitting amongst them, refusing to speak. The resulting situation could be argued to constitute the dissolution of the restrictions that usually define the classroom, thereby initiating a deterritorialization of that space. Like the orchid, the teacher uses a kind of disguise to enact a shift, and furthermore, just as in Deleuze and Guattari’s example, this alteration exerts control over the students who, like the wasps, rise to the bait and alter their behavior in accordance with the new conditions. The ruse of the teacher, just like that of the orchid, incorporates both territorialization and its opposite, demonstrating the interrelated nature of these two processes. While they may appear to be

9

Ibid.

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moving in opposite directions, they permeate, overlap, and seep into each other. In Deleuze and Guattari’s example, the struggle continues until eventually, despite the orchid’s elaborate ruse, the wasp escapes in an act of reterritorialization. In the case of the silent teacher, one student attempts to take an authoritative role—adapting to give orders and issue demands using the tools employed by the teacher. Deleuze tells us that, in response to the orchid’s disguise, “[t]he wasp reterritorializes on that image.”10 Like the wasp, this student takes the opportunity presented by the alteration in the lesson, the unfamiliarly loose structure and more open approach, utilizing the resources available in order to seize power. The example of the wasp and the orchid makes clear that territorialization and deterritorialization are not fixed states but processes between which an exchange occurs. The pairing presents two distinct terms but at the same time also shows two states that have the capability to give rise to and give way to each other. These transitions can be understood further through the parallel dichotomy of smooth and striated that Deleuze and Guattari establish in a later chapter of A Thousand Plateaus. Several models are employed, here, in describing the distinctive characteristics of smooth and striated spaces, as well as in making clear the particularities of the ways in which transformations between these states take place. 11 Smoothness, rather than belonging to an undifferentiated surface, is used here to denote a capacity for extension in any direction through connecting together heterogeneous elements. The quality of smoothness relates, therefore, not to a uniform texture but to a possibility of movement, multi-directional or, indeed, multi-dimensional shifting. The examples offered by Deleuze and Guattari, here, are of a patchwork quilt that can be added to in any dimension with any number of shaped pieces and of a nomadic tribe whose continuing travels have no fixed path. 12 Striation, by contrast, describes that which is measured, regulated, and encompassed. Unlike the “smooth” patchwork, a woven fabric is delimited by its selvedge and metered evenly according to its gridded warp; the smooth space of open country is delineated by the striating, abstract demarcations of longitude and latitude. These two states, flowing and extendable as opposed to regulated and measured, remain distinct while also mixing with each other. Smooth space is “captured” or “enveloped” by striation, whereas the smooth again erupts in the midst of delineated spaces, blurring and “dissolving” its 10

Ibid. Ibid., 524. 12 Ibid., 527. 11

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boundaries. 13 The teacher, typically, is a striating force: her role is to measure the time of the lesson, separating tasks into clear stages, allotting places within the room to students, and reinforcing codes of behavior. In our silent teacher example, this regulatory force is relaxed, unraveling somewhat to remove time constraints and allow meandering paths of reasoning. This transitioning of striated to smooth is not complete, however, as the teacher continues to exert some control over proceedings. Using written notes, gestures, and eye contact, she ensures that some of the structure remains beneath the loosened progression of the lesson. This underlying framework is broken down when the teacher’s silent signals are ignored at the moments when students stray completely off-topic and smoothness threatens to overtake the situation completely. A secondary layer of striation is then imposed, or, perhaps more accurately proposed, by the student who attempts to use the teacher’s own tools to exercise her/his own authority over the class. In these ways, smooth and striated states intermingle and develop into and out of each other. Authority, in a didactic classroom setting, can be understood as causing others to act, for authority exerts control over what others do by manipulating what they think. In our example of the silent teacher, the teacher’s authority is destabilized as the usual structure of the lesson is disrupted. Opened up to dissent and disobedience, authority can no longer be assumed as automatically belonging to the teacher. Her authority comes under question and is open to being claimed by others. The structure of the lesson is no longer contained under the fixing, regulatory force of the teacher in the usual way. These lapses in the teacher’s control allow acts of thinking, active questioning, and speculative inquiry to become more central to classroom proceedings instead of students’ responses merely tracing a pre-planned trajectory. Authority, then, ceases to be expressed in the teacher’s control over the students and their actions. In relinquishing the strict demarcation of permitted actions, the teacher releases the students to take action under their own authority. The students in turn trust the teacher to make this allowance, to honor their right to take action. This mutual trust leads to a new understanding of authority as the right to take action in the world and to the confidence that such action will be valued rather than punished. Given this new concept of authority, the strong can no longer be placed in sharp opposition to the weak. Although strength may denote a striating principle, governing through a power to act or exert control over another, at the same time, strength is required for the resistance necessary to allow 13

Ibid., 524.

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the smooth to initiate a disruption, and weakness might be required in order to retain the flexibility needed to make this possible. The teacher is weakened without speech, but she uses other resources to retain a sense of structure. The students are made more powerful in the teacher’s silence, but they must also find their own power to act and make their own decisions. Like teacher and student, territorialized and deterritorialized states are coupled together in such a way that, while instances of opposition arise, also inherent is a seeping of one into the other, a partnering through which each interlocks with its opposite. This coupling gives rise to a mutual becoming, a two-way transformation, and/or a transmission of properties between the two partners: “The two becomings interlink and form relays in a circulation of intensities pushing the deterritorialization of one term and the reterritorialization of another.”14 This is not a harmonious system but one continuously off-kilter; one force is always erupting through and/or in the other. The orchid, or indeed the teacher, should not be described as an impostor, feigning the appearance of another. Rather, as Deleuze and Guattari argue, “[t]here is neither imitation nor resemblance, only an exploding of two heterogeneous series.”15 Neither the wasp nor the orchid arrives at a state that mirrors the other. Instead, what we see is both partners transforming in response to the other in a dance that alters not merely their appearance but changes their very being. Deleuze describes this fundamental transformation not as imitation but as becoming. In our example, a shift is seen in the way that power is distributed within the classroom. When the teacher refrains from speaking, the resulting alteration makes possible a reevaluation of power distributions and the actors or agencies that possess them. The conceptual pairings of strong/weak, active/reactive, de- and re-territorialization, and smooth/striated describe opposing states while also denoting a series of transitions within which power is mobile and fluid. In a similar way, individuals in possession of qualities such as strength and weakness, for example, interlink through these exchanges of control. A key feature of studentcentered learning has been identified as a reflexivity or equality between pedagogue and pupil. Certainly a responsiveness and interconnection seem to have been found, here, between the wasp and orchid or the teacher and student. A further development invites consideration: Deleuze and Guattari provide the wasp/orchid example in illustration of one of the central ideas in A Thousand Plateaus, that of the rhizome. Epitomizing 14 15

Ibid., 11. Ibid., 11.

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interconnection, the rhizome connects different elements to create one unstable, changeable system. Rather than two separate entities or factions who are altered as they pass power between them, what our example presents is, perhaps, a single system that connects separate agents in an interplay of forces. Power, understood in these terms, ceases to be something that is taken or given; instead, it becomes an element that is malleable and internal to all things, existing through interrelation. “Power is a relation between forces,”16 writes Deleuze; indeed, “every phenomenon, object, event, person, etc. is the materialization of a force.”17 Power can indeed be understood as the power to act; however, this power arises not merely through an individual’s decision to make an action. Power must also be understood as the interaction that takes place between the forces that allow this action to happen or restrict it from taking place. Force, as we have seen, is substantiated in objects, entities, and occurrences, and so it must be understood as internal to a system of relationships in which actions are brought about through a myriad of possible causes, “a plurality of forces acting and being affected at a distance, distance being the differential element included in each force by which each is related to others.”18 Force, in the Nietzschean sense, is will, and this becomes important here as we note that not only is force inherent in all things, but it is also multiple. That is to say, rather than a single force or will, a great many wills are internal to each person or object, all of which interact with and affect one another in the same way as in the system outside: “In all willing it is absolutely a question of commanding and obeying, on the basis of a social structure composed of many.”19 Any individual object or entity is host to a number of wills, interacting with one another as in a social situation, vying for dominance or control over the others. Behaviors and physical properties are the manifestations of these interactions. As the boundaries between teacher and student, classroom and institution become blurred through interconnection and inter-effect, our silent teacher example takes on a new and shifting aspect. This understanding of the interplay of force creating changing patterns of power extends the example beyond its boundaries to encompass details that cannot be known: the internal competition among each person’s many different wills, the dynamic interaction among these wills as they are expressed, and the particularities of the surrounding environment must 16

Gilles Deleuze, Foucault (London: Continuum, 1994), 59. Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 6. 18 Ibid., 6. 19 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 31. 17

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inevitably shape the outcome. The classroom, including everything and everyone in it or around it, can be viewed as a site of dynamic and nonlinear interactions. No longer defined by separate individuals nor indeed by binary pairings of active or reactive, strong or weak, learning situations can be made up of constellations of forces meeting, separating, and merging in continuously altering combinations. Such an understanding of a classroom situation offers no possibility of a stable, central point, and therefore it seems to make placing students at the center of learning an impossibility. At the same time, any understanding of a teacher as being in absolute control of the classroom seems equally impossible. This is not a matter of teachers handing over power to students (while secretly, perhaps, still holding it behind their backs) but a complete re-understanding of the dynamic system that is learning: i.e., this system is made up of a mutual, interlinked, and inter-relational process within which power is present in every part. The result is a reconsideration of the boundaries that define and separate student, teacher, and environment— and a re-understanding of their dynamic interaction. Our silent teacher example is a simple attempt to enact a change, a torsion that makes an alteration in perspective possible, a destabilization of the fixed rules and hierarchies that often govern classrooms as a means of drawing attention to these structures themselves, opening them up to discussion or even dissention. But where exactly does our example leave us now? In a seething mass of unpredictable interrelations operating at scales and registers that we cannot possible be aware of all at once, it would seem. What use, one might ask, is it to be left thus? Caught between the questionable moral responsibilities imposed by the structure of power play in the classroom, on the one hand, and this limitless unstructured abyss, on the other, the teacher is indeed somewhere between the devil and the deep blue sea. In Deleuze’s famous example, students learn to swim not by imitating the gestures of the swimming instructor on the beach—i.e., by waving their arms about—but by embracing the intimacy of the continuously altering interface between their bodies and the ocean’s swell and current.20 This illustration needs to be re-drawn in relation to the development of the silent teacher example offered here: the teacher is not just the land-bound instructor, but she is also the sea, unpredictable and fluid, as well as the swimmer, who improvises responses. Perhaps what is truly under discussion here is not student-centered learning at all but thinking-centered learning—learning that acknowledges students as thinking beings with 20

Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (London: Continuum, 1994), 165.

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agency, resources, and power; learning that is essentially creative and explorative, demanding flexibility and elasticity from both the students and the teacher; learning that brings about a series of dynamic encounters that take place between individuals, the environments, situations, and resources that surround them. Within such a “field of forces,” Deleuze writes, “[s]pontaneity and receptivity now take on a new meaning: To affect and be affected.”21 Power, force, and authority are malleable, altering in nature and distribution throughout the teaching and learning situation. While a polarization between weak/strong or active/reactive can allow analysis to progress up to a point, a true reevaluation of the nature of the interrelationship between the teacher and her class uncovers approaches that, while challenging, permit flexibility and invention that would not otherwise be possible. Of course, not all teaching and learning situations should be smooth, flowing, and unpredictable. If they were, the result would likely be disorienting for the students, aimless in terms of the progression of learning, and overwhelming for all involved. Teachers and students should not be always “at sea.” Inherent within the conceptualization of a lesson as deterritorialized is the need for it to develop structure, control, and static elements within itself: “It is as if the sea were not only the archetype of all smooth spaces but the first to undergo a gradual striation gridding it in one place, then another,”22 the structured, measured, and pre-planned arising through and around more dynamic, unpredictable moments. Neither of these states is ever pure, and each arises through the other. Furthermore, under the right conditions, these transitory states can be places of discovery; they can be instances of thinking-centered learning that involve teacher and students within the dynamics of their lesson and environment.

Bibliography Cooper, David. Authenticity and Learning: Nietzsche’s Educational Philosophy. London: Routledge, 1938. Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. London, Continuum, 1994. —. Foucault. London: Continuum, 1994. —. Nietzsche and Philosophy. London: Continuum, 2006. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. London: Continuum, 2004. 21 22

Deleuze, Foucault, 60. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 529.

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Dewey, John. Experience and Education. London: Pocket Books, 1938. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. London: Penguin, 1973.

CHAPTER ELEVEN INSTITUTING AND THE DISCURSIVE: THEORIZING “FORMER WEST” ANGELIKI ROUSSOU UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, EDINBURGH COLLEGE OF ART, EDINBURGH EH3 9DF

In the mid-1990s, the institutions and curatorial structures of the art world shifted toward a discursive and pedagogical function. By this, I mean to point toward the movement from exhibitionary display structures to a multiplicity of participatory and discursive events: symposia, publications, workshops, etc. The oft-cited “educational turn” is emblematic of this shift.1 The emergence of a discursive pedagogical paradigm was due to several factors, including the expansion (in size and scope) of the curatorial field per se as well as the proliferation and diversification of art institutions. Discursive practices have become fundamental to many contemporary art institutions. For many critics, these practices are the cornerstone of a type of curating that seeks to question the hegemony and constraints of the exhibition form. In their introduction to the edited volume Curating and the Educational Turn, Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson pinpoint a shift whereby “discussions, talks, symposia, education programmes, debates and discursive practices” are no longer mere supplements of exhibitions but “have become central to contemporary practice; they have now become the main event.”2 The practices of the so-called “educational turn” are often conflictive and substantially variable in form, content, and aspirations. They range from public-engagement programming and education departments in museums 1

Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, Curating and the Educational Turn (London: Open Editions, 2010). 2 Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, “Introduction,” in Curating and the Educational Turn, eds. Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson (London: Open Editions, 2010), 12.

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or other public or private institutions to small-scale independent curatorial projects that adopt the educative process as their main methodology. Also prominent in the volume and in further recent bibliographies on art and pedagogy are self-organized practices that aspire to activism—often in relation to legal frameworks for higher education such as the Bologna process, which is “a series of ministerial meetings and agreements between European countries designed to ensure comparability in the standards and quality of higher education.”3 O’Neill and Wilson consider the discursive element to be the most critical “line of analysis” of the various educational/curatorial paths in or around the art world.4 Discursive practices or events include formats such as roundtables, workshops, discussions, reading groups, and symposia. Such formats have often been employed in ways that have challenged the exhibition form as a finite product and have contributed to the emergence of participatory formats in display structures and art institutions. Inviting interaction and allocating production to a diverse set of contributors rather than to a single authorial figure, discursive practices have the potential to thwart the idea of the exhibition form as visual art arranged in space by the expert curator whose expertise is to be passed on to the inexpert viewer. At the very least, the rise of the discursive terrain as autonomous from the exhibition challenges the monopoly of the exhibition form as the proper way of engaging with art. Whether the general idea of propriety in engaging with art is challenged remains to be discussed and depends on the different types of discursive practices. Despite their rather obvious democratizing intentions, discursive practices are not always celebrated. For example, Peio Aguirre states the following: “instead of lecture series we have ‘discursive projects,’ because the former is now construed as boring; instead of exhibitions, we have ‘multifaceted’ events, because the former is now deemed visually hierarchical and one-dimensional.” 5 Aguirre’s ironic use of quotation marks, as well as the implied passivity with which “we” are supposedly enduring a situation that is “now” inflicted upon us, allude to another established state of affairs whereby “discursive projects” and “multifaceted” events form a new methodological imperative. 3

Ibid., 16. This process started with the Bologna Declaration in 1999. “Bologna Process,” Wikipedia, accessed October 10, 2015, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_Process. 5 Peio Aguirre, “Education with Innovations: Beyond Art-Pedagogical Projects,” in Curating and the Educational Turn, eds. Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson (London: Open Editions, 2010), 178. 4

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To tackle the paradoxes that seem to arise in relation to discursive practices, it is worth exploring the complexities and entanglements of knowledge, discourse, and institutional power. The theory of instituting and institution-making permits a solid theoretical ground for the shifts in the knowledge/power structures within curatorial methodologies in projects or institutions. In relation to this context, what becomes crucial is to locate and focus on curatorial propositions that imagine or articulate different institutional arrangements performing what has been called “instituting,” i.e., constantly striving against the establishment of hierarchical and stagnant methodological regimes or institutional orders. The key question that I will address is how instituting could be articulated in discursive practices of the art world using the example of Former West, a transnational discursive project based in Europe that came into existence in 2008. Before presenting the case study of Former West, I will elaborate on the concepts of instituting, knowledge production, parrhesia, and Cynicism. Subsequently, I will examine the relation between the “project” and the “institution” as general forms, drawing a parallel between Former West and the inversion of Cynicism. I will conclude by examining the issues of popularity and outreach. Former West is a noteworthy case study as it provides the opportunity to discuss the project as a general structure against the backdrop of the potential of instituting, a process mostly associated with practices, collectives, or groups but hardly ever explicitly with projects. Additionally, being a relatively large-scale project instead of a small-scale practice on the fringes of the art world, Former West allows for an examination of the role of some parameters in instituting such as scale, stability, and duration.

Instituting, knowledge, and parrhesia Along the lines of the shifts summarized by the educational turn, in the 2000s, knowledge production became a popular point of reference within art discourse. Various theorists have given diverse accounts of knowledge production in the arts, most of which regard knowledge as inextricably entangled with power. Theorist and curator Irit Rogoff has articulated one of the most important theorizations of knowledge production that challenges the normative duality of practice and theory whereby, on the one hand, art practice is equated with the creation of object-based artworks and on the other, art theory is reduced to analytical or interpretive criticism. Proposing the full collapse of the dividing line between the discursive and the artistic field, Rogoff thinks of artistic practice as production of knowledge. By the same token, she argues that “instead of

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‘criticism’ being an act of judgement addressed to a clear cut object of criticism, we now recognise not just our own imbrication in the object or the cultural moment but also the performative nature of any action or stance we might be taking in relation to it.”6 In short, according to Rogoff, the product of art, curating, and art theory is knowledge. In this sense, knowledge is always performed and can be understood as informal and cross- or interdisciplinary. Even though in Rogoff’s account of knowledge the production of knowledge is not or cannot be monopolized or dominated by fields (artistic, academic, curatorial, or discursive), knowledge in practice remains entangled with power in a broader sense. In the art world, specific modes of knowing and performing knowledge, which include ways of distributing and engaging with art, are privileged over others, or they are presented as more proper than others. Institutions can play a crucial role in sustaining such a privileging didacticism while the process of instituting seeks to undermine it. Theorist Gerald Raunig came up with the concept of instituting to break the conceptual impasse at which the two waves of Institutional Critique left the discourse on art and institutions. Institutional Critique, which can be crudely defined as a part of conceptual art that critiqued (art) institutions, has been largely historicized through a shift from critique to self-critique. Initially, artists and institutions are seen as two distinct entities while the former critique the latter. With the shift to self-critique, artists are seen as incorporated by the institution of art as a field. They start to think of themselves as complicit with the institution, assuming a position within it and often announcing the impossibility or inevitability of positions outside it. Raunig denounces the defeatism that comes with this second phase and the purported co-optation of critique. He contends that there can be practices that neither daydream of power-free spaces nor retreat into defeatist self-critique. 7 In order to ground this proposition, Raunig redefines the notion of the institution in relation to power. He argues that institutions should be seen as ongoing processes and not as distinct monoliths of repressive power to be critiqued by outsiders. 8 6

Irit Rogoff, “What is a Theorist?,” in The State of Art Criticism, eds. James Elkin and Michael Newman (New York, London: Routledge, 2007), 97-98. The phrase “our own imbrication” refers to the imbrication of whoever assumes the position of the critic. 7 Gerald Raunig, “Instituent Practices: Fleeing, Instituting, Transforming,” in Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique, eds. Gerald Raunig and Gene Ray (London: MayFly, 2009), 10-11. 8 Ibid.

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Instituting is defined by Raunig as an ongoing process whereby a constituent power institutes itself while it constantly strives against structuralization. 9 Structuralization, in this sense, designates either the process by which an insurrectional act becomes an established mechanism of revolution incorporating oppressive elements (for instance, some organized national revolutions of the modern era) or the process by which the new order that the insurrectional act leads to eventually turns into a merely reformed or newly oppressive version of the previous order. In other words, on the one hand, instituting designates an insurrectional act or, more broadly, a break from or critique of the conditions of a given or dominant institutional regime, often proposing a new institutional arrangement. On the other hand, it acknowledges the possibility for structuralization and constantly strives against it. Once the emphasis is placed on the process rather than on the institution, it becomes clear that instituting occurs also in practices that are not traditionally defined as institutions. Park Fiction is an example that Raunig refers to and describes as a semi-fictional park initiated in the early 1990s in Hamburg by some local social groups, initially to prevent an urban development plan. 10 Therefore, artistic practice and institutions are equally enmeshed in mechanisms of power in the art world and (potentially) entangled in instituting processes. Raunig theorizes instituting as self-instituting.11 By constantly resisting structuralization, instituting maintains instances of autonomy. 12 Thus, instituting is a self-conscious and self-initiated process. At the same time, Raunig upholds a process of pluralization.13 Indeed, reflecting on Raunig’s ideas, Rogoff stresses the role of diversity and pluralization in eluding branding. She observes that “it is not only the moment of instituting oneself but also the plurality of the activities involved . . . that are the hallmarks of instituent practices, which thereby refuse the possibility of being internally cohered and branded.”14 Rogoff’s contribution is particularly valuable as it discusses instituting in relation to discursive, process-based, 9 Gerald Raunig, “Instituent Practices, No. 2: Institutional Critique, Constituent Power, and the Persistence of Instituting,” in Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique, eds. Gerald Raunig and Gene Ray (London: MayFly, 2009), 175-77. 10 Ibid., 182. 11 Ibid., 176-80. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Irit Rogoff, “Turning,” in Curating and the Educational Turn, eds. Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson (London: Open Editions, 2010), 45.

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and self-organized formats at the crossroads of education and curating. In her analysis, she advises caution against privileging these formats and “the coming-together of people in space” over “recognising when and why something important is being said.”15 In other words, while she considers instituting to be pertinent in such formats, she goes a step further by stressing the need to distinguish important utterances from non-important ones as they emerge in the context of these formats. To this rather ambivalent end of identifying importance within utterances, Rogoff invokes Michel Foucault’s concept of parrhesia as a mode of truth-telling. Importantly, however, Rogoff stresses that truth, in this mode of truthtelling, remains a “drive rather than a position.”16 The discourse around parrhesia is not about the search for truth as axiom or dogma nor about the definition of truth as such. Instead, the object of the discourse around parrhesia is the exercise of the methodology of truth-telling while truth remains deliberately undefined in metaphysical or absolute terms. Parrhesia is a concept that Foucault researched thoroughly in his later work. According to Foucault, parrhesia is a mode of truth-telling that requires willingly speaking one’s own mind “without concealing anything” even though it always involves risk for the person who speaks.17 Parrhesia differs from other modes of truth-telling such as “prophecy, wisdom, teaching and technique.” It is a mode of truth-telling that “speaks polemically about individuals and situations” as opposed to “enigmatically,” “apodictically,” or “demonstratively.”18 Foucault describes two types of parrhesia before he arrives at his analysis of Cynicism in antiquity. First, he discusses political truth-telling, which “manifests itself as someone’s assertion that they are capable of telling the truth” and “is addressed courageously, on its own, to an Assembly or a tyrant who does not want to hear it [i.e., the truth].” 19 Foucault also defines ethical or Socratic parrhesia as the practice of epimeleia or the care of self. 20 Socrates cares for others by teaching them to take care of themselves. Epimeleia requires investigation, testing, and care for the self. It is about learning to turn inwards and test oneself in the sense of conjoining rational discourse (logos) with a way of living within the social (bios). This form of parrhesia is directly associated with 15

Ibid., 43,45. Ibid., 46. 17 Michel Foucault, The Courage of the Truth (The Government of Self and Others II) (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 9-11. 18 Ibid., 27. 19 Ibid., 87. 20 Foucault, Courage, 86. 16

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Cynicism, which is described as the parrhesiastic way of life. Foucault defines Cynicism as “the idea of a mode of life as the irruptive, violent, scandalous manifestation of the truth.”21 In other words, Cynicism is about the practice and manifestation of truth through and in one’s life. As Foucault puts it, “Cynicism makes life, existence, bios, what could be called an alethurgy, a manifestation of truth.”22 Cynicism is not another version of parrhesia but the conduct of life that accompanies parrhesia and its manifestation. Raunig considers the second form of truth-telling (ethical parrhesia) to be the most pertinent to “the relation between teaching and learning” because it upholds a mode of investigation, i.e., a calling-into-question and a self-inquiry, that leads to care for the self.23 Raunig argues that, in this case, knowledge is not fixed in a center because “knowledge production lies precisely in the movement from the inquirer to those who are guided by the inquiry to exercise self-care, to give account of the coherence between rational discourse and manner of living.”24 Instead, he thinks that Cynicism (and the practice of the Cynics) is not so pertinent to the relation of teaching and learning as it is to what he calls “the new activisms of the twenty-first century.”25 In fact, he sees roughly all current activism as a contemporary instantiation of Cynicism in antiquity.26 Raunig understands the teaching/learning relation and current activism as demarcated by the concepts of ethical parrhesia and Cynicism respectively. This viewpoint is highly contestable in that it misleadingly suggests the impertinence or impossibility of different crossings or overlaps between the two spheres of practice (teaching/learning and activism) as well as the two concepts (ethical parrhesia and Cynicism). First, it implies that knowledge production cannot be actualized within the realm of Cynicism (the practice and manifestation of truth through and in one’s life), which raises the question of whether Raunig thinks of knowledge production as confined within designated sites for teaching and learning and thus unable to penetrate the realm of life. Second, Raunig’s 21

Ibid., 183. Ibid., 172. 23 Ibid., 59. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., 150. 26 Raunig refers to “the new activisms of the twenty-first century: antiglobalization movement, social forums, anti-racist no border camps, queer-feminist activisms, transnational migrant strikes, Mayday movements of the precarious.” He also includes recent uprisings in the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions as well as recent Occupy movements globally. Ibid.,150. 22

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rationale, which presumes all current activism as potentially instantiating Cynicism, is contestable insofar as a large part of current activism is a well-established and often oppressive machine far from the practice and manifestation of truth as described by Foucault. On top of that, by hinting at the impertinence of Cynicism within the relation of teaching and learning, his rationale precludes the possibility of understanding Cynicism as a practical philosophy that need not be restricted to specific fields and sites of practice such as contemporary activism. Equally importantly, Raunig treats political parrhesia not only as something irrelevant to the realm of teaching and learning but also as unworthy of mention in relation to current activism, i.e., as if it is a given. In a crucial passage in Foucault’s lectures where he discusses the “shifts and changes in parrhesia,” he contends that the three poles of parrhesia—namely, truth-telling, “politeia (the political institution, the distribution and organization of relations of power),” and “the formation of ethos or of the subject”—are always irreducible to one another.27 At the same time, however, they are always irreducibly linked to one another in a “necessary and mutual relationship.”28 Foucault’s oeuvre on parrhesia and Cynicism opens up a valuable theoretical toolkit of concepts. Rather than trying to isolate versions of parrhesia, extracting them from their historical context, and applying them exclusively to specific practices such as current activism, we should perhaps try to use the concept of parrhesia (and its three poles) in a rethinking of correlations and articulations of institutional power and the formation of subjects within discursive practices. In this enterprise, despite the aforementioned restrictive and demarcating application of concepts to spheres of practice, Raunig’s analysis is useful because it accentuates the production of knowledge (which includes discursive practices) as a movement from the inquirer to those who are guided by the inquiry to exercise self-care. Rogoff’s turn to parrhesia, in the context of discursive and open-ended formats of the art world, permits an examination of such formats as potential instances of a parrhesiastic instituting. Therefore, the question we should perhaps be asking is whether (or how) discursive practices of the art world could incorporate an instituting that is both politically and ethically parrhesiastic and employed as a permanent motif or method rather than an exceptional act.

