A Pedagogy of Gaps – Draft
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Rob Welch
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 Dr. A. Lothian
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 Engl 985
¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 2 Dec 2013
¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0
The Myth of Success and Successful Outcomes
¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 1 More than half a century ago, Walter Benjamin warned us that the proper direction to cast our eyes, for our own protection, was not to the future, but to the past. In a sense, we in the humanities adhere to his warning, ardently teaching the wisdom of the past as it is entombed within the books that we relish. History, anthropology, literature are presented vicariously to students in bound caskets with the intention of translating the lived experience of the past into the realities of the present. However, the motivation for this process is almost never dedicated to that past, but is, in fact, oriented regularly toward the future of the students with whom we share this legacy. Practically speaking, the past is presented in the present of the classroom with an eye towards learning goals, an agenda that stretches into a future of tests, term papers, and, we trust, beyond, into the lives of students long after they have ceased to be students. Today, I look to the last decade of queer studies for my justification in opening a discussion about how literary studies is both working in the way we intend it to work and, at the same time, not working as it might. In particular, I am concerned with the approaches within the field that adopted the concept of structures of feeling in order to fully explore the innately human within the literary artifacts which mirror who