27 28

Ibid., 66-67. Ibid., 66.

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Former West Former West is a collaborative research project that was initiated in 2008 and is scheduled to run until 2016. Its network of collaborators comprises some of the most influential art institutions in Europe such as Afterall (London), Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Goldsmiths (London), Reina Sofia Museum (Madrid), VanAbbe Museum (Eindhoven), SKOR Foundation for Art and Public Domain (Amsterdam), Tranzit.hu (Budapest), and Tranzit.cz (Prague). It is mainly funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union.29 Other funders include Mondriaan Fonds Amsterdam, City Council of Utrecht, European Cultural Foundation Amsterdam, and ERSTE Foundation. Former West’s primary focus has been to rethink the impact of the end of the Cold War and the categories of East and West through the remit of art and politics. Its starting point has been the belief that the post-Cold War impact on the so-called West has not been adequately acknowledged. The argument here is that even though the end of the Cold War and the advent of globalization render the classification of the world in first, second, and third irrelevant, labels that imply Western hegemony such as “former East”—a label used to describe countries that underwent a transition from communism after 1989—still persist. Former West inverts this label in an ironic gesture that seeks to undermine this hegemonic relationship and attempts to reimagine a global horizon of equality. It defines itself in the following way: a long-term international research, education, publishing, and exhibition project, which from within the field of contemporary art and theory: first, reflects upon the changes introduced to the world (and thus to the so-called West) by the political, cultural, artistic, and economic events of 1989; second, engages in rethinking the global histories of the last two decades in dialogue with post-communist and postcolonial thought; and third, speculates about a “post-bloc” future that recognizes differences yet evolves through the political imperative of equality and the notion of “one world.”30

According to its web page, Former West is “an extensive transnational, transdisciplinary research undertaking that includes: a series of educational activities, individual research projects, research seminars and symposia, 29

“Creative Europe Projects,” Creative Europe Programmes, accessed September 28, 2015, http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/creative-europe/projects/. 30 “About,” Former West, accessed September 11, 2015, http://www.formerwest.org/About.

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research exhibitions, and major public events in the form of Research Congresses.”31 Initially, Former West was supposed to run until 2014. At the time of this writing in 2015, however, Former West has been extended to include a culminating phase, the Public Editorial Meetings. These meetings are intended to lead to a major publication of approximately fifty contributions entitled FORMER WEST: Art and the Contemporary after 1989, which is scheduled for release in 2016. The Public Editorial Meetings take place in the form of Research Congresses. Former West is mainly conducted in four formats: the Research Congress, the Research Exhibition, the Research Seminar, and the Research Interview. The Research Congresses are large-scale public conferences, which average three hundred attendees, at which academics, artists, curators, theorists, and/or other contributors are invited to present their work, give talks, or participate in panel discussions. These congresses take place mainly in art institutions and art schools. Until 2014, Former West held one Research Congress per year. Former West’s culminating phase includes only Public Editorial Meetings in the form of Research Congresses of which there were three in 2015. Until 2014, Research Exhibitions were conducted one to three times per year in European art institutions—mainly in BAK, Utrecht, but also in the Reina Sofia Museum (Madrid), Tranzitdisplay (Prague), and Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven). During its initial phase in 2009 and 2010, Former West predominantly held Research Seminars, which were smaller in scale and shorter in duration than the Congresses, and Research Interviews with theorists, artists, curators, etc. in order to set a framework for ideas and propositions. The self-description of Former West resembles an international research collaboration among higher-educational institutions. It is also worth noting that the predominant format of Former West is the Research Congress. Yet Former West is a project initiated by an art institution (BAK) and not an educational one. BAK is a contemporary art institution in Utrecht founded and directed by Maria Hlavajova. It calls itself a “basis” for contemporary art instead of “center” or “space,” suggesting that an institution should have a platform-like or facilitating character. Hlavajova is also Former West’s artistic director. The project is organized and coordinated by BAK, which is also responsible for the content of Former West’s web site (www.formerwest.org). Former West basically adopts the format of a large-scale research project typically encountered in higher education’s collaborative research platforms. At the same time,

31

Ibid.

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however, it remains the project of a single contemporary art institution, and it is largely situated in an art-world context. Former West operates in a terrain that hovers between education and the art field through heavily discourse-based processes. Meetings and conversations are triggered by talks, presentations, and interviews followed by publications, documents, and video-archives of talks. Irrespective of any declared aspirations, Former West epitomizes the emergence of discourse in the art world as previously described. Given this, even though Former West defined itself as a research project, I will now examine it as a curatorial/discursive one, following Rogoff’s definition of the curatorial. Rogoff understands the curatorial “not as a profession but as an organizing and assembling impulse, [that] opens up a set of possibilities, mediations perhaps, to formulate subjects that may not be part of an agreed-upon canon of ‘subjects’ worthy of investigation.”32

Project / institution In order to examine Former West from an institutional perspective, it is important to take a closer look at the particular organizational form of the “project.” The project has been widely theorized as a key structure of late capitalism’s precarious, mobile, and flexible production. In their seminal work on The New Spirit of Capitalism, published in 1999, Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello outline the concept of the project as a “short-lived” “transitory form” or endeavour whose participants seek to multiply their connections for further projects through networking. 33 In her book Artificial Hells, the art historian Claire Bishop discusses the “art project” using Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello’s definition. However, Bishop seems to have identified a somewhat different aspiration for the concept of the project in art projects since the 1990s. She argues that a “project in the sense I am identifying as crucial to art after 1989 aspires to replace the work of art as a nite object with an open-ended, post-studio, researchbased, social process, extending over time and mutable in form.”34 So even as the project may be inextricably linked with late capitalism, which perpetuates precarious labor, in the world of art it comes with radically democratizing effects. As Bishop observes, “Although the project is introduced as a term in the 1990s to describe a more embedded and 32

Irit Rogoff, “Free,” E-flux Journal 14 (2010), accessed September 5, 2015, http://www.e-flux.com/journal/free/. Emphasis added. 33 Ibid., 169. 34 Claire Bishop, Articial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London: Verso, 2012), 215.

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socially/politically aware mode of artistic practice, it is equally a survival strategy for creative individuals under the uncertain labor conditions of neoliberalism.”35 Bishop concurs with Boltanski and Chiapello’s argument that the (art) project’s success is unrelated to any “intrinsic value” and that it is dependent on the generation of further projects through the participants’ connections.36 Thus, in order for workers in the creative industries to survive the precariousness of labor intensified by late capitalism, they have to operate in a project-based manner, which entails networking and constantly striving to make multiple connections. Given this set of circumstances, it could be argued that the project has become a hegemonic structure. Perhaps this is what has aggravated Aguirre about “discursive projects.” Projects are increasingly seen as part of the (art) canon, outside of which lies everything perceived to be uncool, boring, or clueless. Being in-theknow regarding what is timely and relevant makes a good worker, and what is timely and relevant (i.e., the project) reinforces the precarious labor to which workers knowingly commit themselves. It could be argued, however, that the project has lost its ubiquity as a structure—or, rather, that its ubiquity has long been so irreversible that mourning for a preproject period seems futile. Instead, it would make more sense to examine the shifts brought about by the pervasiveness of the project in its entanglement with other organizational forms and, in particular, with institutions as bearers of nostalgia for stability and security. Raunig uses terms such as “non-institutions” and “pseudo-institutions” as well as the “project-based institution” to discuss institutional assemblages of creative industries. 37 According to him, these assemblages are “no longer structured in the form of huge media corporations, but mainly as micro-enterprises of self-employed cultural entrepreneurs” that “prove to be temporary, ephemeral, project based.”38 Moreover, as theorist Simon Sheikh observes, there is no small-scale, project-based, or “niche” initiative that mega-institutions like the Tate Modern cannot reproduce, imitate, or even invent under their brand name.39 Frustrating though this may be for small-scale radical endeavors, we need to be mindful of the 35

Ibid., 216. Ibid. 37 Raunig, Factories, 100-01. 38 Ibid., 101. 39 Simon Sheikh, “Simon Sheikh explores the legacy of New Institutionalism” (paper presented at the symposium Desire Lines: A Symposium on Experimental Institutional Formats, David Roberts Art Foundation, London, November 28-29, 2014). 36

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way we perceive or construct institutional polarities or categories. Sheikh also suggests that nowadays there is no such thing as a stable institution, for even the Tate faces precariousness and financial instability, which lead to unsatisfying work contracts for its high-profile staff. I would add that even medium-scale, non-profit institutions (for instance, in the UK) tend to receive mixed funding, and therefore it becomes difficult to categorize them as “public” institutions. Projects and institutions co-depend and coexist to such an extent that their temporal differences, such as duration and permanence, as well as their accessibility, stability, and security are no longer attributable to a project-versus-institution axis. Perhaps in parallel with the general and global demise or increasing incapability of state structures to cater to public needs, it is no longer credible to argue that institutions (even public ones) are pillars of stability, job security, or permanence. At the same time, as Former West indicates, there can be projects that secure enough (public) funding to remunerate their contributors to a very satisfactory extent, albeit mostly as occasional participants, without being consumed by neoliberal forces or falling into precarity. Therefore, the usual perception of the institutional terrain in the arts that distinguishes the small-scale, self-funded, DIY projects or initiatives from the medium- or large-scale public or private institutions is deeply problematic, for it attributes de facto radicality and precariousness to the first type and stagnancy and security to the second. Understanding projects as embedded within an institutional assemblage whereby instituting is a process and not necessarily a stable, monolithic function, it becomes clear that precariousness is the general condition underpinning the current organization of labor and, as such, it is encountered throughout the institutional spectrum. However, what remains crucial in this networked terrain is instituting, for it proposes a breaking with hierarchical or stagnant power relations and institutional arrangements. Indeed, Sheikh concludes that issues of size and stability—or, it could be added, permanence and duration—come second in relation to issues of “governmentality.” 40 He maintains that all institutions and institutionmaking should be seen in terms of “modes of governance and not just as places that produce and represent artistic or theoretical positions or reach out to an audience.” 41 The way institutions, projects, or initiatives are governed can be institutive, for instance, by breaking down stagnant hierarchies and instituting ways to democratize work processes. Work processes can range from exhibition-making or event-staging to what is 40 41

Ibid. Ibid.

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considered tedious or managerial work. It is in the practice of instituting that we might locate moments of radicality either in terms of groundbreaking collectives or through reforms in large-scale influential organizations. The example of Former West attests to this complex institutional spectrum in a variety of ways. First, it is a largely discursive project at the crossroads of fields such as education and curatorial art. Second, it is a project that largely interrelates with and depends on some of the most solid transnational institutions in the world—the Creative Europe program, for example. Third, even though it is a large-scale, international, long-term endeavor, I would argue that it is still relatively process-based and fairly open-ended. Former West’s substantial scale could be explained by its high budget, its long-term duration, and its large number of prominent contributors and participants who range from senior and early-career academics, theorists, and independent researchers to young artists, curators, and activists.42 Former West has also staged multiple discussions around some of the most politically-urgent global issues of post-Cold War history, situating them within a wider theoretical context and often inviting radical perspectives on them.43 Despite its relatively large-scale and institutional grounding, Former West remains open-ended mainly due to its discursiveness and to its having sprung up as a personal vision. It is remarkable that the project started as a rather personal idea that Maria Hlavajova had when she moved from Slovakia to the Netherlands around 2000.44 In a Former West session in London, Hlavajova explained that the Former West project came about as a proposition to invert the so-called “former East.” At the same time, however, Former West is a transnational and diverse platform operating on a European scale and accommodating multiple contributors and individual projects from east and west, south and north. It seeks to reflect on and

42

For a list of contributors see http://www.formerwest.org/Contributors. For Former West budget see http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/creative-europe/projects/. 43 Some indicative titles of congresses or sessions are these: Art, its discourses, and the world at large (1989/2001/2008/2009), Representations of art in the Former West: exhibitions, art institutions, art market (1989-2009), and Who is a “people”? Constructions of the “we” (2015). 44 Maria Hlavajova, “Rael Artel, Maria Hlavajova, Iliyana Nedkova in conversation with Katarzyna Kosmala” relating to her edited collection Sexing the Border: Gender, Art and New Media in Central and Eastern Europe. (Conversation at Word Power Books, Edinburgh, March 23, 2015) accessed September 12, 2015, https://vimeo.com/130040477.

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propose potential horizons rather than to promote a prescribed political agenda.

Inversion of Cynicism So where does this leave instituting and parrhesia? To what extent does Former West’s format perform a different instituting in terms of speaking the truth to established power structures? A possible criticism against Former West might be that it is basically run by some of the most established (and, in some cases, most powerful) people in the art world and is supported by some of the most internationally-influential institutions. For instance, Charles Esche, the curator of Former West from 2008 until 2013, figured in ArtReview’s “Power 100” list in 2004, 2005, and 2014.45 And thus it might be possible to argue that Former West has made use of established figures to merely affirm and reproduce their power and recognition. Indeed, I would argue that, at least to some extent, existing power relations in the art world are being reproduced through Former West. This, however, would be in line with conceiving Former West as an instituting process. Power-free social formations are utopian. This is acknowledged even by people such as Raunig who have theorized autonomous and self-organized practices as instituting processes. However, Former West is produced in the discursive terrain of the art world whereby the disciplinary monopolies of academia and the art world have been challenged. On the one hand, education is perceived as capable of existing beyond academia while, on the other hand, the discursive terrain of the art world prioritizes knowledge production over exhibitionmaking. Even though some stagnant disciplinary prescriptions of academia and the art world such as the top-down transmission of knowledge and the use of curators or other experts to address inexpert art-lovers are often reproduced within discursive practices, Former West sees informal knowledge (visual, artistic, curatorial, or theoretical) as co-produced. Finally, as previously discussed, at least in terms of scale and duration, Former West has proposed and instituted a format different from the typically small-scale or one-off discursive projects that aspire to be (equally) radical. Nevertheless, it remains important to examine whether or how Former West is enmeshed in exclusionary, clan-making mechanisms of power 45

“Power 100,” ArtReview, accessed September 12, 2015, http://artreview.com/power_100/. An annual ranking of the contemporary art world’s most influential figures.

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beyond the obvious critique of its reproducing the symbolic power of certain individuals. In this examination, a useful parallel could be drawn between Former West and Foucault’s account of the French Communist Party. In his analysis of Cynicism in the modern period, Foucault refers briefly to the leftism of his time and the French Communist Party after the 1920s. Foucault locates an interesting inversion of the scandal of the revolutionary life in the French Communist Party. He writes: The theme of the style of life . . . remains absolutely important in the militantism of the French Communist Party, in the form of the . . . inverted injunction to adopt and assert persistently and visibly in one’s style of life all the accepted values, all the most customary forms of behavior, and all the most traditional schemas of conduct. So that the scandal of the revolutionary life—as form of life which, breaking with all accepted life, reveals the truth and bears witness to it—is now inverted in these institutional structures of the French Communist Party, [with] the implementation of accepted values, customary behavior, and traditional schemas of conduct, as opposed to bourgeois decadence or leftist madness.46

In other words, Foucault understands the structures of the party to have created norms and customary forms of behavior within which the revolutionary life acquires a “conformity of existence.”47 On top of that, everyone involved adopts persistently and visibly these norms and forms of behavior. For Foucault, this situation is paradoxical and worthy of further research. In any case, it provides a historical glimpse into this inversion of modern Cynicism. People with radical ideas institute a mechanism that overturns (or seeks to overturn) a given institutional order (in this case, capitalism). As soon as this mechanism is instituted, norms and customary behaviors are being developed and adopted persistently and visibly by the mechanism’s participants. Could something analogous be taking place in the case of Former West? In February of 2015, I attended the Former West’s Public Editorial Meeting in London, which allowed me to see the project’s internal workings up close and thus to critique it more accurately and fruitfully. Attending the meeting revealed to me that Former West has created its own norms and structures and that the blatant manifestation of these norms within, or outside, the art world can be dramatically exclusionary despite all (honest) intentions for radical inclusion. In London, one of the most interestingly-provocative contributions was made by philosopher and 46 47

Foucault, Courage, 186. Ibid.

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activist Nina Power.48 Power’s presentation was meant to be about twenty minutes long. Instead, she talked for about ten minutes and then opened the floor up to questions and discussion. In her talk, she presented briefly the work of an art collective, she read an activist text about protests in Bosnia, and then she stressed the importance of looking into the prescriptive laws surrounding collectivism in riots and protests. During her brief talk, she seemed frustrated, even slightly angry, but she also seemed undecided about what she was doing. Her comments seemed more impulsive than planned. At one point, she stated that she was “frustrated with the conference or maybe all conferences in general.” She argued that “it is not realistic to have all these vague, general discussions about what ‘we’ or collectives or publics are without looking at the ways in which they [publics] are mobilised and used in a violent way all the time.”49 She also said that she is “bored of this hand-wringing” presumably going on in Former West but also perhaps in the art world at large or in academia.50 Her gesture implicitly and, at times, explicitly challenged Former West’s over-theorizing as well as the art world’s obsessive introversion. Nina Power’s talk and attitude generated controversial reactions among the audience and the contributors. It was clear that she had challenged the status quo of the Research Congress. Toward the end of the event, Goldsmiths professor Andrea Phillips mentioned Nina Power’s sort of intervention, acknowledging that Former West needs to take it into account. Taking her intervention into account might entail inquiring into its grounds—including more hands-on, activist, or less theoretical perspectives—or searching for ways to be more open and accessible by undoing potential clique-forming behavior. In mentioning Nina Power, I do not mean to heroicize individual unconventionality in favor of institutional normativity. Her example, however, attests to the fact that Former West has developed its own normative codes and behaviors—perhaps along the lines of the specific regime of discursive practices in the art world. Like the inversion of Cynicism in the French Communist Party, Former West has developed and adopted a blatant normativity of codes and behaviors. Aspects of this normativity include linguistic and conceptual norms, obsession with theoretical discourse, specific art trends, and even an unwritten dress code. 48

“Who is a ‘People’? Constructions of ‘We,’” Vimeo clip, February 28, 2015, posted April 22, 2015, accessed September 12, 2015, http://https://vimeo.com/123938131. 49 Ibid. Power refers to imaginary publics, such as the “public of the public order,” in whose name the law grounds its prescriptions. 50 Ibid.

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In the case of Former West, structuralization appears in the form of this new normativity, and instituting involves constantly striving against structuralization. Therefore, if Former West does not locate and strive against this new normativity, it is doubtful that it is performing a parrhesiastic instituting.

“How can we be more?”51 When a radicalizing structure becomes rigid, when it has already been instituted and established and when it might overlook the need to institute anew, it is important that it turn to investigation, self-care, and selfinquiry. This turn is reminiscent of the demise of political institutions in Athenian democracy, which gave rise to the Socratic parrhesia (i.e., the shift from political to ethical parrhesia). In examining how a discursive practice of the art world could incorporate an instituting that activates the three poles of parrhesia, we need to turn to the question of the formation of the subject. We need to turn to the sphere of self-care, i.e., turn from the inquirer to those who are guided by the inquiry. This sphere in Foucault was the world of the Cynics. Cynicism was a popular practice and a popular philosophy. Foucault refers to Cynicism as a popular practice and a popular philosophy whose “precise and particular places” are “the streets” and “the doors of the temple.”52 He asserts that Cynicism’s “discourses and interventions were addressed to a wide and consequently not very cultured public, and its recruits came from outside the educated elites who usually practiced philosophy.” 53 Foucault also refers to a circular relation between Cynicism’s “doctrinal thinness” and “popular recruitment.”54 Cynicism was a popular philosophy with a banal and poor theoretical doctrine. However, Cynicism’s doctrinal thinness had to do with the paramount importance of the use of askesis (exercise/practice) as learning method rather than the easy and lengthy way of logos (discourse).55

51

Maria Hlavajova, “Welcome by Richard Noble and Maria Hlavajova,” opening talk at the Former West Public Editorial Meeting Who is a “People?” Constructions of the “We,” London, February 27-28, 2015, accessed September 12, 2015, http://www.formerwest.org/PublicEditorialMeetings/WhoIsAPeople/Video/ Welcome. 52 Foucault, Courage, 204. 53 Ibid., 202. 54 Ibid., 204. 55 Ibid., 207.

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What would it mean for Former West to aim at being a popular practice? Whom does it address or seek to address and how? At the Former West Public Editorial Meeting in London, Hlavajova stated that she had imagined these meetings as “smallish roundtables with lots of coffee and discussion that goes on until late at night.”56 Yet seeing the hundreds of people who attended the conference in London, she found herself asking, “[H]ow can we be more?”57 This introductory commentquestion points toward a major issue of concern for both Former West and the art world. In referring to projects such as free universities that use “art as a space for informal educational initiatives,” artist, author, and curator Marion von Osten suggests that they cannot “provide accessibility for more than the very few” as they “operate in the symbolic, heavily-under financed space of the art world.”58 Following von Osten, I would contend that discourse in the art world is accessible, almost exclusively, to an educated middle class. While accessibility is an infamous concept among practices of the art world that seek to be politically radical, Former West will need to address questions of accessibility if it does, in fact, intend to address a wider audience than that of the typical art world. In his famous study The Love of Art: European Art Museums and Their Public, first published in 1969, Pierre Bourdieu suggests that workingclass museum visitors tend to prefer their visits to be guided.59 Guidance involves “the help of a guide or a friend,” the visit being “signposted with arrows,” and the art works being “supplemented by explanatory panels.”60 Bourdieu observes that “working class visitors occasionally see, in the absence of any information which might make their visit easier, evidence of a desire to exclude through esotericism, or if not, as the more cultivated visitors are more willing to suggest, a commercial intent (in other words to promote the sale of catalogues).” 61 Bourdieu also notes that “hostility toward efforts to make works of art more accessible is mostly encountered amongst members of the cultivated class” while “working-class visitors

56

Hlavajova, “Welcome talk.” Ibid. 58 Marion von Osten and Eva Egermann, “Twist and Shout: On Free Universities, Educational Reforms and Twists and Turns Inside and Outside the Art World” in Curating and the Educational Turn, eds. Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson (London: Open Editions, 2010), 282. 59 Pierre Bourdieu, Alain Darbel, and Dominique Schnapper, The Love of Art: European Art Museums and Their Public (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002), 49. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 57

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are well placed to appreciate that the love of art is not love at first sight but is born of long familiarity.”62 Admittedly, it is debatable whether the same remarks could be made today given the advent of the populist mega-museum, which is run with client-based systems and quantifiable targets of accessibility. Rogoff regards accessibility as “the model of a client-based relationship with consumers who know what they want and can evaluate their satisfaction from it.”63 For Rogoff, accessibility in such terms implies “entry points that assume a fully completed entity that can be entered frontally.” She argues that, in this model of accessibility, “the possibility of shifting paradigms through and within the work as jointly experienced by makers, displayers and viewers is entirely lost.” 64 However, she does not reject accessibility in the name of the artist’s or the curator’s alleged freedom to create undisturbed by institutional bureaucracy and marketing strategies.65 Instead, she argues the following: “It is almost impossible to chart the boundaries between imagining, making, theorizing, questioning, displaying, being enthralled by, administrating, and translating. The field we currently call art consists of the intersections between all these, and it takes the form of a huge conversation.”66 I would argue that the question of accessibility persists but is now focused on this “huge conversation” and its participants. Indeed, Rogoff’s grounds for rejecting accessibility in its current form are valid. The possibility of shifting paradigms through and within the work as jointly experienced by makers, displayers, and viewers should be preserved. But what are the forces that govern the shifts of these paradigms? It could be argued that some of these forces have largely to do with knowledge in the sense of Bourdieu’s term “familiarity,” i.e., knowledge understood less as a body of knowledge (content) than as being with and around art and participating in art-related discussions. Those within the art world are by default in a position of greater familiarity. Despite the art world’s praise of participation and its effort to understand knowledge as informal and coproduced, its “esotericism” is blatant and cannot but strike one as exclusionary.

62

Ibid., 53-54. Irit Rogoff, “On Being Serious in the Art World,” in Visual Cultures as Seriousness, by Gavin Butt and Irit Rogoff (London: Goldsmiths, University of London; Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2013), 71-72. 64 Ibid., 72. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. 63

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In this respect, perhaps the most important aspect of Former West is its online archive. All of the content produced since 2008 can be publicly accessed online in its entirety (mostly in video form). While physically attending Former West is highly time-consuming, not to mention potentially expensive, and is thus only a real possibility for people already embedded in the art world, it is easy for everyone to watch the congresses online. Even though this gesture, at least by itself, is unlikely to alter the canon by which almost exclusively art-world audiences take an interest in art discourse, it is still a necessary gesture that should expand into all artworld practices. Making art discourse easily available is a gesture that resembles the function Bourdieu sees in museum guidance tools: “[guidance tools] would proclaim, simply by existing, the right to be uninformed, the right to be there and uninformed, and the right of uninformed people to be there.” 67 For my purposes, perhaps the word “uninformed” should be replaced by the phrase “unfamiliar with art-world discourse.” While I agree with Rogoff that “complexity” should not be sacrificed in the name of accessibility, I would argue that the art world’s instituted esotericism should at least be softened by inviting and welcoming gestures if not transgressed through self-investigation and selfinquiry.68

Conclusion I have attempted to show that projects and institutions of variable size, scale, and duration are equally embedded in a complex institutional terrain whereby precariousness conditions the organization of labor and modes of governance are of key importance. The example of Former West attests to the fact that instituting should not be monopolized by particular formats or organizational forms. Despite its efforts to transcend art-world or academic disciplinary prescriptions, Former West has revealed how instituting processes can also turn into stagnant and rigid structures that at some point will need to be challenged anew. On the one hand, it understands knowledge as informal and co-produced, proposing an institutive format that disrupts prescribed institutional arrangements and hierarchical power relations. On the other hand, its parrhesiastic character remains ambivalent as, first, it abides by many of the prescriptions of the discursive part of the art world and, second, it has instituted its own norms that are already striking as hierarchical or stagnant. The art world’s 67 68

Bourdieu, Darbel, Schnapper, Love Art, 49. Rogoff, Seriousness, 72.

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manifestation of its own norms condemns it to a blatant esotericism that too often excludes those outside it. Former West’s online archive is a minimal example of a gesture that disrupts this esotericism without resorting to populism nor simplification. A parrhesiastic instituting on behalf of Former West would arguably amount to incorporating doctrinal thinness without sacrificing the necessary complexity that comes with the specificity of philosophical discourse. Some possible tactics might include the insistence on embedding concrete and practical examples within the theoretical discourse or the increase of context and moderating aspects that aim specifically at mediating the discourse with a non-art world audience. Furthermore, Former West could increase its presence in non-art world media so that non-art world audiences have the chance to decide whether they want to take an interest in it. Finally, there seems to be a need for a broad toning down of the general blatancy of its norms, which would be synonymous with the tempering of the discursive art world’s need to validate itself as the intellectual expert.

Bibliography Aguirre, Peio. “Education With Innovations: Beyond Art-Pedagogical Projects.” In Curating and the Educational Turn, edited by Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, 174-185. London: Open Editions, 2010. Bishop, Claire. Articial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London: Verso, 2012. Boltanski, Luc, and Eve Chiapello. “The New Spirit of Capitalism.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 18.3 (2005): 161-188. Accessed September 10, 2015. doi:10.1007/s10767-0069006-9. Bourdieu, Pierre, Alain Darbel, and Dominique Schnapper. The Love of Art: European Art Museum and Their Public. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002. Butt, Gavin, and Irit Rogoff. “On Being Serious in the Art World.” In Visual Cultures as Seriousness, 63-80. London: Goldsmiths, University of London; Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2013. Foucault, Michel. The Courage of the Truth (The Government of Self and Others II). London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Hlavajova, Maria. “Rael Artel, Maria Hlavajova, Iliyana Nedkova in conversation with Katarzyna Kosmala relating to her edited collection, Sexing the Border: Gender, Art and New Media in Central and Eastern

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Europe.” Conversation at Word Power Books, Edinburgh, March 23, 2015. Accessed September 12, 2015. https://vimeo.com/130040477. —. “Welcome by Richard Noble and Maria Hlavajova.” In Who is a “People?” Constructions of the “We,” London, February 27-28, 2015. Accessed September 12, 2015. http://www.formerwest.org/PublicEditorialMeetings/WhoIsAPeople/V ideo/Welcome. O’Neill, Paul, and Mick Wilson. Introduction to Curating and the Educational Turn, edited by Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, 11-22. London: Open Editions, 2010. Raunig, Gerald. Factories of Knowledge, Industries of Creativity. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2013. —. “Instituent Practices: Fleeing, Instituting, Transforming.” In Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique, edited by Gerald Raunig and Gene Ray, 3-11. London: MayFly, 2009. —. “Instituent Practices, No. 2: Institutional Critique, Constituent Power, and the Persistence of Instituting.” In Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique, edited by Gerald Raunig and Gene Ray, 173-185. London: MayFly, 2009. Rogoff, Irit. “Free.” E-flux Journal 14 (2010). Accessed September 05, 2015. http://www.e flux.com/journal/free/. —. “Turning.” In Curating and the Educational Turn, edited by Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, 32-46. London: Open Editions, 2010. —. “What is a Theorist?” In The State of Art Criticism, edited by James Elkin and Michael Newman, 97-109. New York, London: Routledge, 2007. Sheikh, Simon. “Simon Sheikh explores the legacy of New Institutionalism.” Paper presented at the symposium Desire Lines: A Symposium on Experimental Institutional Formats, David Roberts Art Foundation, London, November 28-29, 2014. Von Osten, Marion, and Eva Egermann. “Twist and Shout: On Free Universities, Educational Reforms and Twists and Turns Inside and Outside the Art World.” In Curating and the Educational Turn, edited by Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, 271-284. London: Open Editions, 2010. “Who is a ‘People’? Constructions of ‘We.’” Vimeo clip. February 28, 2015. Posted April 22, 2015. Accessed September 12, 2015. http://https://vimeo.com/123938131.

CHAPTER TWELVE NEOLIBERAL LEARNING AND THE SPECTER OF UNEMPLOYABILITY RUSSELL BENTLEY DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON, SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND SO17 1BJ

This paper attempts to describe and analyze the ideological foundations of some closely related developments in UK higher education. 1 These developments encompass the changing character of learning space, the discourse of student engagement, and the discourse of student employability. Taken together, I offer a reading of the neoliberal university as disempowering students and lecturers, while, perhaps unsurprisingly, using a language of empowerment to advance an ideological agenda. The disempowerment partly operates by eliminating sites of resistance to neoliberalism within the academy and by reframing those sites as loci of market transactions. However, I attempt to end on a somewhat hopeful note about new sites of resistance that the changing higher education landscape opens. That hopefulness is tempered by practical circumstances, of course, but it does suggest that elements of an emancipatory pedagogy remain available.

Disempowering learning spaces It is helpful to start by considering the spatial dimension of empowerment and disempowerment and some changes within higher education that are potentially positive. I return to that potentiality at the end of the paper

1

Higher education is very much global, of course, and the UK, like the US and many other countries, sees its own higher education sector as competing in a global market. While this paper focuses mainly on the UK, similar developments are certainly observable in other countries.

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because it suggests some continuing commitment within the academy to an emancipatory pedagogy. The physical spaces where teaching and learning take place in most Western universities embody pedagogical attitudes inherited from previous generations. The legacy estates and facilities are learning spaces designed to transmit, broadcast, and push out information from expert teacher to inexpert student. The design of a typical lecture space represents the “sage on a stage” view of education in which the chief source for developing understanding is to hear a spoken explanation or witness a demonstration.2 Needless to say, much education continues to proceed in this way although it is often challenged as an effective or desirable approach to learning, especially outside the STEM subjects. One criticism is that the physical design and the manner of teaching that it more or less necessitates result in a disempowered, anonymous, disconnected body of students. A comparison to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is apt: students are physically constrained to face forward and observe, not shadows on the wall but PowerPoint slides on a screen. Add to this the present but distant voice of the lecturer narrating those slides and the image is all but complete.3 There are, of course, other legacy learning space formats in universities. The generations that designed and built most of the universities in the UK also recognized different teaching styles requiring rooms designed expressly for interaction, i.e., seminar rooms. The romantic image of a university seminar looks like a roomful of conversant students exchanging ideas and thoughts on a common topic, an unconstrained “multi-logue” of equals. The image also incorporates what the lecture theater does not: an idea of equal standing. The physical placement of students in the seminar room requires them to see one another and, importantly, places them on the same physical level as the formal seminar leader, the tutor. Where a lecture theater has seating that inclines away from the focal point, a seminar room is flat and, typically, has no structurally fixed focal point. In the romanticized image, the tutor is a moderator of a lively and productive discussion—part deliberation, part conversation, all intended to deepen 2

As Paul Temple notes, it is not always clear what campus designers imagined the activity of education to involve. However, it is safe to say that a classical bias informs much of the construction in campus buildings—not a classical bias in the sense of neo-classical architecture (although there is that) but in the sense of a bias toward an auditorium, a place of listening, as the default vision of education. Paul Temple, “Learning Spaces in Higher Education: An Under-Researched Topic,” London Review of Education 6 (2008): 229-241. 3 The allegory appears in Book VII of the Republic.

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understanding. The moderator’s role is to keep the interaction unconstrained, that is, undominated by any one voice or any one idea.4 However, there is another sense in which we can think about learning spaces, specifically as sites of socially-constructed meaning and of social learning. The physical characteristics of these spaces, as well as the way they are used, structure and inculcate understandings of authority and privilege as well as behavioral norms. Even though education is supposed to foster critical intellectual abilities, critical scrutiny of what the learning spaces themselves promote is not on the agenda. These social relations embedded in the spaces remain invisible and unquestioned. The legacy estates and facilities, with the legacy educational philosophy, persist in reproducing the social relations of an empowered few and a disempowered many—this despite the obvious massification of higher education. 5 Reconceptualizing the social learning acquired via physical learning spaces, however, has a role to play in an emancipatory pedagogy, as I describe at the end of this paper.

The discourse of “student engagement” Disempowerment easily lends itself to a discourse about the perils of disengagement. Students who are disempowered are passive, not active learners. There is an early twentieth-century cartoon depicting what education will be like in the twenty-first century. The image shows a roomful of boys (of course) sitting on benches at desks, all wearing what look like headphones. Off to the side, a teacher in academic robes is feeding books into some sort of electrical contraption that is connected to the headphones. Not a difficult image to interpret: in the future, there will be technological means of feeding knowledge directly into the heads of students. Thus, a century ago, the idea that education might not involve the passive absorption of knowledge was itself hard to imagine. Times have changed. Learning and active engagement are very nearly synonymous in the contemporary literature on pedagogy. The descendants of John Dewey have completely internalized the idea of active, self-directed learners as

4

For a wide-ranging discussion of many of the issues around learning space and learning as an activity, Oblinger’s collection is invaluable. Diana Oblinger, ed., Learning Spaces (Educause, 2006), E-Book, http://www.educause.edu/learningspaces. 5 On the psychological effects of learning spaces and the changes emerging through increased use of technology in learning, see Ken Graetz, “The Psychology of Learning Environments,” Educause Review 41.6 (December 2006): 60-75.

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the only true learners.6 Education and training have taken separate forks in the road. Moreover, where there is education in this sense, there is student empowerment, or, at least, its conceptual and practical availability. The fullest expression of this is the current agenda in UK higher education around the idea of students as partners or students working in partnership with their universities.7 The conceptual foundation here is an elevation of the previously passive student to a position of almost-equality or emerging equality. The word to reach for in this context is “stakeholder.” It is meant to capture the thought that the previous empowered-disempowered educational model failed to acknowledge all those with an interest in the activity and outcomes of education. The stakeholder concept permits engagement on an equal footing and promotes a community of interests represented, on the students’ side, by the phrase “the student voice.” What distinguishes lecturers from students is experience and achieved qualifications, not something more intrinsic, and what unites them is having interests in the activity and outcomes of education. Partnership conceptually presents itself, therefore, as a movement to overcome disempowerment. Clearly, in light of the previous comments on existing learning spaces, “partnership” is not a readily available socially-constructed meaning. Therefore, to realize the idea, certain practical changes have to be introduced within the confines of legacy estates and facilities. A prominent aspect of these changes is technology enhanced learning (TEL)—a concept that, to say the least, means different things to different people. For my purposes in this essay, technology needs to be seen in two ways. First, it can redefine spaces, both conceptually and practically, by obviating the need for colocation of students and lecturers. The most conspicuous example of technology used this way is distance learning, and the headline-grabbing version of it is “massive open online courses,” also known as MOOCs. However, distance learning in general and MOOCs in 6

John Dewey, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (1916), Google Books, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8p0AAAAAAYAAJ. 7 Two sector-wide organizations in the UK have been particularly involved in and encouraging of this development. The Higher Education Academy (HEA), which supports UK universities in improving the quality of teaching, and Jisc (formerly the Joint Information Systems Committee), which supports UK universities mainly in the area of digital systems. See their respective websites for a sense of the overall discourse that is now becoming commonplace in UK higher education. The HEA: https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/enhancement/themes/students-partners. Jisc: https://www.jisc.ac.uk/guides/students-as-agents-of-change.

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particular are not the only, or even the most common, ways of combining technology and pedagogy. The second way of examining technology, then, is as a means to facilitate student engagement, which is achieved by increasing available channels of communication between lecturers and students as well as between one student and another. Social networking may be paving a way in education that leads to a greater emphasis on peerto-peer interaction. 8 Going back to the famous Allegory of the Cave, technology seen in this way permits the prisoners to move around and interact with one another directly. Engagement seems to emerge from this and also to empower students by breaking the “broadcaster-receiver” model of education. Students can use various kinds of technology to reach out to other students, to their lecturers, and, indeed, to many and diverse “partners” outside the confines of their formal place of learning. Education gains a kind of authenticity. Students as partners in education, in quality-assurance regimes, in university decision-making: the empowerment of students occurs, one might reckon, through their elevation to an equal footing with not only their lecturers but also with the entire non-student community of the university, including senior management. To the extent that this represents a new educational philosophy, it seeks to harness students to the educational mission of the university itself and to make that mission their own. Stakeholding fits nicely with this, insofar as the ideological foundation is individuals as bearers of interests that they seek to protect and advance.

Student engagement as a neoliberal concept However, partnership comes with baggage in two respects. One is that students are invited into a partnership but become partners in something that they have had no hand in creating. The university itself has already 8

Again, Graetz, “The Psychology of Learning Environments,” 60-75 is informative here. For critical and sober analyses of the recent enthusiasm for technology-enhanced learning, including MOOCs and blended approaches, see Neil Selwyn, Education and Technology: Key Issues and Debates (London: Bloomsbury, 2011) and Neil Selwyn, Digital Technology and the Contemporary University: Degrees of Digitization (London: Routledge, 2014). Kirkwood and Price provide an excellent critical literature review of how technology-enhanced learning is discussed in scholarly works. Adrian Kirkwood and Linda Price, “Technology-Enhanced Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: What Is ‘Enhanced’ and How Do We Know? A Critical Literature Review,” Learning, Media and Technology 39 (2014): 6-36.

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traveled far down the road of neoliberalism, and this necessarily means that students are invited to become partners specifically in a university that ideologically rests on neoliberal principles.9 Partnership masks co-optation, and the promise of empowerment becomes no more than a further compromising of any genuine struggle to achieve it. It makes little difference that the partnership discourse claims to be moving higher education beyond traditional student-union engagement in university management. This manifestation of engagement “beyond” takes the form of a cadre of student leaders sitting on various committees where “the student voice” can be expressed and, supposedly, acknowledged. Widening student participation to meet the demands of what is called partnership empowers more students to be involved in the means of their own disempowerment. The other aspect of the baggage with which partnership comes is the way it complements and, indeed, accelerates the consumerization of students. The stated intention of the massive withdrawal of public funding from higher education in the UK, which began slowly in 1998, but which reached full stride in 2012, was to put students at the center of the system by incentivizing them to seek value for money.10 The obvious idea here is that those who pay for something will be the drivers of quality, and thus the removal of public funding in the UK meant a massive spike in the cost of higher education borne directly by the students themselves. What has misleadingly been described as an increase in tuition fees is simply a transfer of the responsibility for higher education funding from the public purse to the private, that is, to the students. The consumerization of the student helps us better see what lies beneath the student-engagement discourse: a direct and focused effort to stimulate what we can call “demandingness.” Engaged students are demanders of more and better services—and the model here is designed to be one based on service 9

Universities are merely the latest institutions to be subjected to what is known as New Public Management (NPM). On the inherent managerialism and the attachment of price tags to education services that NPM has brought about, see Chris Lorenz, “If You’re So Smart, Why Are You Under Surveillance? Universities, Neoliberalism, and New Public Management,” Critical Inquiry 28 (2012): 599-629. 10 The Higher Education White Paper (June 2011) produced by the (then) coalition UK government spells out the current prevailing policies and ethos of higher education in the UK. See Higher Education: Students at the Heart of the System, Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, accessed March 15, 2011, https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/313 84/11-944-higher-education-students-at-heart-of-system.pdf.

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provision—and universities, as academic staff are increasingly being taught to say, have customers or clients who deserve a quality service for their money. None of these developments will be news to anyone, and the marketization of higher education was not obscured in any way by its architects. They expressly saw it as a worthy aim and boasted about it. Indeed, they continue to boast about its accomplishments—not only in terms of what it is claimed to be achieving with respect to student satisfaction but also with respect to an increase in applications to university.11 The further claim is that more students from lower earning households are now going to university. Marketization is cast as the liberator of the poor and downtrodden classes.12 What are the educational consequences of this? One obvious consequence is that lecturers become frontline service providers in this marketized dystopia.13 This is a critical issue because it drives a wedge between lecturers and students, a wedge between those who actually share an interest in resisting the neoliberalization of higher education— ironically, given the discourse of stakeholdership. As frontline service staff, it is the lecturers, not the university itself, who become the focus of customer dissatisfaction and, thus, objects of discipline for university management regimes. A possible bond of shared interests that could focus efforts to resist marketization becomes harder to forge, despite the conspicuous support that, for example, the lecturers’ union in the UK has 11 David Willits, the former Minister for Business Innovation & Skills, interviewed by the Times Higher Education Supplement in June 2015, clearly feels that the major higher education funding changes he introduced and presided over have been amply vindicated. Times Higher Education Supplement, Times Higher Education, accessed June 8, 2015, https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/davidwilletts-what-i-did -was-in-the-interests-of-young-people. 12 The very significant increase in higher education participation rates in the UK since the 1960s—and greatly accelerated under Labour governments between 1997 and 2010—did not see a relative improvement in participation of children from poorer backgrounds. As Blanden and Machin show, participation rates for children from richer families increased disproportionately. While their research was published in 2004, there is no reason to expect this trend to have been reversed. Jo Blanden and Stephen Machin, “Educational Inequality and the Expansion of UK Higher Education,” Scottish Journal of Political Economy 51 (2004): 230-249. 13 Molesworth, Scullion, and Nixon have assembled an excellent collection of essays that explore in detail the most recent developments and emerging consequences of marketization of higher education. Mike Molesworth, Richard Scullion, and Elizabeth Nixon, eds., The Marketisation of Higher Education and the Student as Consumer (London: Routledge, 2011).

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lent to student campaigns against the withdrawal of public money for universities. In the daily business of the university, the lecturer-student relationship is now a commercial transaction, albeit a peculiar one that still bears all the hallmarks of an educational relationship.14 Nevertheless, that kind of partnership is fading and, indeed, one is tempted to see this as an intended outcome of the marketization architects’ plans. Lecturers, after all, are uniquely placed to influence student thinking about the circumstances of higher education. Devising a system that feeds student demandingness compromises the ability to educate about demandingness itself. Of course, demandingness is not solely driven by students directly bearing the cost of higher education. It will have escaped no one’s attention that a possibly inherent tendency to instrumentalize education in general, and higher education in particular, has advanced at an increasing pace, especially since the financial crisis that began in 2008. Higher education has long been a vehicle promising class mobility in the US, at least since the end of the Second World War when the massification of higher education was made possible by policies such as the GI Bill.15 In the UK, higher education has served the interests of class mobility during the years when university students paid no fees, received a maintenance grant, and, indeed, could sign on for unemployment benefits during vacations. However, overwhelmingly, higher education in the UK has been a privilege of the wealthier classes, and the financial measures just listed were, to a large degree, mainly of benefit to the better-off segments of the middle class, not to the children of working class families. At a time when industrial employment was widely available and even semiprofessional jobs could be gained with no qualifications beyond compulsory education, about one in sixteen of each generation finishing compulsory

14

Nordensvard proposes a citizenship model, as opposed to a consumer model, of students, in order to retrieve some of the values lost in the prevailing neoliberal climate. The perspective itself is interesting, but the overwhelming effect of the actual conditions students and academics are subject to makes escape from the consumerist model more than a decision about which metaphors to use. Johan Nordensvard, “The Consumer Metaphor Versus the Citizen Metaphor: Different Sets of Roles for Students,” in The Marketisation of Higher Education, eds. Mike Molesworth, Richard Scullion, and Elizabeth Nixon (London: Routledge, 2011), 157-169. 15 However, there is evidence that even under the GI Bills (post-Second World War and post-Korean War) the effects were concentrated in the upper half of the socioeconomic scale. See Marcus Stanley, “College Education and the Midcentury GI Bills,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 118 (2003): 671-708.

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education continued on to university in the early 1960s. University was a marker of class stability, not mobility.16 While participation rates have not radically altered, university in the UK is now connected directly in popular discussions and in public policy to the need for a degree in order to secure a “good” job. With an all but vanished manufacturing sector, higher qualifications are considered necessary to gain the largely service-sector jobs that characterize graduate employment. Downward class mobility is a real possibility that previous generations of students could scarcely have imagined. A degree is no longer the finishing touch before embarking on a middle-class life. It is now the basic requirement for being in a contest to obtain that life. The discourse of student employability concentrates the minds of students, as well as the entire university management regime, on the idea that a satisfactory university education is one that equips graduates to gain employment at what is deemed the appropriate level. Importantly, with varying degrees of implicitness, the employability discourse suggests that universities have a special responsibility to get their graduates into such jobs. The full expression of demandingness emerges at this point. The payment of vastly-increased fees could not sufficiently produce a consumerized perspective of higher education without firmly fixing the aim of receiving the service in the first place. Without the crafted and oftrepeated point that a university degree is supposed to get graduates into appropriate jobs, there is, in a word, insufficient fear to accompany the greed. Demandingness is about wanting more, but the specter of unemployability gives the fight for education “service” more bite and a more urgent motive. The idea of a service is central in this context. It makes explicit the exchange relationship that is developing between educators, now seen as service providers, and students, now seen as purchasers or investors. The exchange relationship reinforces notions of value for money and of a purpose-oriented transaction, the purpose being the acquisition of something instrumental for achieving a primary aim. This is just to change the way we describe education as instrumental; it becomes an instrument for achieving some primary good, but not a primary good itself.

16

Blanden and Machin effectively chart this phenomenon in “Educational Inequality.”

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The discourse of student employability Employability is the latest calculated move aimed at entirely instrumentalizing higher education. Instrumentalizing it is, clearly, a way of individualizing responsibility for success. Students attend university to enhance their employability, an enhancement they achieve by properly calculating the needs of the labor market and molding their personalities to exhibit the proper attitudinal traits demanded by employers. However, while the job market is itself premised on competitive principles, the discourse draws little attention to the fact that competitions have winners and losers and that the preparation for employment puts students in competition with one another. The discourse of employability, in obscuring these basic features of the graduate employment market, suggests that all shall have prizes, provided they do the right things. That so many recent graduates find themselves working at less than graduate-level jobs since the economic downturn began perhaps suggests that enhancement will always run up against economic circumstances. Nevertheless, to the students who have internalized the ideology of individual responsibility, it encourages a sense that they have personally failed to achieve what employers want and have failed to develop the character traits that are called for in a dynamic and globalized world or work. This is how employability as a concept goes further than merely the idea of education as an instrumental good. Employability is a further step toward the commodification of the students themselves. Employability is about treating oneself as a product that has to be made ready for the market and about seeking a competitive advantage and product differentiation. Entering the graduate labor market is not just about selling one’s labor; it fulfills the logic of commodification of the person. That logic, embedded in the wage labor practices of capitalist economies, starts from an attempt to separate conceptually the laborer from her/his labor power. The wage system operates as a transaction in which the laborer sells that power, typically measured in time, for a wage. Thus, the labor power is conceptualized as the commodity and the laborer as somehow distinct from the commodified labor power. The practical reality, however, is that the actual person and her/his labor power are not separable, meaning that the conceptual attempt to impose such a separation masks the commodification of the laborer her- or himself. The graduate seeking work in the globalized marketplace now plainly is the product up for sale. In addition, individualizing responsibility also individualizes risk. Or, to put it another way, individualizing responsibility “de-risks” the system by placing the costs of any kind of disadvantageous outcome entirely on those in the labor market. The de-risking in higher education represents a

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compact between government and private-sector industry. The terms of that compact are that government will discipline universities and their staff to produce graduates suitable for employment and will relieve industry of needing to invest in the development of those they hire (except with respect to specific skills that can only be learned in the context of the relevant employment itself). Thanks to employer-friendly university education, new hires arrive at the office work-ready. Clearly, the terms of this compact require nothing of the private-sector industries, so it is a compact in which the political system takes on the risk of the private sector and manages its own risk by loading it onto students and universities (the political system’s risk, or, more immediately, the risk facing the government of the day, includes capital flight—employers can move off-shore). Government passes risk to universities through systems of discipline, in the first instance. For institutions, this takes the form of quality-assurance regimes and other metrics-driven means of making the universities compliant and accountable agents for the wishes of their principals in government. For students, risk gets handed over in two ways, one direct and the other less so. Firstly, and directly, students take on risk by covering the full economic cost of tuition. The debt incurred to pay tuition fees and necessary maintenance costs burdens students throughout much of their working lives, even though the UK student-loans regime operates quite differently from the US system. Secondly, students indirectly take on risk via their own universities, which are actively structuring the curricula and co-curricula as a seamless field of opportunities that students must capitalize on using some kind of strategic vision for planning their futures. This should be understood as a requirement to develop an investment strategy focused on maximizing one’s own market value. The principle of commodification demands that the commodity, the individual student, be able to compete successfully in a market of broadly similar products. The investment of time and effort that the individual student makes in this regard is concentrated on differentiating her- or himself from that broad background of similarity. If and when their individual strategizing fails to deliver the desired results, the blame rests entirely with the atomized student-strategists, to the extent that the university itself has successfully created that field of investment opportunities. Demandingness certainly helps drive universities toward developing a wide field of such investment opportunities. However, these comments on risk describe system-level risk bearing. Government fashions the disciplinary regimes mentioned earlier to make universities construct that field of opportunities in the first place. The failure of student-strategists to achieve their aimed-for results is a failure of an

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individual university. To the extent that the system of university education is properly disciplined, the system never fails anyone, but specific sites within the system certainly may. In other words, quality assurance regimes, publicly available statistics on employment destinations of graduates, and the proliferation of league tables that rank universities against one another unavoidably structure the decision-making within universities in particular ways. The costs of appearing not to do enough to enhance graduate employability are high in the short term and can threaten institutional survival in the longer term. Disciplining universities to direct management energy and other resources into enhancing graduate employability is the “push” that complements the “pull” of student demandingness.

Discipline We need to examine discipline and the mechanisms of disciplining more thoroughly to see how this operates in the neoliberalized university. A couple of reasons will suffice to justify a closer look. The first is that the neoliberal regime is not about releasing individuals to freely pursue their own goals in life but about forming individuals to behave in the ways that the ideological structure requires, to have a certain kind of goal to pursue. The second is that I began this paper by looking at physical learning spaces as sites of disempowerment, and at universities as claiming to be working toward the genuine empowerment of students while serving other ideological purposes. The concern for any neoliberal architect of institutional structures and practices is that people may stubbornly refuse to behave the way the theory specifies. The system of higher education, whatever else it teaches, also involves the social learning of appropriate personality attributes and will also define the choice architecture for individuals in the requisite ways.17 The specter of unemployability obviously provides the emotional motivation by instilling fear—anxiety about future 17 “Choice architecture” is the term of art that comes from the latest behavioral psychology research in public policy, the field of study associated with “nudging.” The idea is that the framing of a choice situation influences how, and what, choices are made. Obvious examples concern “opting in” versus “opting out,” e.g., automatic enrollment in something that is a policy goal, thus requiring people to opt out. Requiring people to opt in, on the other hand, reduces the likelihood of individuals doing so. One specific example might be automatic enrollment on the organ donor register upon renewal of one’s driving license. See Cass R. Sunstein, Why Nudge: The Politics of Libertarian Paternalism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014).

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success—which has a powerful ability to generate risk-aversion. This helps drive the instrumentalization and consumerization agendas in higher education to a significant degree. Consider, also, the disciplining effects that work in other directions. Students may be sufficiently pliable to allow themselves to be shaped around neoliberal contours, but academics often are less pliable. Part of this is because the academic profession still permits a great deal of autonomous conduct in research and education. Even as frontline service providers, individual academics are the weakest link in the chain of a fully-neoliberalized higher education. The compliance of academic staff, that is, their willingness to respond to management priorities and to market signals, is less predictable than it is for those in other professions. A typical private sector organization is driven by a need to maximize profit, and that need will be forcefully driven by a leadership team that is in place to keep the enterprise on a competitive footing. The image of the lefty intellectual teaching things that are not useful (are useless?), on the other hand, is the bogeyman in this regard. Thus, all must be compelled to be (or at least appear) useful. Practically speaking, this typically involves skills development being integrated into the curriculum, which makes raising skill levels the responsibility of those who deliver the curriculum, i.e., the academic staff as education service providers. Employability has become a strategic aim of the modern university. In light of this development, any individual university will have to adapt its culture and its practical organization to achieving that strategic aim. The word that is commonly used to describe such adaptation is “embedded,” which we can think of loosely as employability becoming almost invisibly woven into an organization such that enhancing employability is considered a business-as-usual part of the institution. Moreover, embedding helps produce a new kind of common sense regarding the practical as well as more philosophical purposes of any given university and higher education itself. Embedding the enhancement of employability changes how we talk about and conceptualize a university. Thus, the ideological agenda around employability colonizes every aspect of the institution’s activity and the ways of thinking behind that activity.18 Academics can be recalcitrant or stubborn or just unaware, so there is a danger, from the perspective of those promoting the ideological agenda, that the agenda will not be fulfilled. Where this failure is due to 18

The sector-wide aspect of this is, again, signaled by the commitment to the employability agenda by the Higher Education Academy in the UK. See https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/project/embedding-employability-curriculumstrategic-enhancement-programme.

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recalcitrance or stubbornness, the failure is one of ineffective discipline or a lack of discipline. From the perspective of university senior management, the problem becomes recruiting academic staff to work to advance the ideological agenda when the will to advance it is lacking amongst the academics. A number of factors come into play at this point, two of which are student demandingness and metrics-driven rankings. Demandingness in this respect is a product of the fear inspired by the specter of unemployability. The metrics, at least in the UK, but perhaps coming soon to the US, are official statistics on the destinations of graduates from degree-awarding bodies. In other words, statistics on the kinds of jobs that graduates obtain. 19 In the UK, there is an official classification scheme that identifies what a graduate job is, i.e., a job for which one needs a degree, the suggestion being that, below the level of graduate employment, one is not working at the level of one’s educational achievement. The annual reporting of what graduates are doing six months after graduation (Destination of Leavers from Higher Education, DLHE) is an extremely important measure for individual universities and their senior managers.20 It contributes to various privately-funded league tables and is required to be included in the Key Information Set (KIS) that all universities are required to make publicly available through a web site established for that purpose.21 Because of the general instrumentalization of higher education, the DLHE data is treated as a broad measure of how well graduates do in the job market. Since the data is reported at the level of major disciplinary subject, the statistics supposedly give a fine-grained picture of which discipline areas have the most employable graduates. Statistics like this directly influence recruitment of students into degree programs. When the primary funding for higher education now comes from fees paid directly by the students themselves, the consumerization of decisions such as where and what to study confront academic departments as threats to survival. Departments that cannot recruit, can, have been, and will be shut down. Thus, job insecurity disciplines the academic staff to 19 President Obama says he is committed to ensuring that “consumers” have clear and transparent information about universities. See https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/08/22/president-obama-explains-his-plancombat-rising-college-costs. However, as reported by the New York Times, the more ambitious plan for a single government ranking of universities and colleges appears to have been abandoned. See http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/us/with-website-to-research-colleges-obamaabandons-ranking-system.html?_r=0. 20 https://www.hesa.ac.uk/stats-dlhe. 21 http://unistats.org/.

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shape the curriculum, irrespective of subject, around the need to enhance the employability of students.22 At the heart of this is a false canting of the student—false because it alienates students from learning, it alienates teachers from students, and it alienates pedagogy from its emancipatory potential. The disempowering and pacifying experience of education concretely embodied in legacy facilities has been recast as a pathos induced by the specter of unemployability—haunting both students and those employed to educate them.

Conclusion: new opportunities? It will be useful to return to the beginning of the paper and examine a new dimension to the physical learning spaces. The analysis so far has been pessimistic about the direction of travel in higher education, particularly in the UK. However, there is an aspect of the employability agenda that may be less bleak. Based on surveys showing that graduate recruitment favors those who have participated in a work placement or internship, universities are working feverishly to create opportunities for students to do so. 23 There are a variety of ways to do this, but what is emerging is a year-out approach, during which students take some kind of employment that is formally recognized as part of their degree. Of course, there are other kinds of work experience, and quite a lot has been written in the mainstream press about the expectation that students do some kind of work for a month or more for no pay—except in the sense that one is paid in experience itself, supposedly preparing one for greater achievement in the formal world of work. This is so obviously exploitative that it is even popularly recognized as such.24 The year-out placement is different because it is work for pay and formally incorporated into the structure of the 22

No discipline is immune, of course. See, for example, Rosemary Barrow, Charlotte Behr, Susan Deacy, Fiona McHardy, and Kathryn Tempest, “Embedding Employability into a Classics Curriculum: The Classical Civilisation Bachelor of Arts Programme at Roehampton University,” Arts and Humanities in Higher Education: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice 9 (2010): 339-352. However, as is also evident, this policy direction in higher education has itself become a new research opportunity for academics. 23 The graduate recruitment research organization High Fliers has been reporting for several years that its own surveys show an employer preference for those with placement-type work experience. For example: http://www.highfliers.co.uk/download/GMRelease12.pdf. 24 The UK’s National Union of Students has been particularly vocal about this. See http://www.nus.org.uk/en/ news/unpaid-internships-are-exploiting-young-people-/.

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degree. This can be seen as the encroachment of the world of work on the world of scholarship. Although employers stop short of defining the curriculum, taking students into employment as part of gaining an academic qualification is the step before total encroachment occurs. The powerful signal this sends is that the instrumental value of higher education is its predominant value. The predominant status of instrumental value, however, is not merely learned; it is enacted through the structuring of the curriculum, as well as the practical and psychological disciplining of academic staff and students. In terms of entering employment, it is difficult to understand precisely why a year out of one’s degree studies is more beneficial than finishing the degree as usual and doing that very same job after graduation. The architects of such programs could offer various responses (for example, a placement might increase the chances of getting a better job or accelerate a post-graduation job search or provide a route into a particular employer’s organization), but the point here is that the inclusion of the year out in the formal structure of a degree breaches a separation between work and study. Is this cause for concern? In one sense, it might be the opposite. If legacy facilities and estates disempower students, a year out for paid work might be seen by some as breaking free of the confines of any classroom. Such a view, however, confuses one kind of disempowerment with another. The disempowering classroom is a holdover from an earlier era of higher education that is being progressively supplanted by an ideology that changes the fundamental purposes of learning. Thus, the value of breaking free of the disempowering classroom cannot empower or liberate in the relevant sense when faced with the new disempowering ideology of higher education. Thus, whatever else a work placement undertaken as part of normal degree studies achieves, it continues the instrumentalization and the social learning underpinning the neoliberal university. Nevertheless, it is still possible to strike a more positive note and, indeed, issue a call to action. All sites of learning create some kind of opportunity to educate about embedded ideological structures, and it is possible to see a new angle on a potentially emancipatory pedagogy in work placements. The specter of unemployability can be harnessed to expose the ideological uses of the concept of employability in the contemporary capitalist economy. A critical means of achieving this could be to educate specifically about the education that work placements provide. Universities will want students on work placements to critically reflect upon the experience they are having in their place of employment. In fact, universities will insist that they do so. This is the compliment neoliberalism pays to pedagogy: accepting that demonstrable learning

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should be one of the outcomes. The educational institution’s sense of critical reflection will require one to consider what skills one needs and is acquiring on the placement, what particular strengths one exhibited as a member of the employer’s organization, and what weaknesses one will need to address in order to ensure full preparation to enter a career. This kind of critical reflection is superficial, however. As an educational activity, it is connected entirely to the work placement as job training, and its focus is about becoming the sort of person who can secure a particular kind of employment. In terms of any personal development it may suggest, this kind of self-reflection takes a very narrow view of the “self” that is developed. This is the self that is useful to the capitalist economy and nothing more. It disempowers by obscuring questions of the ideological purposes that are being played out in higher education and reduces critical thinking to means-ends rational calculation. For academics who cling to the idea of a genuinely critical pedagogy, placements have another, deeper possibility. For the majority of undergraduates, a placement will be their first exposure to what is very likely to be the reality for the rest of their lives: looking for jobs, fulfilling an employer’s requirements, and working in times of structural job insecurity.25 A critical pedagogy will teach about this reality. It will ask students to reflect upon the deeper features of the work that they experience. It will test their awareness of the relations of power within and between organizations. And it will challenge them to reflect on what they have experienced as the fundamental relationship between the employer and the employee. This sketch of a critical pedagogy can be made even more specific. Aspects of structural sexism and structural racism become more clearly visible in the light of a lived experience. Reflecting on relations of power in all their dimensions is, indeed, the deeper benefit of work experience. Students can be challenged to consider who benefits—how and at whose expense—by the system of work. Places of work are highly managed environments with, typically, definite positions of authority held by named individuals. The expectations placed on the members of such organizations relate to the aims of the organization itself, and work is designed to achieve those aims. The authority holders structure the work to discipline employees to perform in ways that the organization needs in order to 25

By structural job insecurity, I mean circumstances in which increasing numbers of job seekers compete for decreasing numbers of jobs; professions systematically reduce the amount of labor required; employment law is designed to favor only the interests of capital; and workers and professionals increasingly face the prospect of having to accept work and conditions below what they currently have in order to retain the employment they have, or face redundancy.

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achieve its aims. Thus, the exercise of power is woven into all relations within an employer’s organization and operates at all levels to shape and direct the purposes of every individual in that organization. As students on placement (that is, as people whose status is defined by the activity of learning, not the status of an employee), they are given a chance to investigate what work is and, thus, can and should be challenged to learn something deeper than the learning objectives their university defines. Becoming alert to and gaining an understanding of power along all its dimensions is a practical education in capitalism in an age of neoliberalism. Of course, a pedagogical determination to achieve this will have to originate with university teachers, those who do cling to the idea of an emancipatory pedagogy. None of this can be taken for granted, and it will demand that academics themselves resist and unlearn the social lessons of the employability discourse. The neoliberal university makes this difficult through systemic removal of academics’ power to define the processes, policies, and institutional structures within which they have to teach. Academics, however, retain the role of educators and researchers, which means there is a vocational obligation to define and shape the educational content of all aspects of the student experience. The risk here is that cynicism and defeatism will prevail among academics, with the result that embedding employability in the curriculum becomes the sole responsibility of the non-academic staff of a university, the staff who operate more directly under the imperatives of university management. If employability and pedagogy are allowed to diverge, it will only succeed in cementing the instrumentalization of higher education. Thus, employability in general and work placements in particular offer sites of resistance that should not be neglected.

Bibliography Behr, Charlotte, Susan Deacy, Fiona McHardy, and Kathryn Tempest. “Embedding Employability into a Classics Curriculum: The Classical Civilisation Bachelor of Arts Programme at Roehampton University.” Arts and Humanities in Higher Education: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice 9 (2010): 339-352. Blanden, Jo, and Stephen Machin. “Educational Inequality and the Expansion of UK Higher Education.” Scottish Journal of Political Economy 51 (2004): 230-249. “Higher Education: Students at the Heart of the System.” Department for Business, Innovation & Skills. Accessed March 15, 2011. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/

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attachment_data/file/31384/11-944-higher-education-students-at-heartof-system.pdf. Dewey, John. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. 1916. Google Books. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8P0AAAAAYAAJ. Graetz, Ken A. “The Psychology of Learning Environments.” Educause Review 41.6 (December 2006): 60-75. Accessed January 2, 2014. Kirkwood, Adrian, and Linda Price. “Technology-Enhanced Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: What Is ‘Enhanced’ and How Do We Know? A Critical Literature Review.” Learning, Media and Technology 39 (2014): 6-36. Lorenz, Chris. “If You’re So Smart, Why Are You Under Surveillance? Universities, Neoliberalism, and New Public Management.” Critical Inquiry 28 (2012): 599-629. Molesworth, Mike, Richard Scullion, and Elizabeth Nixon, eds. The Marketisation of Higher Education and the Student as Consumer. London: Routledge, 2011. Nordensvard, Johan. “The Consumer Metaphor Versus the Citizen Metaphor: Different Sets of Roles for Students.” In The Marketisation of Higher Education, edited by Mike Molesworth, Richard Scullion, and Elizabeth Nixon, 157-169. London: Routledge, 2011. Oblinger, Diana G., ed. Learning Spaces. Educause, 2006. E-book. http://www.educause.edu/learningspaces. Selwyn, Neil. Education and Technology: Key Issues and Debates. London: Bloomsbury, 2011. —. Digital Technology and the Contemporary University: Degrees of Digitization. London: Routledge, 2014. Stanley, Marcus. “College Education and the Midcentury GI Bills.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 118 (2003): 671-708. Students as Agents of Change. Joint Information Systems Committee Online. Accessed February 6, 2014. https://jisc.ac.uk/guides/students-as-agents-of-change. Sunstein, Cass R. Why Nudge: The Politics of Libertarian Paternalism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014. Temple, Paul. “Learning Spaces in Higher Education: An UnderResearched Topic.” London Review of Education 6 (2008): 229-241. Times Higher Education Supplement. Times Higher Education. Accessed June 8, 2015. https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/david-willettswhat-i-did-was-in-the-interests-of-young-people.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE BUSINESS OF TEACHING: “TEAM-BASED LEARNINGTM” AND THE LIMITS OF PEDAGOGICAL INNOVATION PATRICK CESARINI DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH ALABAMA, MOBILE, AL 36688

Recently, reading a collection of essays about pedagogical innovation, I came across a personal story that, in its general shape, might have been written about me—or about you. Frank J. Dinan is describing the paradoxical disappointment he began to experience after teaching collegelevel chemistry for twenty-five years: I had won a number of teaching awards and was generally thought of as a successful teacher. In recent years, however, I had sensed a definite decline in the effectiveness of the lecture method in my courses. Student attendance was not as consistently high as it had been, and, despite my best efforts at “clarifying” the material presented in my lectures, the results on examinations were often disappointing to me. Combined student withdrawal and failure rates were also higher than I found acceptable, about 15 to 20 percent. . . . Although my student evaluations remained good, I suspected that the evaluations may have become a better measure of the effort that I put into making my lectures entertaining than to [sic] their effectiveness in teaching organic chemistry. My colleagues’ frequent complaints about “today’s students” and the disappointingly high student withdrawal and failure rates that characterized their courses indicated that I was not alone in these perceptions.1

1

Frank J. Dinan, “An Alternative to Lecturing in the Sciences,” in Team-Based Learning: A Transformative Use of Small Groups in College Teaching, ed. Larry K. Michaelsen et al. (Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2004), 98.

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Unlike Dinan, I teach English, and I almost never conduct my classes in a lecture format. But, like him, I have experienced a growing sense that something has gone wrong with my teaching despite the fact that I, too, have been recognized as a good teacher, both by my institution and in my students’ course evaluations. Initially, it seemed that the problem occurred mainly in my lower-division courses: freshman-level composition courses and sophomore-level literature surveys. But soon I was encountering the same problems in my upper-level courses for English majors. And it was not only that student attendance was low and that student performance on exams and essays was weak; I also discovered that students frequently were not doing the required reading for the course, or were not doing it very well, and that, increasingly, students did not bring their required course texts to class, and some never even purchased them. To make matters worse, I discovered that a surprisingly large number of students, even among the majors, did not like literature very much, or at least not the literature that I teach, which is primarily American literature from the colonial period to 1900. Although Frank Dinan’s troubles did not seem to run as deeply as mine, and although there are discipline-specific differences (e.g., between chemistry and English) in subject matter, integration of courses within sequences, and levels of student preparedness, motivation, and goals that need to be accounted for, nevertheless I saw that what he and I had most in common was a habitual use of passive learning strategies. Above I mentioned that, unlike Dinan, I did not conduct my courses in a lecture format. But the truth of the matter is that, however often I required students to work in small groups on set questions, I still spent a great deal of class time explaining concepts and interpreting works of literature for my students, and I repeatedly had the impression—reading their exams and essays—that too often the students’ acceptable arguments and interpretations sounded like more or less successful reproductions of arguments and interpretations that I had supplied them with or led them rather ungently toward. Their work too seldom seemed the result of their having learned how to undertake independent analysis and appreciation of texts based on a command of common concepts and methods. I wish I could say that I resembled Dinan in his determination to take action in the face of professional difficulties, but my story is a bit messier. Late in the summer of 2013, I received an email inviting interested faculty members at my school to attend a two-day workshop, where we would be introduced to an innovative pedagogy called Team-Based Learning led by its primary developer, Larry Michaelsen. My university offers regular workshops for teachers on a diverse range of issues, but this one caught

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my eye, I confess, because the email promised that attendees would receive a $300.00 stipend. Dinan does not mention having an economic motive for turning to Team-Based Learning, but I know “that I was not alone” among my colleagues in being enticed by some extra cash. I had had one bad experience with an earlier pedagogical initiative, when, as interim chair of my department, I was charged by upper-level administrators with converting one of our high-enrollment, multi-section courses from a traditional to a “blended” (i.e., half in-person, half online) format in 2008. This top-down initiative was frankly designed to save the university money by teaching the same number of students using fewer faculty instructional hours and often (to maximize savings) by using very lowpaid adjunct faculty in the place of full-time faculty to teach them. I had become cynical, then, about alleged innovations in teaching, at least those that originated with administrators, but (perhaps just as cynically) I calculated that $300 equaled approximately two days of my net salary and that even if Team-Based Learning turned out not to interest me, attending the workshop did not commit me to adopting the strategy. At the workshop every participant received a free copy of Team-Based Learning: A Transformative Use of Small Groups in College Teaching, edited by Larry Michaelsen (along with two other colleagues), and containing the essay by Frank J. Dinan referenced above, along with nine other essays written by professors (“The Voices of Experience”) who, like Dinan, have successfully adopted TBL—who have, themselves, been transformed by TBL.2 And today—having been convinced of the promise of TBL during that workshop; and having progressively remodeled my classes over three semesters so as to incorporate more of TBL’s complex mechanics; and being convinced in fact that TBL has transformed my own teaching and my students’ learning for the better—I could proceed to write an essay like those others. Such an essay would read like a secular, professional-managerial variation on the old Protestant “conversion narrative.” Like Dinan and the others in Team-Based Learning, I could (continue to) confess my pertinent pedagogical sins (passive learning strategies, lecturing, lowering the bar, grade inflation, blaming my students); I could describe an earnest but ineffective search in the pedagogical scripture and among esteemed advisers of the pedagogical spirit (from Socrates to Dewey to Freire); and I could at last relate how in deep “deadness of heart” (or near-burnout) I came to TBL, saw the light, accepted the grace of my lord and master, and endeavored to walk 2

Henceforth I will frequently use TBL as an abbreviation for Team-Based Learning. The “Voices of Experience” constitute chapters five through fourteen in Michaelsen, Team-Based Learning, 95-194.

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righteously in all his ways.3 Of course, the terms of such a progress would need to be updated, and, as professors, converts to TBL are more like ministers than ordinary believers. Thus I could (as Michaelsen’s contributors do) mark the several key turns in our educational salvation: for my students, from passive to active learning, from memorization to application, from regurgitation to critical thinking, and from apathy to engagement; and for myself, from the intuitive to the “evidence-based,” from the “sage on the stage” to the “backwards designer”; and for all of us, from cynicism to idealism, from alienating to socializing, from “boring” to “fun.” Like the old collections of conversion narratives, mine would join Dinan’s and the rest in their encouraging monotony: Always do A, B, and C; always get D and E. But also in their useful variety: the “Voices of Experience” chapters in Team-Based Learning and its sequel speak from across an impressive range of academic disciplines, with detailed examples in each of subject-specific lesson plans, grading scales, sequences of assignments, troubleshooting, etc.4 Such an essay would certainly be useful in a way, since the experience of teachers from the humanities is under-represented in the two TBL collections and in postings to the Team-Based Learning Collaborative’s website.5 But one more essay by yet another satisfied Voice of Experience, explaining and promoting TBL for use in English classes and other humanities disciplines, and so spreading the gospel—or filling a slot—in the larger TBL mission, would be difficult to write for several reasons. First, it is no accident that the experiences of humanities professors are under-represented in the TBL literature. Although many aspects of the TBL approach are adaptable for use in humanities classes, the strategy as a whole was designed for use in disciplines that are more oriented toward “the factual” than “the interpretive.” While that distinction itself needs to be elaborated and problematized, I am mainly interested in using my experience with TBL to reflect on the broader question of how a given pedagogy might serve institutional and social purposes over and above the purposes of particular teachers and students in particular classrooms. Despite the fact that TBL seems to be a bona fide “movement,” its 3

For an overview of the form of the Puritan conversion narrative, or confession, see Edmund Morgan, Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1965). 4 The sequel is Team-Based Learning in the Social Sciences and the Humanities, ed. Michael Sweet and Larry K. Michaelsen (Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2012). 5 Team-Based Learning Collaborative, accessed November 14, 2015, http://www.teambasedlearning.org.

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literature (both that produced by Michaelsen et al., and that produced by adopting institutions for local use) is worryingly un-historical and unsocial.6 This leads to my second area of broad concern. As I suggested earlier, my own story with TBL is messier than those offered by Frank Dinan and the others, in part because my own story—and I assume this is true for other post-secondary teachers—is not only personal or individual but (again) reflects and responds to a host of historical, economic, political, and cultural contingencies that are nevertheless rather difficult to see and narrate coherently. So one movement of this essay will enact a dilation of the personal to the institutional and beyond. But another (as in an eye under shifting lights and perspectives) will enact a dilation of the social back to the personal, from Afar back to Near. In spite of, or perhaps because of, trends in higher education toward “privatization,” teaching at the tertiary level still rightly values such individualistic ideals as academic freedom, workplace autonomy, personal expression, creativity, vocation, etc.7 And as more, and more fine-tuned, modes of assessment and accountability are generated and deployed in educational institutions, one’s own sense of what matters and what is right—however these might need to be adjusted over time—still count for each of us, and still need to be adjusted by each of us, rather than surrendered to administrators or “metrics.” Much of the recent literature on various crises in higher education, arriving from whatever point on a political spectrum, tends to create a sense of apathy, at least for me. One reason is that, whether the writing tends mainly to theorize, to historicize, or to polemicize, it mostly constructs narrative agents, acts, and arcs on such a large scale, or of such a broadly composite character, that no individual is likely to re-emerge from an exposure to such discourse with any compelling reason to do anything differently. The “big picture” seems either hopeless or irrelevant, with regard to one’s own situation. Insofar as this essay is personal and autobiographical, I do not intend for it to be exemplary but rather to offer myself in, and as, a 6

An example from my own institution, The University of South Alabama, can be found at “Team USA Quality Enhancement Plan,” accessed November 14, 2015, http://www.southalabama.edu/departments/qep/. The section titled “Proposal” (http://www.southalabama.edu/departments/qep/proposal.html) offers a detailed timeline of the stages leading to the school’s adoption of TBL. 7 The literature on this topic (whether the key term is privatization, corporatization, commercialization, or monetization) is quite large now, and I will reference some of it below, but a concise overview and forecast that remains useful is Richard Ohmann, The Politics of Knowledge: The Commercialization of the University, the Professions, and Print Culture (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2003), 85-123.

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persona that has (for understandable reasons) not been included in the usual typologies of higher education’s drama. By naming and claiming that type as (one of) my own, I hope to encourage others to do something similar: to begin their own “institutional autobiographies,” and so diversify the drama of education both as to its cast and its plots.8 My assumption is not that this mid-level-drama is better than the strictly personal tale or the strictly social epic but that its construction is needed in order for one to move, imaginatively or mindfully, between a personal register that can seem all-too-present and a social register that can seem all-too-remote.

Practicing classroom innovation I want first to explain how Team-Based Learning works, by twice describing a typical class meeting in one of my literature courses, once as it went before I adopted TBL, and again as it goes now. Although the degree of quotidian detail in what follows might seem tedious, I believe it is necessary in order to proceed convincingly to the broader questions and claims that will follow. In the first week of my sophomore-level “Survey of American Literature I” class, my forty or so students read a twenty-five-page excerpt from Mary Rowlandson’s 1682 captivity narrative, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God. As with any literary text, Rowlandson’s contains much of interest, but because time is limited, I ask students to focus their reading on something I consider significant to the text as a whole, the Puritan concept of “God’s special providence.” I lecture briefly on this concept, explaining the difference between “general” and “special” providence and providing hypothetical contemporary examples of each. I also provide some general historical context on the Puritans, the history of North American colonization, and the relations between the English and Indians in New England. After answering whatever questions students have, I tell them the next class meeting will start with a five-question quiz on Rowlandson’s narrative, and that, in addition to answering at least one question on her use of providence, they will also have to answer basic questions on matters of plot (who did what, when, and why) and on the meanings of words. I tell them they should make reading notes on these items that will aid their recall.

8

On “institutional autobiography,” see Richard Miller, Writing at the End of the World (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008). For an example of one, see Ohmann, The Politics of Knowledge, 202-224.

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At the start of the next class, I hand out the quizzes. Students have between ten and fifteen minutes to answer the questions in brief sentences without consulting their books. When time is up, I collect the quizzes, and then discussion proceeds. I ask a student to give her/his answer to question one. I ask whether anyone has a different answer; someone always does. I then tell my students to turn to their texts to determine whether one of the two answers is correct or, at least, better. After allowing a few minutes for textual consultation, I call on new students to weigh in on the matter in order to engage as many of them as I can, or at least to give them the impression that any of them might be called on and so should be ready to answer. Once a certain range of responses has been elicited, I tell the class which answer is correct or the best and I explain why, with reference to the preceding contributions from the students. We proceed in this way through all five quiz questions, some of which are more objective (e.g., “What close relative of Rowlandson’s dies during their captivity?”) and so are more quickly resolved, and some of which are less so (e.g., “What is the most significant example of “special providence” in the narrative, and what makes it so?”) and thus take more time. After each quiz question has been handled in this way, I ask whether students have questions about the discussion, and usually very few of them do. This whole process uses up about thirty minutes of the class session. In the time that remains, I combine short lectures on aspects of the text that have not been covered by the quiz questions with short, directed re-reading and discussion of selected passages. In the last few minutes of class, I prepare students for the next meeting by providing some context for the new assigned reading and, again, by directing students’ attention to some aspect of that text that I deem especially significant, as well as reminding them to make notes about other matters that I might ask them about next time. After class, I score the students’ quizzes so that I can return them by the next meeting, often making brief comments to explain why an answer did not receive credit or even briefer ones to offer encouragement and praise. Often, when a large number of students fail to provide the correct answer to a question, I do not count that question and answer for those who were mistaken (their quizzes then are worth a maximum of four points), and I give a bonus to those who answered correctly. At the next class meeting, after administering a new quiz but before discussing any new material, I hand back the corrected quizzes from the previous meeting, explaining again the answers to whatever questions a large number of students answered incorrectly and answering whatever new questions students have about the others, of which, usually, there are very few.

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According to the pedagogy of Team-Based Learning, one big mistake in the approach I have just described is the over-long time I allow between students taking a quiz and students learning their actual score on it. It is not just that forty-eight hours have passed between these two events. Rather, because students do not see their own scores on the old quiz before taking the new one, an opportunity for them, individually, to see, acknowledge, and adjust their own learning practices in the light of past performance has been muddled, if not entirely lost. The other big mistake, or lost opportunity, concerns the way I manage the lesson that follows each quiz.9 Given that there are forty students in the class, I cannot give every student time to ask a question, much less can I discern and assess every student’s “uptake” of the material covered and her/his “metacognitive” process and progress. Indeed, conducting every meeting as a kind of discussion, as I used to with a few willing students, and hoping the others would recognize and apply its insights to themselves, had not been fruitful. As the old-style semester proceeded, the cohort of students willing to do the talking with one another and me steadily shrank. And, overall, their performance on successive quizzes indicated not only that many of them did not get better at reading literature, but also that a disappointingly large number ceased doing the reading. I could see what was happening, but I did not think very hard about how to change it, so I maintained a kind of simulation (or ruse) of active learning. As the weeks before mid-term and then final exams arrived, however, my reliance on passive learning became overt: I lectured to the students about what would be covered on the exams (material that had already been covered in class), and I found ways to make the exams as easy as possible—e.g., by lengthening and increasing the weight of the portions that tested objective knowledge. Thus, it is not surprising to me that my old classes seemed inadequately fruitful and fairly dull to my students and me, even as the vast majority of my students rewarded me with very positive evaluations. I was not asking very much of them, I kept things lively enough not to be called boring, and I was giving them grades that satisfied them. Even though I have not adopted every article of the TBL faith, I have altered my approach enough that the course as a whole has changed in some substantial ways. In order to score quizzes during the same meeting when they are given, the TBL literature advocates the use of multiplechoice and/or true/false format quizzes as well as the use of portable scanners, “clicker” technology, or pre-fab scratch-off answer cards that are 9

The methods and justifications for TBL’s approach to classroom redesign are detailed in Michaelsen et al., Team-Based Learning, 27-72.

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“self-scoring.”10 I have altered my quiz format so that almost all questions are multiple-choice or true/false, but I have not yet used any of the suggested high- or low-tech options for instant scoring. Instead, I combine the need for immediate scoring of quizzes with TBL’s second important tactic, the organization of students into permanent (semester-long) teams of five or six students each. Here is how it works: as of old, I begin class with a quiz, which I now call an Individual Quiz. As soon as I collect these, I hand out new copies of the same quiz, but these latter are called Team Quizzes, 11 and the student teams (into which they are already gathered at the start of each class) confer and reach a consensus on a single set of answers, which they write on their Team Quizzes. Each team then jots down those same answers on a sheet of notebook paper, with the team’s name at the top, and I collect these while letting them hold on to their separate copies of the Team Quizzes in order to facilitate the discussion that follows. That discussion proceeds quite differently from how it did with my former method. I read out the first quiz question and quickly write each team’s answer to it on the board. (And I can be quick because the answers now are single letters.) Occasionally, every team has come up with the one correct, or the single best, answer. This usually happens with the objective questions (e.g., “When was Mary Rowlandson’s narrative first published?”) although even on these at least one team occasionally has an answer that is different from the others. Moreover, every quiz has at least one question for which there is more than one correct answer, or more than one answer that is arguably the best (e.g., “What episode best illustrates Rowlandson’s use of the concept of ‘special providence’?” followed by a choice of four episodes), so some degree of disagreement among the teams—and an opportunity for collective discussion of the text in detail—is inevitable. And now, rather than simply announce the correct or best answer and explain why it is so, I ask the students to do this work themselves. That is, once all the teams’ answers to a given question are on the board, and after I have pointed out the obvious disagreement among them, I tell each team to review the assigned reading in order to find the one passage that best supports their choice of an answer. They have to do this quickly, i.e., in no 10

TBL recommendations regarding these and other logistical matters are detailed in Michaelsen et al., Team-Based Learning, 158-164. I should note that my home institution provides funds for TBL-adopting instructors to purchase scratch-off, self-scoring quiz cards. 11 TBL discourse uses the terms I-RAT (Individual Readiness Assessment Test) and T-RAT (Team Readiness Assessment Test) for what I call Individual Quizzes and Team Quizzes. I prefer to avoid acronyms, and especially ones like these.

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more than five minutes. Next I simply ask one of the teams to explain their answer and their chosen passage—making sure, from meeting to meeting, to vary the assignment of this role among the members of each team. Then I ask someone from a team with a different answer to explain why theirs is better than the first team’s. Then I invite everyone in the class to weigh in, and it is remarkable (in comparison to the way things went in my classes formerly) how many of them do and how much they speak to and try to convince one another of their answers rather than just convincing me.12 In this way we arrive at the same place as with my old method: we have covered each quiz question and, along the way, a good deal of the assigned reading. But we have, I think, achieved a better result: far more students are participating in discussion, both in teams and in the whole-group discussion; far more students are re-reading their texts in class rather than relying on me or their better-prepared classmates to do the re-reading for them; and very little whole-group time is spent on the “easy” questions because these get sorted out in the teams’ own discussions, which leaves more whole-group time to wrangle over the harder and more worthwhile questions.13 Having students work in small groups was not a new practice for me before I began with TBL; in fact, it was the heart of the first pedagogy I learned when I began teaching composition as a graduate student. But such TBL tactics as organizing the groups into heterogeneous and permanent teams; narrowly defining the teams’ actual work so as to require for each task a single choice of answer; along with devoting a significant portion of the students’ final grades to their scores on team work; and requiring team members to evaluate one another anonymously—all this was new to me, and I am convinced that these practices are responsible for the improvements I have seen overall in student attendance, preparedness, engagement, persistence, and (to a less certain extent) achievement. It 12

Frequently, during this discussion, a team that has chosen the wrong (or the lesspersuasive) answer to a question will say so to the class and will choose not to defend its answer. This usually happens because the team has been persuaded by one or more of the other teams’ arguments. I have noticed that such moments become more rare as the semester proceeds, which seems to be the result of a general improvement in student preparedness. 13 TBL literature refers to the problem of poorly-prepared students consistently relying on their better-prepared team-members as the “free-rider” problem (or “social loafing”), and it argues that this problem diminishes over time, due to a combination of direct peer pressure and indirect aversion to embarrassment, both before one’s team and before the class as a whole. Nevertheless, the literature advises teachers to take measures early to prevent such behavior. See Michaelsen et al., Team-Based Learning, 52-71.

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seems that each student’s desire to contribute to the success of the team (as well as each student’s aversion to being judged unsupportive of the team by the other members) combined with a reward for the team’s success (with the Team Quiz scores counting toward a student’s overall Team Score) and an individual penalty for failure to contribute to that success (with each member’s evaluation by the others also counting toward her/his Team Score) motivates more students, first, to do their homework, and then, to participate seriously in the class’s various activities. Moreover, the practice of putting the teams in competition with one another—even when every team can “win” a given course event (that is, any team can receive the maximum number of points for a Team Quiz or other team activity)— generates more substantive and consequential discussion among teams (that is, more “cross-talk” among more students) than used to occur before I adopted TBL. To recapitulate, but now with some description of motivational factors: when I first began teaching literature survey courses and realized that too few students were reading the assigned texts for each meeting—which made any attempt by me to teach rather than simply to perform textual interpretation rather difficult—I began administering weekly quizzes, usually one quiz every three meetings for a thrice-per-week class. I thought that the quizzes would at least give more students another incentive simply to read. But if I gave the week’s quiz on a Monday, for example, too many students would then not do the reading for (or would tend not to show up on) Wednesday and Friday. Giving a quiz every two or three meetings per week was, of course, an option, but I did not want to spend so much time marking and discussing quizzes. So, as the semester progressed, I tended to give the quiz on the last day of the week, and although this kept students a bit more on their toes, overall the result was not much better: Mondays and Wednesdays eventually became the slack days with respect to attendance and participation. And either way the students’ quiz scores did not improve much overall. With the TBL method, it seems I no longer have to play this game of pedagogical cat-and-mouse. It takes very little time to score the quizzes now because they are all a mix of multiple-choice and true/false format, so I can give one any day I like. Better, knowing as they do that some form of scored team activity can happen in any class meeting and so knowing that they need to be prepared for class whether or not there will be an actual quiz, more students seem to do the reading more frequently and more attend class regularly than did so under my old approach. Finally, with TBL I have the sense that my time and effort as a teacher—as someone who is supposed to help large numbers of students to learn—is better

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spent. I never much liked nor enjoyed lecturing to students, and although I still have to do that occasionally, it is no longer a sort of “broadcast” to an anonymous audience whose interests are unknown to me, but more like a letter to someone or some group who have sought my advice about a particular problem or my answer to a particular question. Considering only this matter of quizzes, I have also found that the students’ increased seriousness about the close reading of literature has made them closer readers of my multiple-choice and true/false questions as well. As noted earlier, I have always allowed students to challenge the wording of my quiz questions, and I have always been willing to admit when a question has been poorly or ambiguously worded (and have taken steps, scoringwise, to correct for such problems). But under TBL, students far more often see and raise questions about my questions, and in such discussions—again, because the team stakes are high—the closeness of the reading and questioning is quite intense. One positive result, of course, is that I now work to formulate the best questions I can, given the limitations of the multiple-choice, true/false format. But another, just as good, has been the addition of a new dimension to my class: a space wherein students teach me valuable things (about literature as well as quizzes) and wherein my motives for pedagogical change arise from a realizable hope for improvement rather than a resignation to lowered expectations.

Contextualizing classroom innovation Although I have recounted a selected aspect of my experience with TeamBased Learning in positive terms, it is not hard to see it otherwise. In the remainder of this essay, I want to map out the narrow and broad areas of concern that TBL raises and try to distinguish, within those overlapping areas, the elements that are truly worrying from those that are not (or are not yet). I said earlier that the extant TBL literature is rather unhistorical and unsocial. Another way to put this is that TBL is untheoretical, insofar as theory would (among other things) critically account for the historical backgrounds and current contexts of a thing (such as a pedagogical strategy) as well as for the social intentions, functions, and effects of a thing. Given the ubiquity of complaints today about the corporatization of higher education and its feared effects on classroom practice and curriculum, TBL would seem to be in special need of scrutiny from several angles. However, as I also noted before, one of the limitations of the public discourse around higher education is precisely its tendency to over-generalize or to inadequately contextualize. For example, in a 2015 New York Times opinion piece, history professor Molly Worthen extols the

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educational virtues of lecture-based classes, which she says foster “listening skills” and good note-taking, while she criticizes an unspecified “craze” for active learning strategies, which she says are “an attempt to further assimilate” the humanities “to the goals and methods of the hard sciences—fields whose stars are rising in the eyes of administrators, politicians, and higher education entrepreneurs.” 14 Part of the problem with Worthen’s claim is her mistaken assignment of active learning’s origin to the “hard sciences,” part is her insinuation that educators in the humanities can learn nothing about teaching from those in non-humanities disciplines, and part is her suggestion that if non-educators like something (and not only administrators, etc., but also the bearers of “populist resentment”), then it must be bad for education or, at least, education in the humanities, which non-educators presumably disdain. As one of many learning strategies called “active,” TBL does have origins that are worth considering although the question of whether those origins entail goals and methods that are alien to TBL’s various disciplinary destinations must remain open. After a brief discussion of TBL’s origins and its implicit theory, then, I can better address the concerns it raises for those interested in the apparent dichotomies between the humanities and the other disciplines (“hard” or not) and between educators and non-educators. Although Larry Michaelsen is often credited as the “inventor” of TBL (and although TBL is even trademarked), it is clear from Michaelsen’s and his colleagues’ accounts of TBL’s origins and development that the strategy emerged in the 1970s as a series of adjustments to a basic and bythen fairly common practice: the division of students in a class of whatever size into smaller, student-led groups for the purpose of collaborating on the various kinds of work assigned to them. But whereas such group work before had usually been carried out in a fairly irregular way, 15 TBL’s innovation was to make such groups the primary engine and site of classroom learning by embedding them in a set of interlocking arrangements that would define classroom tasks more clearly and that would incentivize (i.e., assess and then assign grades for) both the students’ preparation for such tasks outside of class and their performance of them in class, both individually and in their groups. To illustrate the thinking by reference to the earlier discussion of quizzes in my American 14

Molly Worthen, “Lecture Me. Really,” New York Times, October 17, 2015, accessed October 29, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/opinion/sunday/lecture-me-really.html?_r=0. 15 The distinction between learning groups and learning teams is elaborated by L. Dee Fink, “Beyond Small Groups: Harnessing the Extraordinary Power of Learning Teams,” in Team-Based Learning, ed. Michaelsen et al., 3-26.

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Literature survey: I want students to do the assigned reading before class because the discussion of the reading in class cannot be productive otherwise. But because many students will not (as I have found) do the reading unless I give them a reward for doing so, and a penalty for not doing so, I administer at least one quiz per week at the start of class, and their individual averages on these quizzes have substantial weight (35 percent) in the computation of their final grades. But even students who do the reading often do not do it very well, for various reasons, and so many of them do not perform very well on the quizzes. So I administer each quiz twice, first the way just mentioned and then as a group (or team) quiz, during which the students help one another to arrive at their answers. And they take this work seriously, in part because their average scores on the team quizzes also have substantial weight (half of the total team score for the semester) in the final grade and in part because the students develop bonds of mutual support with their teammates. Students seem to be more willing to be prepared and to participate (or less willing not to) when they perceive that the responsibility for their own learning is tied to the learning of their peers in a small, face-to-face setting. And this greater seriousness about preparation and performance, cultivated in the teams, seems to carry over (in most respects) to students’ individual work on exams and other individually-scored projects, which still weigh most heavily (75 percent, including individual quizzes) in the computation of their final grades. Indeed, although exams are taken individually for individual scores, students in my TBL sections form their own study groups—that is, they use their teams as study groups—to prepare for the exams without any prompting from me, which is also a change from the way things worked in my former, non-TBL classes. Where did TBL and its meticulous scaffolding of tasks and incentives come from? There are two interesting points of origin, one accidental and the other not. As Michaelsen explains, he began using teams and redesigning his classes around them when he was informed by an administrator that the enrollment in his old, forty-student courses would be increased thenceforth to one hundred and twenty students. Michaelsen did not want to convert to a lecture format, so he adapted the relatively casual use of small groups from his old classes into the intensive team-based model sketched out here.16 His specific innovation of the “team” concept for higher education, while it might conjure up images of sport, actually derived from Michaelsen’s own disciplinary domain—Business Management, which he taught for many years both at universities and as a 16

Michaelsen et al, Team-Based Learning, vii-ix.

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consultant—and, behind that, from the development of “self-managing” workplace teams in industrial and corporate settings over the latter third of the twentieth century. This makes sense, given the differences between athletic teams, in which members typically have rather distinct and specialized functions, and workplace teams, in which members of large organizations engaged in complex processes are gathered into small units whose members all perform the same set of tasks and assist and monitor one another’s work, which teams are in turn assisted and monitored by higherlevel managers.17 The teams in TBL classes—along with the interlocking relations of self-managing student-teams and team-monitoring teachers, the assignment of frequent and focused tasks during class, and the prompt assessment of student performance on those tasks—look much more like workplace teams than athletic teams. It also makes sense that TBL’s adoption in institutions of higher education should have occurred primarily not in the humanities but in fields requiring the frequent application of abstract principles of design, operation, or building to novel problems, cases, or scenarios, such as in the “hard sciences” but also in medicine and health sciences, accounting, business management, and the like.18 In the humanities, a rational division of subject matter into multiple discrete concepts or rules, on the one hand, and on the other hand into objects to be analyzed and fixed—or designed and built—or processes to be carried out, problems to be solved, etc., seems much harder to accomplish, if indeed it does not run counter to their nature.19 Finally, as virtually every pedagogy justifies itself in part by claiming to equip students with some skill beyond 17

For an overview of workplace teams see John Bratton and Peter Chiramonte, “Groups and Teams in Organizations,” in Organizational Behaviour in a Global Context, ed. Albert J. Mills et al. (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2007), 267-293. 18 The second TBL collection (Sweet and Michaelsen, Team-Based Learning in the Social Sciences and the Humanities) contains, like the first, a section of fifteen “Voices of Experience,” only four of which, however, are written by professors in the humanities. The Team-Based Learning Collaborative, according to current President Karla Kubitz, does not have data on the kinds of courses, by discipline or size, in which TBL has been and is being used. [E-mail message to author, October 20, 2015.] 19 Obviously this is a very broad claim about disciplines in general, with many potential qualifications. For example, most disciplines (at least as they exist in academic departments) themselves contain divisions along the lines sketched here. But a detailed argument in support of my general claim can be found in Janet Donald, Learning to Think: Disciplinary Perspectives (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002), especially in Chapter Eight, “Criticism and Creativity: Thinking in the Humanities,” 232-270.

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subject-mastery that will serve the interests of future employers, so TBL’s version of this claim—given its origin—can be more direct than most. As the editors of the first TBL collection declare: “Society at large, as well as most professional organizations, is increasingly recognizing the value of people who know how to work effectively in teams on intellectual tasks, and they [sic] are calling on colleges and universities to incorporate this kind of learning into the higher education curriculum.”20 All of this might lead to the suspicion that Team-Based Learning’s origin is its destination, and its destination its origin: that team-work itself, in the business-managerial sense, is what TBL teaches in whatever discipline and beyond whatever discipline-specific learning it serves. This would be an updated version of the sort of argument that Richard Ohmann made about composition classes in English in America, namely, that the practices and values of education that underlie any particular subject matter are such as to make students fit for and compliant with their destined places in a neoliberal capitalist economy.21 While the potential dangers of TBL are real, I think their locations and therefore their redress are more complex than the “education-as-capitalist-reproduction” argument recognizes. For instance, even TBL’s promoters acknowledge that instructors are likely to find that they are able to cover less material in a course, due to the need to devote so much time to team processes. But that literature also argues that such an exchange is entirely worthwhile since it means that students spend less time in class engaged in lower-order learning activities, such as the “intake” of simpler kinds of content, and more time developing facility with higher-order “applications” of more complex content. While this tradeoff is evidently feasible in some disciplines, where a limited set of “concepts” can be applied to an infinite number of “applications,” I have already seen that in a literature class (and likely in other humanities disciplines), a reduction in the number of “cases”—or rather of texts: stories, essays, poems, novels, etc.—can entail a real diminution of the subject as a whole. This is because, to take a simple example, while stories by Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and Alcott all have a great deal in common as short fictional narratives, they also differ enormously in other ways and thus are not interchangeable. Given how the canon of American literature has expanded in recent years (and that for

20

Michaelsen et al., Team-Based Learning, 20. More employer-oriented versions of the same point appear on pages three and 182. 21 Richard Ohmann, English in America: A Radical View of the Profession (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).

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good reasons), cutting it back for the sake of a pedagogy of efficiency entails real disciplinary losses.22 That TBL is a pedagogy of efficiency is its greatest danger, I think, though not primarily with regard to the issue of content-coverage. At an institution where teachers can still choose how much of the TBL program—or of any other pedagogical strategy—to adopt, teachers are free to experiment, to determine the number of elements, and the frequency and intensity of their use, that are compatible with their own understandings of the integrity of their respective disciplines. But I suspect that many teachers, given the chance, would become willing adopters of TBL, for in institutions of higher education whose valuation of teaching is low—which is to say, most of them—TBL fits in too well, and, by design, it leaves too little unchanged. For one thing, TBL leaves unchanged the fact that too much teaching takes place in such large classes, and in some respects it embraces this fact or, at least, allows administrators at adopting schools to do so. For instance, the first Team-Based Learning collection contains a chapter in which Larry Michaelsen explains how to use TBL in classes of one hundred students or more, and he offers evidence in support of his claims that TBL is “one of the few instructional strategies that is scalable,” and that TBL’s use in large classes can make them feel like small classes.23 It is odd to me that Michaelsen assumes (as do many of my colleagues) that a class of forty students is not already too large—just as odd as the passing confession of several of TBL’s “Voices of Experience” that, even in classes of as few as twenty students, so many of them had used the lecture-format before switching to TBL.24 But none of this should be puzzling, given the history and the economics of higher education. At a time when more and more institutions aspire to the status of the research university with its attendant over22 The TBL literature actually claims with some frequency that instructors can cover more material using TBL than using any other format (e.g., see Michaelsen et al., Team-Based Learning, 106-107, 214-215). But during the workshop that I attended, Michaelsen himself conceded that most TBL instructors give up some content for the sake of greater time spent on “application.” The TBL essay that comes closest to describing a course like the one I teach is Bill Roberson and Christine Reimers, “Team-Based Learning for Critical Reading and Thinking in Literature and Great Books Courses,” in Sweet and Michaelsen, Team-Based Learning in the Social Sciences and Humanities, 129-141. Roberson and Reimers imply on page 132 that adapting their course for TBL required them to teach fewer texts, as well as to organize the entire course along new, thematic lines. 23 Larry K. Michaelsen, “Team-Based Learning in Large Classes,” in Michaelsen et al., Team-Based Learning, 154. 24 E.g., see Michaelsen et al., Team-Based Learning, 107, 113.

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valuing of faculty research “output,” the old truism that (for the sake of their careers) professors should not take teaching too seriously is more true than ever. 25 The form of the relationship between the over-valuing of research and the under-valuing of teaching varies from place to place, of course. If disciplines in the sciences and social sciences have long used very large classes, assisted by teaching assistants and “scantron” testing, as one way to free up their faculty for research, others, like English, have long used poorly-compensated non-tenurable faculty (“casual” or “contingent” instructors) to teach the most labor-intensive classes such as composition, thus leaving their tenured faculty freer for research.26 In my own department, a new policy allows professors to teach an enlarged section of the survey class with an enrollment of eighty students rather than forty. Professors who choose to do so then have a lower course load per semester (two rather than three), which gives them more time for research. None of this is to say that many teachers do not in fact take teaching seriously, only that the bureaucratic structure at too many institutions sets serious limits on the incentives and rewards within which pedagogical commitment and innovation will be imagined and enacted. TBL, I think, works well within those limits—I would call it a form of “better business-as-usual”—and its appeal both to teachers and administrators is, in that respect, understandable. It allows us, in short, to keep teaching the same (or increasingly) large groups of students but to feel better about doing so. This might not matter very much if the claims of Team-Based Learning’s advocates regarding its effectiveness as a pedagogical strategy were well supported. While the research I have seen confirms my own experience, that under TBL students are more likely to come to class, to come on time, to come prepared, to engage with the class’s work, and to persist in their efforts, the claim that students learn at least as much in TBL as in non-TBL classes is less persuasive. But the changes in my 25

The argument that most tertiary institutions in the US under-value teaching at the expense of research has a long history, which is reviewed and advanced in Kevin Carey, The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere (New York: Riverhead Books, 2015), 13-31. 26 For a recent review of the latter phenomenon, its variety of negative effects, and a proposal for its reform, see Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth, The Humanities, Higher Education, and Academic Freedom: Three Necessary Arguments (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). The TBL literature is explicit about the strategy’s cost-effectiveness—specifically, the elimination of the need for tutors and teaching assistants in large classes, since under TBL students to a large extent “teach themselves.” See Michaelsen et al., Team-Based Learning, 24.

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classes due to TBL make it hard to compare those classes to the ones I used to teach. The new addition to individual scores of the always-higher team scores, averaged together in whatever ratio, rewards students with higher final course grades than under the old format. And because I cover less material in TBL than in non-TBL classes, my exams also differ correspondingly. Finally, at my own institution, and as far as I know in the discipline of English nationally, there is no serious standardized assessment of students in tertiary-level English classes, nor any pertaining to sophomore-level literature survey courses, that would allow me to compare my students in TBL courses to other students in equivalent TBL and non-TBL courses, either at my own school or at other institutions. There is some broad-based research studying the effectiveness of TBL on learning outcomes in medical education programs, but the conclusions seem rather ambiguous, and in any case I have discovered no such research for humanities courses taught using the TBL format. 27 But perhaps, for now, in humanities departments where some large classes are the unquestioned norm, such assessment is beside the point. Many teachers and administrators will be content if TBL produces even the limited benefits, regarding engagement and the like, that the research claims since it means that more students will get high enough grades to stay in school longer—whether or not they are learning enough—and thus to keep their tuition dollars streaming to universities at a time when other revenue sources—notably state education funds—continue to diminish. Still, absent any consensus on whether students actually learn as much under TBL as under other, active or passive learning strategies, educators and administrators (as well as students and those paying for their education), at least those who care about disciplinary learning, should be clear about the costs and benefits of what they are buying into. Doing “better business-as-usual” is not necessarily an improvement even to the status quo because anything that leaves current pedagogical arrangements fundamentally unchanged at a time when higher education is in crisis has the effect of surrendering to the crisis rather than addressing it. My own deepest moment of dismay related to Team-Based Learning did not come when I recognized its origins in businesses and Business Programs, nor when I began to fear that it treats students as workers-in-training for “flexible” workplaces under regimes of intrusive accountability or as 27

See Paul Haidet et al., “A Controlled Trial of Active vs. Passive Learning Strategies in a Large Group Setting,” Advances in Health Sciences Education 9.1 (2004): 15-27; and Mim Fatmi et al., “The Effectiveness of Team-Based Learning Outcomes in Health Professions Education: BEME Guide No. 30,” Medical Teacher 35.12 (2013): e1608-e1624.

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consumers of an affordable educational experience who require constant stimulation, rewards, and fun. Rather, it came when I discovered that my own institution’s plan to implement TBL had not even included the humanities as target disciplines. The planners of the initiative were persuaded to include the humanities late in the process more as a concession to the feelings of humanities teachers than out of any more thoughtful consideration of the organization’s mission and the place of the humanities within it.28 Why does that matter? Part of the crisis in higher education is a new pressure bearing on the “hybrid institution”—that is, on the four-year college or university—threatening to break it apart (or “unbundle” it) and leave the separated parts to their respective fates. As higher education becomes less affordable, demands to streamline its programs and reduce its costs proliferate, from reducing, eliminating, or allowing substitutions for its General Education requirements to eliminating entire programs that are deemed non-essential or frivolous with respect to graduating students’ supposed career prospects. The fact that administrators at my school wanted to implement a new, universitywide pedagogy without including or even consulting members of my own very large department; that they have allowed grade inflation and vacuous forms of institutional assessment in my discipline to pass muster; that they have mandated an ever-increasing use of casual or contingent instructional labor in English even as departing professors of upper-level courses are not replaced: all this seems to indicate a local variation on the larger trend in which the humanities and other disciplines are split—if they can be— between their “service” and their “knowledge” aspects, with the former being subject to short-term improvements (such as TBL) and the latter allowed to languish and perhaps wither. Insofar as TBL facilitates this larger process, by encouraging teachers to make the best of a bad situation, and to focus on their own classes and to re-tool (or “de-skill”) their own disciplines; and so not to attend to their home institutions’ overall “management,” nor to re-assume their putative power of faculty governance or to participate more actively and collaboratively (across disciplinary lines) in their schools’ developing “missions” (or “strategic plans”)—in these respects, TBL in itself is little better than a distraction. At the same time, for me, partially and critically adopting Team-Based Learning has had benefits beyond those I described earlier. In a general sense, it has allowed me to begin to wake from my “dogmatic slumbers,” to stop burying my head in my own disciplinary sands, or—to mix 28

As related to me by Ronald Styron, former Director of the University of South Alabama’s Quality Enhancement Plan, under which TBL was initiated institutionwide. [Personal communication between Styron and author, June 9, 2015.]

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metaphors—it has encouraged me to lower my gaze from the disciplinary heights of “pure knowledge” and attend more seriously to the mid-level realm of the institution, which mediates the close-up worlds of classroom, career, and profession and the more distant-seeming worlds of society, economy, and politics. It was disturbing to discover that my turning to TBL was motivated as much by my institution’s textbook use of “innovation-diffusion” techniques as by my own, personal desire to do something to improve my teaching.29 But I remain enough of a humanist to be embarrassed by this and enough of a generalist, and a student of theory, to search for principles, sites, and modes of agency that might help me convert personal embarrassment into collective response. When I first learned about TBL in Michaelsen’s workshop, I was teamed with a statistician and three instructors of emergency medicine, and (like some students in my TBL classes, or like Molly Worthen with her fear of “hard sciences”) I resented being grouped with people and interests that seemed so alien to my own. But, as I indicated above, the most serious scrutiny of TBL’s effectiveness has come from medical researchers, and critical inquiry into the use of workplace teams has been generated within the fields of Business Management and Organizational Behavior. 30 That an English professor would not have been aware of current research by medical or management professors is not surprising, given the institutional and professional structures of higher education. Nor was it surprising, however unpleasant it was, to discover that my own TBL teammates showed little comprehension of or interest in the kinds of work I do with my literature students. But, of course, my students are also, at other times of day, their students. They, the students, and we, their teachers, all inhabit an institution, an organization, that is supposed to have a common purpose even as it offers many specialized paths to the realization of that purpose. So my current task, I believe—and maybe yours, too—is to work within the structure of my own institution to identify and ally with other teachers who share the same commitment to that purpose, and who are willing to think and work together about ways to advance it as well as ways to resist whatever threatens it. This is slow, hard, tedious, unglamorous work; it 29 See Team USA Quality Enhancement Plan, especially under the subheading “Phased Inclusion of Faculty,” http://www.southalabama.edu/departments/qep/proposal.html#actions, accessed November 14, 2015. 30 See Paul Thompson and Chris Warhurst, eds., Workplaces of the Future (London: Macmillan, 1998), especially Chris Baldry et al., Chapter Nine, “‘Bright Satanic Offices’: Intensification, Control and Team Taylorism,” 163-183.

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belongs—in my institution’s parlance—to the area of “service,” which is the most-avoided and the least-rewarded of our three areas of professional responsibility (the other two being research and teaching). Service is especially difficult, at the cross-departmental level that I have in mind, not only because it takes us away from “our own work” but also because it exposes each of us, in our specialized and often self-interested personae, to the rudest, most naïve, or ignorant presumptions about what each of us does and whether it is even worth doing. It requires kinds of innovation and kinds of teamwork that we have too often reserved for our teaching and research. But for that reason it is precisely the sort of activity whereby truly institutional thinking about learning-in-general can take place and where truly institutional action regarding learning-in-general can be created—that is, thinking and action that reflect and return to our collective experience in the classroom.

Bibliography Bérubé, Michael, and Jennifer Ruth. The Humanities, Higher Education, and Academic Freedom: Three Necessary Arguments. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Bratton, John, and Peter Chiramonte. “Groups and Teams in Organizations.” In Organizational Behaviour in a Global Context, edited by Albert J. Mills, Jean C. Helms Mills, Carolyn Forshaw, and John Bratton, 267-293. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2007. Carey, Kevin. The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere. New York: Riverhead Books, 2015. Dinan, Frank J. “An Alternative to Lecturing in the Sciences.” In TeamBased Learning: A Transformative Use of Small Groups in College Teaching, edited by Larry K. Michaelsen, Arletta Bauman Knight, L. Dee Fink, 97-104. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2004. Donald, Janet. Learning to Think: Disciplinary Perspectives. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002. Fatmi, Mim, Lisa Hartling, Tracy Hillier, Sandra Campbell, and Anna E. Oswald. “The Effectiveness of Team-Based Learning on Learning Outcomes in Health Professions in Health Professions Education: BEME Guide No. 30.” Medical Teacher 35.12 (2013): e1608-e1624. Fink, L. Dee. “Beyond Small Groups: Harnessing the Extraordinary Power of Learning Teams.” In Team-Based Learning: A Transformative Use of Small Groups in College Teaching, edited by Larry K. Michaelsen, Arletta Bauman Knight, and L. Dee Fink, 3-26. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2004.

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Haidet, Paul, Robert O. Morgan, Kimberly O’Malley, Betty Jeanne Moran, and Boyd F. Richards. “A Controlled Trial of Active vs. Passive Learning Strategies in a Large Group Setting.” Advances in Health Sciences Education 9.1 (2004): 15-27. Michaelsen, Larry K., Arletta Bauman Knight, and L. Dee Fink, eds. Team-Based Learning: A Transformative Use of Small Groups in College Teaching. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2004. Miller, Richard. Writing at the End of the World. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008. Morgan, Edmund. Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1965. Ohmann, Richard. English in America: A Radical View of the Profession. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. —. The Politics of Knowledge: The Commercialization of the University, the Professions, and Print Culture. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2003. Roberson, Bill, and Christine Reimers. “Team-Based Learning for Critical Reading and Thinking in Literature and Great Books Courses.” In Team-Based Learning in the Social Sciences and Humanities, edited by Michael Sweet and Larry K. Michaelsen, 129-141. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2012. Sweet, Michael, and Larry K. Michaelsen, eds. Team-Based Learning in the Social Sciences and the Humanities. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2012. Team-Based Learning Collaborative. Accessed November 14, 2015. http://www.teambasedlearning.org. Team USA Quality Enhancement Plan. Accessed November 14, 2015. http://www.southalabama.edu/departments/qep/. Thompson, Paul, and Chris Warhurst, eds. Workplaces of the Future. London: Macmillan, 1998. Worthen, Molly. “Lecture Me. Really.” New York Times, October 17, 2015. Accessed October 29, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/opinion/sunday/lecture-mereally.html?_r=0.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN DEVELOPING DEMOCRACY IN UKRAINE BY GENDER MAINSTREAMING IN EDUCATION: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES TETIANA MATUSEVYCH INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL WORK AND MANAGEMENT, NATIONAL PEDAGOGICAL DRAGOMANOV UNIVERSITY, KYIV, UKRAINE 01601

Introduction The new Vinkeburg (2014) 1 study on actual women’s career pathways notes that some are like a walk, a waltz, a fox trot, a slow waltz, or a tango. But from a Ukrainian perspective, these pathways more frequently resemble acrobatic rock-and-roll with stunning flips and double twists. In other words, the dance is a tough one to perform. Impartial statistical data certify that during the years of Ukraine’s independence, the proportion of seats held by women in the national parliament has never reached more than 12 percent (in the Parliament of 2014, it was a mere 11.1 percent) although they make up 54 percent of Ukraine’s population and thus the majority of its voters. In the labor market, women suffer from lower wages and a lack of representation in higher positions in both the public and private sectors. Women make up about five per cent of the personnel in legislative authorities and seven per cent of the heads of central and local executive authorities. Also 20 percent of owners of small and medium-sized businesses are women, and they have virtually no representation among 1

Claartje Vinkeburg, “Waltz to excellence,” accessed November 1, 2015, http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/201 4_08_07/caredit.a1400200.

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the owners of large companies. Women’s wages are one third less than men’s; they have a far greater unemployment rate than men; and their pensions are forecast to amount to 40 to 45 percent, on average, of those of men.2 At the same time these unfortunate statistics were in the making, Ukraine joined the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, committing to place at least 30 percent of women in representative bodies by 2015. That was in the year 2000. Research shows that 75 percent of Ukrainian women experience economic, physical, psychological, or sexual violence in their families. Gender problems and sex discrimination continue to exist in all areas of society across Ukraine. Gulbarshyn Chepurko has found, for example, that the social recognition of women is restricted by the values and priorities of men and by the domination of male-oriented lifestyles, ideologies, and interests. She has also found that women continue to be economically dependent upon men, that the increasing violence and human trafficking affect women in particular, and that there is a lack of opportunities for men and women to combine work and family life in a harmonious way.3 The phenomena of horizontal and vertical segregation are very widespread in Ukraine. Horizontal segregation refers to imbalances in the number of people of each gender represented across the spectrum of fields and occupations, while vertical segregation refers to the domination of men in the highest status fields and occupations. Not surprisingly, the proportion of men to women varies considerably among different areas of study in Ukrainian higher education. Women at the university level traditionally have a low representation in architecture, agriculture, engineering, and transportation. By contrast, in the areas of the humanities, the social sciences, culture and art, education, medicine, and economics, women are markedly dominant. The phenomenon of horizontal segregation is observed with more frequency at advanced scientific levels. In Ukraine, there are two academic degrees: the first, and lower, level degree is the PhD; the second, and higher, is the Doctor of Science. In 2012, 45.8 percent of academic researchers were women, a decrease of 1.9 percent from 2011. The highest proportion of women (75.5 percent) was in the field of philology (48.6 percent of them holding PhDs and Doctors of Science), followed by the pedagogical sciences (71.5 percent PhDs and 42.7 percent Doctors of Science), sociological sciences (69.8 percent PhDs and 41.9 percent Doctors of Science), art history (69.6 percent PhDs and 65.8 percent Doctors of Science), psychological sciences (69.4 percent 2

Gulbarshyn Chepurko, Gender Equality in the Labour Market in Ukraine (Kyiv: International Labour Office, 2010), 9. 3 Ibid.

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PhDs and 54.5 percent Doctors of Science), historical sciences (66.0 percent PhDs and 25.6 percent Doctors of Science), and health sciences (64.4 percent PhDs and 50.7 percent Doctors of Science). The lowest proportion of women is found in physics and mathematics (28.3 percent PhDs and 35.6 percent Doctors of Science).4 The Ukraine’s “leaky pipeline”—a metaphor used to describe the fact that women drop out of STEM fields such as science, technology, engineering, and math at all stages of their careers—is leaky indeed, for the proportion of female Doctors of Science is half that of the female PhDs: in 2007, 19.6 percent; in 2008, 20.5 percent; in 2009, 21.6 percent; in 2010, 22.6 percent; and in 2011, 23.8 percent. Nowadays, there are only four female academics working at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU). There was only one in 1915. Thus, the number of female members of NASU has only slightly increased over the last one hundred years. At the beginning of 2012, for example, the percentage of women who were members of the NASU was 2.15 percent. Twenty-two women (6.2 percent) were the corresponding members of NASU at the beginning of 2012.5 Given these statistics, it is not surprising that the Global Gender Gap Report of 2014 put Ukraine in 56th place. This report covers 142 countries and seeks to measure one important aspect of gender equality: the relative gaps between women and men across the four key areas of health, education, economy, and politics. It makes use of the World Economic Forum, which quantifies the magnitude of gender-based disparities and tracks their progress over time.6

Gender mainstreaming in modern Ukrainian society: actuality and preconditions Considering that gender mainstreaming in education is the focus of this essay, it seems important to define what I mean by the concept of “gender mainstreaming.” For my purposes, I rely on what I perceive to be the two most useful definitions of the process. The first one was given in the report 4

See Vykonannya naukovykh ta naukovo-tekhnichnykh robit u 2012 rotsi. Derzhavna sluzhba statystyky Ukrayiny. Ekspres–vypusk. 12.04.2013. http://www.ukrstat.gov.ua. 5 See Zhínki í cholovíki v Ukraíní., Derzhavna sluzhba statistiki Ukraíni. Statistichniy zbírnik, Kyiv, 2011, accessed November 1, 2015, http://www.ukrstat.gov.ua/druk/katalog/poslugi/Ginky_ta_chol_2010.zip. 6 See Global Gender Gap Report 2014, accessed November 1, 2015, http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2014.

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“Gender mainstreaming: conceptual framework, methodology, and presentation of good practices”: “Gender mainstreaming is the (re)organisation, improvement, development and evaluation of policy processes, so that a gender equality perspective is incorporated in all policies at all levels and at all stages, by the actors normally involved in policy-making.” 7 The second definition of gender mainstreaming was given by the UN Economic and Social Council: Mainstreaming a gender perspective is the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.8

The process of mainstreaming a gender includes the following: questioning the underlying paradigm on which national policy, goals, and objectives have been based; creating joint programming with other development entities, including other government ministries and departments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations (IGOs and NGOs); aligning with other entities’ priorities, activities, and critical issues; placing gender-sensitive women (and men) in strategic positions of policysetting and decision-making; making women visible in all data; and providing training in gender analysis, methodology, and awareness.9 Incorporating gender mainstreaming into Ukrainian educational theory and practice is necessary these days. What has made gender mainstreaming necessary is the fact that Ukrainian society is in transition, and there are certain preconditions that characterize a transitive society. The main preconditions for making gender mainstreaming necessary in modern Ukraine are as follows: 1) Structural changes. The development and formation of social phenomena and structural changes such as the 7

“Gender Mainstreaming: Conceptual Framework, Methodology and Presentation of Good Practices,” Council of Europe, accessed November 1, 2015, http://www.unhcr.org/3c160b06a.pdf. 8 “Report of the Economic and Social Council for 1997,” United Nations General Assembly, accessed November 1, 2015, http://www.un.org/documents/ga/docs/52/plenary/a52-3.htm. 9 Elsa Leo-Rhynie,“Gender Mainstreaming in Education,” A Reference Manual for Governments and Other Stakeholders (London: Commonwealth Secretariat, 1999), 11.

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information revolution, humanization, democratization of society, intensification of cross-cultural communication, and globalization have had a significant impact on the fundamentals of social systems everywhere and have given rise to profound changes in the essence of social institutions and practices, which in turn have given rise to profound changes in the everyday life of people, their ideas, values, interpersonal communications, moral norms, and life goals. These developments and changes contribute to the formation of a new infrastructure of social relationships and personal communications, which require the appropriate methodological support of educational activities to ensure consistency and continuity. Of most importance, here, is attention to gender in all components of the educational system: institution, technology, and philosophy. 2) Patriarchal stereotypes and the lack of gender awareness in modern Ukrainian society. Explaining the precondition of this process, Victoria Hydenko and Irina Predborska have this to say: The lack of gender awareness in contemporary Ukraine might be caused by the persistent idea of equality between genders (as well as between nations and classes) that has been shaped during the Soviet period. Whereas under the Soviet system the communist ideal of society repressed any explicit manifestation of gender differences, the current post-communist society is starting to reveal a new “awareness” of gender inequalities, perceiving them as the result of a “natural” (biological) differentiation between femininity and masculinity.10

3) The existing inequality in the professional, economic, and familial areas. 4) The process of changing the traditional sex-role balance and reducing the relevance of the man-breadwinner/woman-housewife contract. 5) Cultural globalization and strengthening of cross-cultural communication. This leads to the spread of democratic ideas and, therefore, to the ideas of gender egalitarianism, tolerance, and partnership. 6) The poly-alternativeness of gender culture and gender socialization; the process of transforming the stereotypes of femininity and masculinity; sexrole models and gender-identification scenarios; and the need to take into consideration these changes in educational policies and practices.

10

Victoria Haydenko and Irina Predborska, “Gender Stereotyping in Primary School Textbooks (the Case of Ukraine),” in Multiple Marginalities: An Intercultural Perspective on Gender in Education across Europe and Africa, eds. J. Sempruch, K. Willems and L. Shook (Dublin, NH: Helmer Press, 2006), 137.

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Gender mainstreaming in education as a catalyst for democratic changes Focusing on the implementation of gender-equality policies in education in transitive societies, I find that the word “problem” is the key word in this process. First of all, it should be mentioned that the importance of the transformational role of gender mainstreaming for transitive societies lies in the fact that gender mainstreaming in education is problem-posing by its nature, for it involves analysis of socio-cultural reality and its subsequent problemazation and deconstruction. The distribution of gender relations throughout all aspects of everyday life allows teachers and students to analyze the usual phenomena of disparity and to look for creative ways to deconstruct them. That is to say, in the creative transformation of knowledge, the teachers’ and the students’ personalities are experiencing a kind of “co-evolutionary” development, a prerequisite of which is a dialogical educational process and free educational interaction. Second of all, enforcing gender-equality policies causes such a huge transformation in social relationships that the process of their implementation into educational theory and practice is problematic. For example, Teresa L. Ebert notes the following: A critique of patriarchal ideology is especially problematic in that its hegemonic dimensions are so extensive: it stimulates globality so successfully as to appear universal and natural while at the same time almost completely erasing its own historical construction. By hegemony, I do not mean a unified, compelling governance of all aspects of society, but the dominant articulation and organization of signifying practices producing subjectivities and their lived relations in such a way as to appear natural, coherent, and uncontested. Hegemonic ideologies, such as patriarchal practices, successfully conceal their own contradictions, oppositions, and constructedness and effectively co-opt and suppress contesting ideologies and efforts to challenge their domination.11

This dialectical interaction of problem-posing and the problematic in gender mainstreaming makes the process of its implementation difficult and contradictory. But the need to develop a democratic state in Ukraine forces the seeking and analyzing of international experience in this area and the implementation of special policies and practices for achieving equal opportunities for all members of society. One of the mechanisms aimed at developing equal rights and opportunities is gender mainstreaming. 11

Teresa L. Ebert, “The Romance of Patriarchy: Ideology, Subjectivity, and Postmodern Feminist Cultural Theory,” Cultural Critique 10 (Autumn 1988): 27.

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The methodological frameworks that enable us to consider gender mainstreaming in education as a factor in building a democratic society are interdisciplinarity, transversality, transgression, and transculturality. Obviously, the overarching methodological framework that might fruitfully be employed to mainstream gender in education is gender theory. Because gender theory is characterized by interdisciplinarity, it provides a comprehensive understanding of gender relations as a specific sociocultural reality. The rigid demarcation of the disciplines is a problem of modern education that can be solved by the interdisciplinarity of gender theory, for instead of fragmentation and rigidity, interdisciplinarity represents a holistic, comprehensive approach. Thus, in its approach to the analysis of socio-cultural reality and to the application of diverse experiences and methods used in different sciences, it can provide productive prospects for the study of the syncretic interdependencies of any social phenomena. Another fruitful methodological framework for gender mainstreaming in education is transversality, particularly as it has been conceptualized in the works of Wolfgang Welsch, Félix Guattari, and Gilles Deleuze. Transversality not only provides the recognition of plurality and the existence of heterogeneous positions and paradigms, but also it establishes communication and integration among them. As a methodological framework for gender mainstreaming in education, transversality recognizes the plurality of personal and professional trajectories, and it rejects all “centrisms,” particularly the androcentrism inherent in the traditional system of education. A third methodological framework that might be fruitfully used in gender mainstreaming is transgression. Transgression not only represents the ability of the individual to go beyond sociocultural stereotypes (including those of gender) but also to detect the gender stereotypes and inequalities that occur in everyday life and to adequately respond to them. And, finally, a fourth is transculturality. The concept of transculturality was suggested by Welsch12 to characterize the state of the modern world and to emphasize the interdependence and interconnection of typologically-similar cultures. His point is that different ways of life do not end at national borders. Unclear boundaries between cultures contribute to their constant interaction through dialogues, conflicts, exchange, and communication development. The transcultural aspects of gender mainstreaming in education are manifested in the following universal humanistic values common to all cultures: freedom, democracy, 12 See Wolgang Welsch, “Transculturality—the puzzling form of cultures today,” California Sociologist 17, no. 18 (1994/1995): 19-39.

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responsibility, justice, honesty, respect for the personality and human dignity, egalitarianism, and gender tolerance.

Challenges Despite the need for a transitive society such as Ukraine to use its transformational potential to build democracy, those implementing the strategies for overcoming gender disparity in Ukrainian higher education face a number of difficulties and limitations of both an objective and subjective character. The main difficulties and limitations are the following: 1) formality, inconsistency, and fragmentation on the praxeological level; 2) the absence of a national strategy for overcoming gender disparity in education as well as the lack of formal inclusion of gender issues in policies and programs; 3) eclectic conceptualizations of gender mainstreaming in education; 4) the continued functioning of traditional patriarchal gender stereotypes in Ukrainian society; 5) methodological problems related to the choice of effective teaching strategies, techniques, and methods; 6) the association of gender mainstreaming in education with LGBT-movement propaganda and the concomitant development of an “anti-gender” movement based on the contradictions between traditional sex roles in Ukrainian society and more progressive perceptions of sex and gender as operating on a continuum; and 7) the unwillingness of teachers to encourage innovative activity and self-reflection. Having pointed out the challenges, I would now like to consider each of them more closely. First, the implementation of gender mainstreaming in education has stopped at the stage of declaration. The interruption of the process is marked by formality, inconsistency, and fragmentation on the praxeological level. The declaratory nature of the implementation of a gender-oriented approach manifests itself in the ratification of the strategies of achieving gender equality de jure and stopping at the problem-posing stage of gender issues de facto. On the one hand, legislative regulations meant to ensure gender parity in society in general and education in particular are represented by a number of national as well as international legal instruments, the latter of which were ratified by Ukraine.13 On the other hand, research on the implementation of gender 13

For example, the Millennium Declaration, the Covenant “Millennium Development Goals,” the Constitution of Ukraine, Law of Ukraine “On equal rights and opportunities for women and men,” Law of Ukraine “On Education,” Report of the International Commission on Education of UNESCO, the Decree of the President of Ukraine “On National Doctrine of education development in Ukraine,” State National Program “Education” (Ukraine XXI century), the

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mainstreaming shows its formal character, its fragmentation, and its lack of a comprehensive, integrative approach. 14 The gender gap increases while horizontal and vertical segregation still exist. And all the right initiatives represented in the above-mentioned legislative acts can be stalled by the unwillingness of the decision-making person (usually a man) to hire a woman or to improve the position of women due to the existing gender stereotypes and unjust work-life balance of Ukrainian women. The study conducted by the “Equal Opportunities Program,” organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Ukraine, showed that despite the declaration to support women’s rights in the public sphere, the promotion of employment opportunities for women is absent. In particular, in the case of a return to work, a woman often takes on a double (work/home) and sometimes a triple (work/home/kids) workload. Most women work two shifts per day, one at work and the other at home.15 Second, there is an absence of a national strategy aimed at overcoming gender disparity in education as well as a lack of formal inclusion of educational gender issues in state strategies and programs. This situation makes it impossible to incorporate gender mainstreaming into educational theory, policy, and practice on a consistent and holistic basis, and it also significantly slows the process of gender mainstreaming implementation and therefore of democratic changes. Third, there is a dearth of eclectic conceptualizations of gender issues in educational policies and practices. While in theory there appear to be eclectic conceptualizations of femininity, masculinity, and androgyny, they are not really that eclectic in practice. Either consciously or unconsciously, educators, administrators, and homemakers contradict themselves in their attitudes toward (and thus their policies regarding) alternative gender identities. And thus those who elect to create their own gender identity typically have only patriarchal images of masculinity and National Strategy for the Development of Education in Ukraine for the years 20122021, as well as others. 14 See Olena Hankivsky and Anastasiya Salnykova, “Gender Mainstreaming in Post-Soviet Ukraine: Application and Applicability,” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 26, no. 3 (2010): 315-340. See also Oleg Marushchenko, “In Between Cultural Traditions and Reactionary Threats: Is Gender Education Possible in Ukraine?” in Overcoming Gender Backlash: Experiences of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Poland: Materials of the Second International Gender Workshop (Kyiv: Heinrich Böll Stiftung, 2013), 40-42. 15 GҒ enderní stereotipi ta stavlennya gromads'kostí do gҒ endernikh problem v ukraíns'komu suspíl'ství / Kolektivna monografíya .Ínstitutsot síologíí NANU. Kiív, 2007, 88.

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femininity to choose from. Neither school nor home provides alternative representations of sexuality. Fourth, traditional patriarchal gender stereotypes continue to function unabated in Ukrainian society in general and in educational institutions in particular. In their content analysis of Ukrainian primary school textbooks—which include the ABC book and textbooks for second to fourth graders such as “Mathematics,” “Ukrainian Grammar,” and “Reading Book”—Haydenko and Predborska have found these books to be gender-biased, i.e., the traditional division of labor between the genders as well as androcentrism constitute their core. Stereotypical notions of gender difference are prevalent in both science and humanities textbooks. While some attempts have been made to soften the assumed biases of gender-stereotyping present in a reading textbook such as “I and Ukraine,” content analysis shows that these textbooks maintain archaic views by neglecting to mention technological advances and the rise of modern professions. It is remarkable that these textbooks were published at the beginning of the twenty-first century while their content continues to reflect the social realities of the early twentieth century. Here, education’s “alienation” is immediately apparent: as times goes by, textbooks are mechanically reprinted (some for the eighth time) in required numbers, but they are neither revised nor updated.16 Portraying the ideal-mother image, educators trace in detail all of the tasks and responsibilities of a mother. Since the concept of “woman” in these textbooks has remained that of “mother,” all motherly functions are represented as “natural” women’s duties. This image of the ideal mother serves as the example of ideal femininity for both boys and girls, in accordance with which they model their behavior and adjust their gender expectations. Insofar as the internalization of gender roles occurs in school, an institution with power over and authority in the child’s life, the stereotypes are intensified.17 In textbook and school, the female gender is characterized by her infinite love and emotional devotion; by her closeness to national roots and nature; and by her willingness to work hard. Thus, mothers come to be identified 16

See Victoria Haydenko and Irina Predborska, “Gender Stereotyping in Primary School Textbooks (the Case of Ukraine)” in Multiple Marginalities: An Intercultural Perspective on Gender in Education across Europe and Africa, eds. J. Sempruch, K. Willems, and L. Shook (Dublin, NH: Helmer Press, 2006), 135150. 17 See Victoria Haydenko, “Chronicles of Children’s Holidays: Construction of Gender Stereotypes in Ukrainian Preschool and Elementary Education” in Mapping Difference: The Many Faces of Women in Contemporary Ukraine, ed. Marian J. Rubchak (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011), 109-123.

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with teachers.18 Although maternal images are numerous, paternal images are largely underrepresented in these textbooks and educational contexts. The rare images of fathers tend to relate to leisure and entertainment—for example, cultural activities, sports, and horticulture.19 Fifth, the methodological problem of implementing gender education in higher educational establishments is connected to the choice of effective pedagogical strategies, techniques, and methods. Obviously, the material suggested for study and reflection may seem alternative and unconventional to students who have been reared and educated under the influence of traditional gender standards. In fact, it may even seem to be contrary to their views, and this can be cause for resistance to the material on the part of the students. Sixth, associating gender-oriented education with radically pluralistic conceptualizations of gender and the LGBT movement has given rise to the development of the “anti-gender movement.” Clearly, the clash between traditional sex-role concepts of Ukrainian society and the consideration of sex and gender as operating on a continuum has slowed down the implementation of strategies for overcoming gender disparity. Describing this process, Oleg Marushchenko writes the following: The critical [year of] 2010 when illusion dissolved fast marked the beginning of “backlash” in gender transformations. Change of the political elites resulted in rolling up of the state democratic strategies chosen earlier. At the same time anti-gender sentiments efficiently warmed up by the extreme right and religious organizations have been mounting in the society. At first, the gender community clearly has underestimated the danger. Only after this environment had given rise to a wide range of movements and unions involved in open and often aggressive anti-gender propaganda had it become clear: well-planned ideological opposition to the gender innovations has been launched. One of the prime examples is the All-Ukrainian Parent Movement, a union of non-governmental organizations and private persons with its educational activities, “Parents’ readings”, forums, brochures and newspapers promoting the so-called ‘traditional family values’ and supporting the related upbringing system. What is particularly well-known is the book Unembellished Gender (Gender bez Prikras) with the following subtitle speaking for itself: Through Gender Policy to Dictatorship of Homosexualism (Cherez Gendernuyu Politikuk Diktature Homoseksualisma). This movement allegedly produced yet another odious book for teachers and parents, Gender ‘Education’, or How They Will Make Homosexuals from Your Children (Gendernoye ‘Vospitanie’ ili Kak iz Vashih Detey Budut Delat 18 19

Ibid. Ibid.

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Homoseksualistov), published in Ukrainian with no identification data. Big numbers of both books were sent out to the state departments for education, schools and preschool institutions in the country.20

And finally, seventh, teachers appear to be unready for innovative activity and self-reflection. The unwillingness of teachers to implement gender mainstreaming in education is largely explained by the fact that for a long time it was thought that the gender-equality paradigm was not suitable for Ukraine. In the Soviet Union, the ideal citizen was a unified, normalized, “gray” person, whose manifestations of uniqueness and otherness were suppressed. At the same time, the Soviet Union proclaimed equality between men and women. In fact, this so-called “equality” was manifested by engaging women in heavy labor and making them take full responsibility for maintaining the household. From around 1991, with the start of the nation-building process, an ancient myth describing the “truly Ukrainian feminine” was reanimated. In “Christian Virgin or Pagan Goddess,” Marian Rubchak offers an example of this ancient myth as it is represented in mass media narratives: “The Ukrainian woman has a responsible mission (she is perhaps the only woman in the world, emancipated from her very inception, who never waged a battle for equal rights with her husband, but always fought instead for the equal rights and liberty of Ukraine). Like the Blessed Virgin, the Ukrainian woman must give birth to the Ukrainian Savior.”21 As suggested by Rubchak, now the Ukrainian woman has become responsible not only for raising children and maintaining the household but also for building the nation-state. Despite the many challenges, however, Ukraine has a unique opportunity to fully implement gender mainstreaming in education, for Ukraine is currently experiencing a post-revolutionary period. Considering the current situation from the standpoint of a nonlinear paradigm opens up new opportunities for eliminating gender disparity. According to Suzanne Spencer-Wood, The inclusive approach of nonlinear systems theory in researching how order and chaos are interrelated in real-world processes and systems could 20

Oleg Marushchenko, “In Between Cultural Traditions and Reactionary Threats: Is Gender Education Possible in Ukraine?” in Overcoming gender backlash: experiences of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Poland: Materials of the Second International Gender Workshop (Kyiv: Heinrich Böll Stiftung, 2013), 40. 21 Marian J. Rubchak, “Christian Virgin or Pagan Goddess: Feminism Versus the Eternally Feminine in Ukraine,” in Women in Russia and Ukraine, ed. Rosalind Marsh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 319.

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It is also important to realize that the small efforts exerted in social and educational movements, including those of gender, can be significant, for despite critical conditions that are generally characterized by instability due to the proximity of their tipping points, these small efforts can create further favorable opportunities for change.

Strategies To begin, it must be admitted that modern Ukrainian society manifests signs of gender disparity as well as horizontal and vertical segregation. Both of these phenomena complicate the development of a democratic society, which is based on equal rights and opportunities and which creates the necessary conditions for establishing the freedom to reject the influence of stereotypes and prejudices as well as the freedom to embrace autopoiesis (i.e., self-creation) and “transgressive” personalities. Working in opposition to these undemocratic phenomena, the processes of gender mainstreaming actualize the implementation of a gender-oriented approach in higher education as well as the search for new implementation strategies, and it is to these processes and strategies that I now turn. In my view, when taking into account the European experience of overcoming gender disparity in the higher educational system, 23 it is advisable to introduce the following strategies into the national educational system:

22

Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood, “Nonlinear Systems Theory, Feminism, and Postprocessualism,” Journal of Archaeology (2013): 15, accessed November 1, 2015, doi.org/10.1155/2013/540912. 23 See “Gender Differences in Educational Outcomes: Study on the Measures Taken and the Current Situation in Europe. Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency,” EACEA P9 Eurydice, accessed November 1, 2015, http://www.eurydice.org;VLIR, 2008. “Equality Guide: HR Instruments for Equal Opportunities at Universities,” Brussels: VLIR, accessed November 1, 2015, http://www.vlir.be/media/docs/Gelijkekansen/Equality_ Guide_Basisboek_EN.pdf.

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First, strategies for overcoming horizontal segregation: yA deconstructionist strategy that involves the identification and reduction of patriarchal gender stereotypes in the educational and childrearing processes as well as the creation of a gender-neutral environment, an environment in which textbooks would be examined for gender discrimination, gender-sensitive pedagogies would be implemented, and there would be an increase in the competence of teachers to handle gender issues while engaging in thoughtful self-reflection. yA preventive strategy providing a study of the reasons for men’s departure from pedagogical occupations and the development of a system of actions aimed at reducing this departure as well as the departure of male students from pedagogical universities. yAn informational and promotional strategy providing the development and implementation of informational and educational projects such as the organization of “Informational Days” at schools and technical colleges, the publishing and spreading of methodological and referential materials, the dissemination of information regarding career development in non-conventional areas of expertise along with the encouragement of school children and students to become interested in education and career development in those areas. yA representative strategy providing the presentation of gender atypical professional roles and examples for school children and students to follow; coaching and counseling; the organization of meetings and discussions with women and men who are professionals in gender-atypical professional areas; and the encouragement of school children to participate in lectures, seminars, and/or roundtables at institutions of higher education. yA vocational orientation strategy calling for the destruction of traditional gender stereotypes and helping boys and girls to choose professional development pathways not determined by the influence of gender stereotypes. This strategy involves the organization of “Open Days” during which not only companies but also scientific and research institutions invite students to present areas of professional activity that are traditionally not accepted by these companies and institutions; the presentation of female and male role models in non-traditional professional fields within the framework of the “Profession Days” at schools and colleges; and the organization of summer courses on applied science and technology for girls and on humanities disciplines for boys.

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yA positive-discrimination strategy granting representatives of both sexes such privileges as extra points during university admissions testing for disciplinary specialties that are not traditionally popular with representatives of one sex or the other. This would encourage male students to choose disciplines that are not typically considered masculine and female students to choose disciplines that are not typically considered feminine. Second, strategies for overcoming vertical segregation: yAn informational and educational strategy creating centers aimed at raising the status of female scientists as well as national unions made up of female professors. This strategy would coordinate gender research centers, which would conduct a wide range of activities including coordinating, coaching, informing, and counseling research and political institutions as well as associations of female scientists and companies. yAn organizational and management strategy providing an obligation for higher educational establishments to ratify and fully apply strategies that ensure gender equality at the legislative level. This strategy would also provide the organization of transparent recruitment procedures and policies that optimally implement work balance (e.g., flexible working hours, the creation of kindergartens and/or daycare facilities, and the facilitation of women’s comeback after a career break). yA positive-discrimination strategy granting privileges to the representatives of a certain sex. For example, this strategy would provide financial grants to universities that promote career advancement for women who work as lecturers and professors. It would also make the financial resources of the university funding system reliant upon an increase in the number of women working as teachers, and it would provide financial incentives for women to return to work after a career break related to the birth of a child and childcare responsibilities. It should be noted, however, that a positive-discrimination strategy should be used with caution because in addition to effecting positive change, it can give rise to a number of threats: 1) it can lead to the phenomenon of forced tolerance, 2) it can reduce the value of one’s achievements since evaluations can now be based on one’s belonging to a particular social group rather than on one’s level of professionalism, 3) it can cause doubt about one’s ability to achieve since any achievement can be seen as the

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result of preferential treatment and not as the result of hard work, and 4) it can reduce one’s motivation to succeed since one can reckon on preferential treatment based on one’s belonging to a particular social group. Despite the challenges to and possible pitfalls of implementing these strategies, it is important to push forward with their implementation. These strategies can become real only under certain circumstances, however. In my view, there are seven prerequisites for implementing gender mainstreaming in the Ukrainian educational system: First is the formation of a particular attitude toward gender-oriented education. Gender-oriented education should be seen as a tool for overcoming gender disparity; as a step toward creating a democratic society of equal rights and opportunities; and as a way to reflect upon the difficulty of achieving the democratic values, rights, and freedoms that guarantee, regardless of gender, the equality and self-esteem of each individual participating in the educational process. Second is the need for a national strategy of gender-oriented education based on a social-constructivist understanding of gender equality. Because of the contradictions that exist between the borrowed discourses of equity and the real life practice of it, personality formation is a source of conflict for many students. And because of the high level of homophobia in Ukrainian society, the problem of fluid and/or multiple identities should be taught informatively and in an unbiased manner. The problem should not be hyperbolized, nor should it be concealed. Either approach to the problem would simply create further difficulties for students as they form their personalities. Concerning the state of the LGBT community and the level of homophobia in Ukraine, Tamara Martsenyuk’s 2012 research shows the following: Society’s attitudes toward homosexuality have become more homophobic. According to the results of public opinion surveys, levels of tolerance depend on respondents’ socio-demographic characteristics: women are more tolerant than men; citizens of western Ukraine less tolerant than easterners; young people are the most tolerant among age groups. But public opinion surveys also show Ukrainian teenagers are half as tolerant of homosexuals as they were a few years ago, just as they are now less tolerant of different ethnic groups. This issue needs further discussion and research. Given the increased visibility and activity of radical groups in the last ten years, the trend toward intolerance among the young can be

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Third is the holistic nature of the implementation of gender-oriented education. Overcoming gender disparity in Ukrainian society will be possible only on the condition that there is a comprehensive, systematic implementation of gender mainstreaming into all components of the educational system—institutions, technologies, and philosophy—as well as consistency and continuity in the implementation process. Strategies for overcoming gender disparity should be complementary to one another as well as comprehensive and consistently applied. Fourth is the shift of focus from the educational institution to the individual. It will be important that students develop critical thinking skills so that they can identify and reduce gender stereotypes once they are no longer under the guidance of their educators. Fifth is the usage of gender-sensitive pedagogy. It will be necessary to increase the “gender competence” of teachers and managerial and administrative staff as well as teachers’ awareness of their responsibility for (consciously or unconsciously) revising gender stereotypes. Sixth is the usage of adequate methodological tools in the educational process. The introduction of gender courses into the curriculum requires a teacher’s readiness to employ innovative ways of developing deep selfreflection and creative thinking as well as innovative ways of reformatting the student-teacher interaction to reflect the new gender perspective. One of these innovative pedagogies is a dialogic communication method that is free of gender stereotypes. It is both an interpersonal and professional communication that entails a “co-evolutionary” process whereby students’ and teachers’ personal development causes transformational shifts in student-teacher relations. The aim of these new relations is to democratize the educational and child-rearing processes, thus establishing a culture of freedom, which is a prerequisite for the formation and development of the creative potential of the individual. The coupling of freedom and selfreflection (as both a value and the methodological framework of genderoriented education) provides an indispensable basis for the development of creativity and innovative research. Seventh is the implementation of strategies aimed at overcoming gender disparity. This implementation should focus on the interaction and collaboration of higher educational establishments with secondary schools,

24 Tamara Martsenyuk, “The State of the LGBT Community and Homophobia in Ukraine,” Problems of Post-Communism 59, no. 2 (March–April 2012): 60.

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state and public organizations, research institutions, companies and industrial enterprises. And, finally, in my view, it is reasonable to introduce public policies that would support universities’ innovative activities in establishing gender equality issues.

Conclusions My aim in having written this essay is to help fill the gap in evaluating the difficulties and conditions of implementing gender mainstreaming into Ukrainian educational theory and practice. Unfortunately, the current situation in Ukraine is full of contradictions. On the one hand, it is obvious that reforming the Ukrainian educational system using democratic principles will require the inclusion of gender mainstreaming on all levels if a society of equal opportunity is to emerge. On the other hand, it is an undisputed fact that gender mainstreaming in education is a complex, ambiguous, and multidimensional phenomenon and that those implementing the strategies for overcoming gender disparity in Ukrainian higher education face a number of difficulties and limitations of both an objective and subjective character. Nevertheless, now that Ukraine is experiencing a post-revolutionary period, it has been given a unique opportunity to fully implement gender mainstreaming in education. The growing awareness among ordinary citizens of the need for democratic reforms and respect for human rights has led the authorities (both citizens and international institutions) to initiate and enforce appropriate transformations such as the legislative regulation of gender equality and the creation of Gender Centers in some universities, and thus there is reason for cautious optimism on this issue. The recognition of plurality and the prevention of a priori attributions of sex stereotypes will move us one more step forward in the development of a democratic society. I hope that the time will come when a male educator in a kindergarten will not be perceived as an alien and when a woman will not have once again to make the often-fatal ontological choice between “having a job” and “having a baby.” Is this enough for the absolute happiness for all? Of course, it is not. But I know with certainty that it will increase the number of self-realized, and thus happy, women and men as well as the number of children being born.

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Martsenyuk, Ɍamara. “The State of the LGBT Community and Homophobia in Ukraine.” Problems of Post-Communism 59, no. 2 (March-April 2012): 51-62. Marushchenko, Oleg. “In Between Cultural Traditions and Reactionary Threats: is Gender Education Possible in Ukraine?” In Overcoming Gender Backlash: Experiences of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Poland: Materials of the Second International Gender Workshop, 40-42. Kyiv: Heinrich Böll Stiftung, 2013. “Report of the Economic and Social Council for 1997.” United Nations General Assembly. Accessed November 1, 2015. http://www.un.org/documents/ga/docs/52/plenary/a52-3.htm. Rubchak, Marian J. “Christian Virgin or Pagan Goddess: Feminism Versus the Eternally Feminine in Ukraine.” In Women in Russia and Ukraine, edited by Rosalind Marsh, 315-331. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Vinkeburg, Claartje. “Waltz to Excellence.” Accessed November 1, 2015. http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/ articles/2014_08_07/caredit.a1400200. Vykonannya naukovykh ta naukovo-tekhnichnykh robit u 2012 rotsi. Derzhavna sluzhba statystyky Ukrayiny. Ekspres–vypusk. 12.04.2013. Accessed November 1, 2015. http://www.ukrstat.gov.ua. Welsch, Wolfgang. “Transculturality—The Puzzling Form of Cultures Today.” California Sociologist 17, no. 18 (1994/1995): 19-39. Zhínki í cholovíki v Ukraíní., Derzhavna sluzhba statistiki Ukraíni. Statistichniy zbírnik, Kyiv, 2011, [online]. Accessed November 1, 2015. http://www.ukrstat.gov.ua/druk/katalog/poslugi/Ginky_ta_chol_2010.zip.

CONTRIBUTORS

Russell Bentley is Associate Professor of Political Theory and Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor (Education) at the University of Southampton in the UK. His research interests include the history of political thought, Classical political theory, citizenship, democratic deliberation, and aspects of power in contemporary democracies. He is currently working on a project that examines spectatorship, rhetoric, and disempowerment in democratic politics. This project explores the prospects for citizen empowerment in an age of political spectacle and in which advanced data analytics are transforming concepts and methods of political manipulation and control. Bentley has published work on Classical political thought and on deliberative democracy. His university management role gives him responsibility for curriculum innovation, interdisciplinary learning, enhancing student employability, and new approaches to assessment across the university. He contributes to the university’s projects on technology-enhanced learning and leads on activities to promote student engagement. Patrick Cesarini is Associate Professor of English at the University of South Alabama, where he teaches courses in American literature, literary theory, and composition. His previous research has focused on the literature of contact in colonial New England. Tapo Chimbganda is a psychoanalyst, psychosocial researcher, and educator at Leeds Trinity University, England. She did her clinical training in Dublin, Ireland, and her doctoral studies at York University, Canada. Her primary interests include narratives of childhood and education with a focus on social justice. Chimbganda uses psychoanalysis to engage with life writing as she extrapolates the effect of social discourses of difference. She focuses on the oppressive experiences of education, which result in the de-humanization of learners. She is also interested in abstract pedagogies such as pedagogies of emotion, questioning how educators engage with the teaching of human affects such as empathy, forgiveness, and love. She has a forthcoming book on psychoanalysis, race, and education.

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Paul Dahlgren is Associate Professor of English and Director of the M.A. program at Georgia Southwestern State University. He teaches classes in rhetoric, critical theory, and literacy. His work has appeared in The Journal of Cultural and Religious Theory, Rhetorica, Composition Studies, and Receptions. He was a Governor’s Teaching Fellow in the 2015-2016 academic year, during which he developed some of the ideas for his essay. Robert Gray is Associate Professor of University Pedagogy in the Institutt for Pedagogikk at the Universitetet i Bergen in Bergen, Norway. He holds a Ph.D. in Instructional Technology from the University of Alabama as well as a B.A. and M.A. in English. He has over fifteen years of experience in the professional development of university faculty, particularly in regard to online learning and other uses of technology in the teaching and learning process. He has also taught composition, literature, and research writing at the University of South Alabama, the University of Alabama, Michigan State University, and Troy University. His research interests include how technology impacts assessment practices in higher education, interaction in online learning, how we define quality in teaching and learning, and digital learning communities. In addition, he has published three books of poetry and directed an award-winning documentary film on race relations in the American South. Charlotte Knox-Williams is a teacher, researcher, and artist. She is Coordinator of provision for students with special educational needs at Portland Place School in London. She leads a team of specialists in delivering a diverse program of learning for students in years five to 13, with particular emphasis on literacy. Knox-Williams was Postdoctoral Research Scholar at The Institute of Education, University College London, from 2015 to 2016 and worked with Professor Paul Standish. Her current research focuses on the pedagogical aspects of the work of Stanley Cavell and Gilles Deleuze, exploring the implications of the intersections and divergences between them. Among these are developing pedagogical approaches shaped through the emphasis that both philosophers place on learning through art, alongside new models for inclusion.

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Contributors

Bruce Krajewski is Professor of English and Chair of the English department at the University of Texas at Arlington. He has taught philosophy, literary criticism, and theory to both undergraduates and graduates. His writing includes work on Althusser, H. Blumenberg, Cavell, Celan, Gadamer, C. Ginzburg, Lacan, Loraux, Malabou, Terence Malick, Poe, Nietzsche, Plato, Žižek, and Jan Zwicky. Recently, he has contributed to the Blackwell Companion to Hermeneutics and published an essay in Conversations: A Journal of Cavellian Studies. For more information, see his web site: http://brucekrajewski.net. Tetiana Matusevych is a lecturer at the National Pedagogical Dragomanov University. She is a member of the editorial board of the journal Philosophy of Education as well as a member of the International Society for Universal Dialogue. Her research interests include the philosophy of education, transhumanism, posthumanism, gender in education, philosophical anthropology, social philosophy, and equality politics and policies. Matusevych completed her Ph.D. in Philosophy of Education at the Institute of Higher Education of the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine in 2014. Barry Jason Mauer is Associate Professor of English at the University of Central Florida, where he teaches in the Texts and Technology Ph.D. Program. His published work focuses on developing new research practices in the arts and humanities. His latest research is about citizen curating, which aims at enlisting a corps of citizens to curate exhibits, both online and in public spaces, using archival materials available in museums, libraries, public history centers, and other institutions. He also publishes online comics about delusion and denial, particularly as they affect the realm of politics. In addition, Mauer is an accomplished songwriter and recording artist. Mauer completed his graduate studies at the University of Florida in the Department of English, where he worked under the direction of professors Gregory Ulmer and Robert Ray. He lives in Orlando with his wife and daughter, his dog, his cat, and two chickens. Becky McLaughlin is Associate Professor of English at the University of South Alabama, where she teaches courses in critical theory, film, and gender studies. She has published articles in a wide range of journals on an equally wide range of subjects such as perversion and paranoia in the works of Angela Carter, the gaze and the mirror stage in modern poetry, and female mysticism and jouissance in the films of Lars von Trier. She has also published Everyday Theory, a critical theory textbook co-edited with Bob Coleman. Currently, she is working on a book entitled “Wild”

Putting Theory into Practice in the Contemporary Classroom

329

Analysis and the Symptomatic Storyteller: Lacan avec Chaucer avec (the) Moi. Matthew Overstreet is a Ph.D. student and graduate instructor at the University of Pittsburgh. Before entering academia, he worked as an attorney in the American Midwest and as an English teacher in Asia. His research interests center on the application of pragmatist philosophy to the writing classroom. Lately, this has involved reimaging the scene of writing, and writing instruction, through the lens of William James’s “radical empiricism,” a metaphysics stressing the fundamental wholeness of human experience. Camelia Raghinaru is Assistant Professor of English at Concordia University, Irvine, and she holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Florida. Her research interests focus on utopian studies, modernism, and popular culture. Her articles on Conrad, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, and Bréton have been published in various academic journals such as Studies in the Novel, [sic], and Forum as well as in two edited collections, Great War Modernism and Critical Approaches to Joseph Conrad. Currently, she is working on two projects dealing with complicated masculinities and popular modernisms in recent TV shows. Laurie Ringer is Professor of English and Chair of the English department at Burman University, where she specializes in late medieval/early modern literature. In addition to teaching British fiction and contemporary theory, she has taught literary and cultural theory for 21 years. Ringer also has “nomadic,” inter-, multi-, and para-multidisciplinary interests in Deleuzo-Guattarian-Massumian expressions of affect theory, as well as contemporary British fiction and trauma. The affect theory strand of her research has developed into a body of work interfacing affect theory with literature, pedagogy, the Gothic, and trauma. Currently, she is writing a book entitled “Memories of . . .” Trauma: (Im)possible Expressions of Embodiment and Production. The Wycliffite/Lollard strand focuses on the vernacular texts associated with the Wycliffite/Lollard heresy. The Wycliffite Repository, an online database generated from an assemblage of 432 Middle English texts, makes Ringer’s work freely available for consultation. Angeliki Roussou is a Ph.D. researcher in the School of History of Art at The University of Edinburgh, focusing on the notion of instituting in relation to organizational and curatorial practices in Europe. She has cocurated the exhibition “Exodic” in Athens (2014). She has also worked on

330

Contributors

the curatorial team of Kunsthalle Athena (2011-2013). She has published in the arts publication South as a State of Mind, and she has recently participated in curatorial symposia and academic conferences in the UK. Her research is funded by Edinburgh College of Art and the A. G. Leventis Foundation.

INDEX

Abu Ghraib, 47-48 Academic Discourse and Critical Consciousness, 79 Accursed Share, The, 63 Achievement of Desire, The, 168 active learning, 20, 99, 101, 192, 290, 295 activism, 62, 242, 247-248 Adorno, Theodor, 50 Adventure of Insight, The, 122 aesthetics, 89 affect theory, 186, 204, 210-211, 213-214, 216, 218-220 All About Love, 191 Althusser, Louis, 18, 41-42, 56 Ambassadors, The, 36, 48 ambiguous wound, 11 analysand, 12-13, 15, 21-22, 122125, 127, 129, 142-144, 150153, 155-159, 167 analyst, 12-13, 15, 20, 22, 122-125, 128-131, 135, 142-144, 148, 150, 152-153, 155-159 anamorphosis, 36-37 anger, 7, 9-10, 145-146 Anna O., 10 Anthropologist on Mars, An, 44 anti-foundationalism, 79 anxiety, 116-119, 125, 127, 134, 145-146, 276 Arendt, Hannah, 82 critical thought, 82-84, 90 morality, 82-83 Aristophanes, 187-189, 192 art institutions, 241-242 discursive practices in, 241-242 Art of Fiction, The, 174n assessment, 19, 21, 50, 95-96, 109, 287, 297, 301-302

Austere Academy, The, 5 authorial intention, 169 authority redistribution of, 18, 20, 25-26, 78, 81, 84-85, 104, 106-109, 111-112, 152, 202, 205-206, 226-231, 235, 239, 266, 280 Badiou, Alain, 24, 194-197 forcing, 195 inexistent, the 196, 198 set theory, 194-195 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 19-20, 105-106 double-voicedness, 108 carnivalesque, 34 dialogism, 108 Bambi, 66 banditry, 129, 133 Banks, Russell, 66 Barthes, Roland, 18-19, 60, 72, 96, 98-113, 162 author, 103 critic, 103 Text, 101 work, 101 Bataille, Georges, 63 Beast in the Jungle, The, 170 Believing is Seeing, 47 Benjamin, Walter, 61 Berkeley, George, 35 Berry, Wendell, 2 Bizzell, Patricia, 18, 79-80, 82, 85, 90 Black Feminist Theory, 22, 141 Bloom, Harold, 23, 167 Blumenberg, Hans, 17, 33, 35-36, 40, 51 Bodley, Thomas, 201-203 Boler, Megan, 9 Bourdieu, Pierre, 259-261

332 Brecht, Bertolt, 44 Breuer, Josef, 10 Bring up the Bodies, 205-206, 216, 218, 221 Britzman, Deborah, 116-117 Buddensiek, Friedemann, 35n, 47 Burn After Reading, 16, 19-20 Butler, Judith, 64 capitalism, 17, 26-27, 34, 38-40, 5051, 124, 251-252, 256, 281 Carpenter, John, 41 Carroll, David, 2 Cartesian split, 81 cartography, 129-130 Cassin, Barbara, 187 castration, 120n, 121, 128, 192 Cervantes, Miguel de, 129-137 Charcot, Jean-Martin, 10 Chiapello, Eve, 251 Cho, Daniel, 122 “choice architecture,” 275 “citizen curating,” 62 class mobility, 271 classroom mulitcultural, the, 21, 139 power dynamics in, 26, 158 student-centered, 111 teacher-centered, 6, 111 close reading, 166, 294 Cold War, 249, 254 collaboration, 1, 16, 97, 149 commodification, 27, 273-274 composition, 28, 85-86, 184, 284, 292, 298, 300 co-performativity, 25, 205 creativity, 7, 149, 156, 180, 213, 287, 322 crisis, 3, 12-13, 27-29, 119, 271, 301 in higher education, 28, 302 critical theory, 1, 65, 77, 140, 185 Critical Theory and the English Teacher, 6 critique, 18, 19, 27, 57, 60, 65, 7782, 84, 88, 140, 155, 244, 256, 311

Index Cromwell, Thomas, 203-208, 212, 214, 217, 219 cultural studies, 184 Curating and the Educational Turn, 241 Davis, Robert Con, 151 Death of the Author, The, 110 Death of the Lion, The, 162, 181 deconstruction, 48, 83, 319 Deleuze, Gilles, 25, 204n, 211, 218, 226, 230, 232, 237-238, 312 arborescent, the 25, 210-215, 219-220, 222 becoming, 34, 66, 107, 111, 118, 153, 190, 219, 220-223, 229, 233, 236-267, 276, 280 deterritorialization, 25, 232-234, 236 rhizomatic, the 25, 211, 213, 218 smooth space, 234-236, 239 striated space, 234-236 territorialization, 25, 232-234, 236 demand, 6, 14, 24, 89, 158, 193, 281 demandingness, as a concept, 269, 271-272, 275, 277 Derrida, Jacques, 56, 83, 89, 95 desire, 9, 12-13, 16, 21, 36, 68, 8284, 98, 109, 113, 116, 118, 120121, 123-124, 127-129, 131-135, 154, 159, 168, 187-189, 192193, 229, 232-233, 259, 293, 303 analyst’s, 13, 123-124 enigmatic, 13 pedgogy of, 116 purified, 13 student’s, 123, 159 teacher’s, 12-13 Dewey, John, 9, 25, 84n, 86, 109, 153, 227, 266-267 Dick, Philip K., 17, 33, 37 Dinan, Frank J., 283, 285 Diotima, 24, 187, 189, 190-192 discourse of the analyst, 135 of the hysteric, 118, 120, 132

Putting Theory into Practice in the Contemporary Classroom of the master, 127-128, 132-133 of student employability, 264, 272-273 of the university, 21, 119-120, 127 discrimination, 22, 140-141, 145, 148, 150, 307, 319-320 disempowerment, 157, 264, 266267, 279 disillusionment, 18, 84, 130, 143 Don Quijote, 116, 129-135 Drayton, Michael, 24, 206-211, 213, 222 Eagleton, Terry, 202 ecocriticism, 43 educational biography, 6-7 turn, 26, 241 wounding, 7 ego, 11 Eichmann, Adolf, 82-83, 90 Either/Or, 11 emotion, 9, 146, 148, 186, 216 emplayment, 215-216, 218, 220, 222 employability, 27, 272-273, 275276, 278-279, 281 empowerment, 27, 159, 264, 267269, 275 English in America, 298 epistemic privilege, 22, 141, 142, 152, 157 epistemological satisfaction, 23, 167, 181 skepticism, 194 trauma, 9 epistemology, 19, 89, 106, 118n, 126, 139-140, 150, 190, 318 epistemophilic instinct, 12, 16 esotericism, 52, 259-262 ethical action, 19, 78, 85 space, 147 subject, 11, 181 Evans-Winters, Venus, 149-151, 153-154, 157

333

evental, the, 24, 197 Experiment in Criticism, An, 167 Eyes Have It, The 33, 37 Faigley, Lester, 77-78, 80, 85, 88 False self, 14-15 fan fiction, 24-25, 205-206 fandom, 24, 201, 204-205 fantasy, 13, 123, 128-129, 132, 134136, 147-148, 153-154, 203 fear, 9-10, 49, 68, 132, 144-146, 149, 185, 216, 222, 229, 272, 276-277, 301, 303 Felman, Shoshana, 122 femininity, 58, 310, 314-315 feminism, 70, 97 Figure in the Carpet, The, 23, 171176, 180-181 Fink, Bruce, 12-13, 120, 131, 156, 167, 192, 200 Fish, Stanley, 79 formalism, 2 Former West, 26-27, 243, 249-251, 253-259, 261-262 Foucault, Michel, 26, 246 epimeleia, 246 parrhesia, 26-27, 243, 246-248, 255, 258 foundationalism, 80 Fragments of Rationality, 77-78 Freire, Paulo, 79-80, 190-192, 194, 197 banking concept of education, 6, 192 critical consciousness, 79 French Communist Party, 26, 256257 Freud, Sigmund, 10, 11n, 12, 23, 31, 124-125, 143, 149, 154-155, 167 Dora, 155 Rat Man, the, 155 Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique, The, 156 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 33-34, 49 Game of Thrones, 25, 205

334 gender, 21-22, 29, 57-58, 62-67, 71, 136, 141, 145, 147, 307-324 disparity, 313, 316-317, 321-323 equality, 309, 321, 323 mainstreaming, 28-29, 306, 309, 314, 324 theory, 29, 312 gender-oriented education, 316, 321-322 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 10 Godard, Jean-Luc, 42 good-enough mother, the, 14 Greville Fane, 169 grief, 7, 11 Guattari, Félix, 25, 204, 211, 224, 232, 239, 312. See also Gilles Deleuze. Haidt, Jonathan, 22 Harman, Graham, 88-89, 91 Harry Potter, 25, 204, 212-213, 220 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 127 hegemonic privilege, 22 hegemony, 26 of exhibitionary form, 26 Heidegger, Martin, 34, 40 Einverleibung, 40 Existenzialen, 58 Hlavajova, Maria, 250, 254, 259 Holbein, Hans, the Younger, 36-37, 48 Holley, Lynn, 140n, 148 Holt, John, 6, 12 homeschooling, 6 hooks, bell, 191-192, 194, 197 horizontal segregation, 307, 319 humanities, 5, 16-18, 20, 25, 38, 5657, 60, 65, 74, 141, 184, 198, 201-205, 222-223, 286, 295, 297-298, 301-302, 307, 315 humiliation, 9, 215 Hurston, Zora Neale, 67-71 identity formation, 11, 18, 43, 49, 57, 61, 64-65, 69-71, 148, 196197, 315 ideological state apparatus, 42

Index ideology, 18, 37, 41-42, 46-47, 51, 56-58, 60-63, 65, 67-68, 70-71, 74, 98, 120, 273, 279, 311 indeterminacy, 20, 48, 105-106 Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, 12 instituting, 27, 243-245, 248, 253, 255, 258, 261-262 institutional autobiography, 8, 28, 288n institutional critique, 244-245 interactive learning, 20 interdisciplinarity, 29, 312 interpellation, 42-43 interpretation, 1, 15, 59, 77, 101, 105, 108, 112, 123, 129, 135, 155, 193, 198, 293 intersubjectivity, 157-158 introjection, 67 Iser, Wolfgang, 170 James, Henry, 23, 162-163, 169, 171-176, 179, 182 organicism, 174 James, William, 43 Johnson, Barbara, 169 Johnson, T. R., 117, 117n, 127 jouissance, 99, 118-119, 121, 134, 154 Joy, Eileen A., 16, 27 Kant, Immanuel, 82 Kierkegaard, Søren, 11 knowledge production of, 20, 116, 119, 121, 154, 243-244, 248 Kompridis, Nikolas, 56, 58-59, 74 Lacan, Jacques, 10, 12, 14, 20-21, 24, 36, 116, 118-120, 122-123, 125, 126-127, 129, 135, 137, 159-160, 189, 192, 200 four discourses, 20 object a, 121 passion for ignorance, 127 subject supposed to know, 119, 123, 156 will not to know, 12

Putting Theory into Practice in the Contemporary Classroom lack, 24, 128, 153, 156, 159, 188189, 192-193 Latour, Bruno, 18 Laughter of the Thracian Woman, The 17, 33, 35 lecture-based teaching, 20, 102 Les Fiancés Du Pont Macdonald, 42, 47 Lewis, C. S., 167 liminality, 59 literary canon, the, 186, 204, 207 literary criticism, 61, 173, 202 Lodge, David, 108-109 logic, 20, 49, 60, 65, 73, 82, 84, 147, 174, 194, 196, 210, 213, 273 modal, 20 poetic, 60, 71, 91, 123, 132, 136, 207 loss, 11, 18, 78, 81, 84, 116-117, 119, 169, 188 love, 24, 46, 60-61, 68-69, 130, 136, 144, 171, 183-195, 197-199, 205, 260, 315 Lover’s Discourse, A, 18, 60 Lynch, Deidre, 183, 185-186 Lyotard, Jean-François, 85 Madness and Civilization, 34-35 manifesto, 16-17, 21, 27-28 Mantel, Hilary, 24, 201-204, 206, 208-209, 216-217, 219-220, 222, 224 Marx, Karl, 40 Marxism, 97 masculinity, 58, 310, 314-315 Massumi, Brian, 219 master signifier, 118, 120-121, 128, 133 mastery, 19, 21, 90, 116, 118-123, 126, 128-129, 131, 134, 152 Mesa, Vilma, 102, 114 Michaelsen, Larry, 284-287, 295296, 299, 303 Microscopia, 122-123 Miller, Jacques-Alain, 122 Miller, Richard, 8, 288n

335

mimesis, 41, 233 MOOCs, 40, 267 More, Thomas, 211, 214, 219, 221 narcissism, 11, 166, 169-170 narrative, 9-11, 15, 18, 28, 173, 202, 221, 285-289, 291 conversion, 28, 163, 286n grand, 18, 76-77 master, 77, 135 neoliberalism, 26-28, 252, 264, 269, 280-281 neurosis, 8, 13 New Spirit of Capitalism, The, 251 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 26, 226-227, 229-232, 237 active force, 230 reactive force, 230-231, 233 nihilism, 84 No Child Left Behind, 5, 109 O’Neill, Paul, 241-242 objectivity, 111 Occupy Wall Street, 39 Oedipal complex, 23 Ohmann, Richard, 287n, 298 Olson, Kirsten, 6-7, 19, 22 ontology, 19, 89, 91, 194-196, 213 Oral, Sevket Benhur, 88 allusion, 91, 93 interiority of objects, 88 pedagogy as heuristic device, 89 transrational, the, 19, 90 vitality, 88, 94 Other, the, 63, 74, 119, 121, 127128, 135, 151, 154, 158 Other Boleyn Girl, The, 25, 205 Other Side of Psychoanalysis, The, 116 passive learning, 227, 284-285, 290, 301 Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 190191 Pepper, Stephen, 80 contextualism, 80, 88, 90-91, 93 world hypotheses, 80 Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, The, 36-37, 41, 47-48, 51

336 Phaedrus, 91-93, 187 Phelps, Louise Wetherbee, 78 attunement, 87 epistemic revolution, 80 Philosophical Investigations, 44 phronesis, 86, 88 Plato, 24, 33-35, 37, 41, 49, 61, 192, 265 Allegory of the Cave, 49, 265, 268 pleasure, 9, 16, 99-100, 118n, 121, 162, 168, 179, 185, 192 political correctness, 22, 142 positivism, 82, 89 post-colonialism, 2, 43, 50, 51n postmodern impasse, 19, 80-81, 83, 85 postmodernity, 19, 77-78, 81-82, 88 poststructuralism, 19, 78, 96-97 primal pedagogical scene, the, 7, 11, 23, 166-167 primal scene, the, 167 privileged space, 21, 139, 141-145, 147, 149, 152, 157, 159 “project,” the, 26, 243 psychic healing, 22 wound, 11 psychoanalysis, 3-4, 8-10, 21-23, 43, 70, 116, 119, 122, 124-125, 128129, 132, 136, 141-143, 148, 167 punishment, 8, 11, 46, 58, 229 queer theory, 140 race, 21, 57, 70-71, 124, 140-141, 150-154 racism, 62, 63, 65, 71, 74, 140, 150151, 153, 280 Rasmussen, Chris, 102, 114 Raunig, Gerald, 244-245, 247-248, 252, 255 structuralization, 245 reader-response theory, 97 reading, 13, 16, 23, 25, 35, 43, 4749, 67, 79, 80, 99-101, 104-105, 108, 110, 112, 128-129, 134, 136, 162-163, 165-173, 175-176,

Index 180, 189, 192, 205, 242, 264, 283-284, 288-291, 293, 296, 315 sociality of, 23, 171 Readings, Bill, 13, 26 Real, the, 37, 118-121, 120n, 128, 130, 136 reasoning electrate, 18 literate, 18 reception theory, 169 reflective disclosure, 18, 58-60, 66, 73-74 regression, 159 repression, 8, 12, 23, 128, 146, 148149, 166, 169 Republic, 34 rereading, 100, 170 return of the repressed, the, 125, 166 rhetorical hermeneutics, 186 Ricoeur, Paul, 11 Rodriguez, Richard, 168 Rogoff, Irit, 243-245, 246, 248, 251, 260-261 curatorial, the, 63, 241, 251 Rowling, J. K., 203-204, 223 Rundle, David, 201-204, 219 S/Z, 98, 101, 110, 162, 170, 181 safe space, 21, 139, 143, 145-146, 148-151, 153 Said, Edward, 79 Saint Paul, 24 Sarrasine, 110 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 168 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 188 self healing, 11, 15 reflection, 56-57, 81, 94, 125, 280, 313, 317, 319, 322 revision of, 16 semiotics, 70, 97 sexual harassment, 185 Shakespeare, William, 204 shame, 7, 9, 46, 181 Shaw, G. B., 168-169 signified, the, 19, 96-97, 104, 113 signifier, the, 19, 89, 96-97, 99-100, 103, 113, 118, 120-121, 128-

Putting Theory into Practice in the Contemporary Classroom 131, 133-134, 151, 155-156, 158, 162 skepticism, 47, 60, 190, 194 Snicket, Lemony, 4-5 social justice, 80, 140, 145, 149, 153 Socrates, 41, 57, 61, 84, 91-93, 187188, 190, 246, 285 speculative realism, 19 Spinoza, Baruch, 214 Stand and Deliver, 185 Standing by Words, 2 States of “Theory,” The, 2 Steiner, Sue, 148 student-centered learning, 25-26, 100, 226-227, 229, 233, 236, 238 subjectivity, 9-10, 81, 91, 111-112, 125, 134, 158, 196, 212, 219, 318 superego, 67 Symposium, 24, 186-187, 192 symptom, 10, 12, 15, 116, 146 Team-Based Learning, 28, 283-286, 288, 290-292, 294-302, 304-305 technology enhanced learning, 267 Tedlock, Barbara, 17 text epic, 19, 105 novel, 19, 105 readerly, 19, 101, 162 writerly, 19, 98, 162 Thales of Miletus, 17, 35-36, 42, 47, 51 Their Eyes Were Watching God, 68, 72, 75 theoria, 3, 17 therapy, 12-13 They Live, 41-42, 48, 52n thinking-centered learning, 26, 238239 Thousand Plateaus, A, 25, 234, 236 transculturality, 29, 312 transference, 24, 124, 149-150, 152, 154, 156, 158 transgression, 29, 120, 134, 312 transversality, 29, 312 traumatic pedagogy, 139, 143 True self, 14

337

Tudors, The, 25, 205 Ulmer, Gregory, 18 heuretic principles, 65 image of wide scope, 64, 71 popcycle, 64 puncept, 72 relay, 67 scenes of instruction, 64-65, 6970 unconscious, the, 14, 21-22, 69, 119, 122-126, 128-135, 139, 143-144, 146-147, 150, 152-153, 186, 217 unemployability, 27, 264 University in Ruins, The, 13 unpleasure, 23, 167-168 unschooling, 6 utilitarianism, 43 Varda, Agnes, 17, 53 Verhaeghe, Paul, 153, 158 vertical segregation, 307, 314, 318, 320 Victor Turner, 59 Wells, H. G., 171 Welsch, Wolfgang, 29, 312 What the Best College Professors Do, 185 white privilege, 63, 151, 154 White, Hayden, 203 Why I Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper”?, 10 Wiener, Jan, 143 Williams, Dawn, 149 Wilson, Mick, 241 Winnicott, Donald, 14 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 17, 44 Wolf Hall, 205-206, 211-220 Wolsey, Thomas, 215 Wordsworth, William, 95 Worthen, Molly, 295, 303 Wounded by School, 6, 31 Writing at the End of the World, 8 writing cure, 16 W.S., 24, 206, 208-211, 216, 218, 220-222 Žižek, Slavoj, 17, 33, 36, 48, 51, 87, 128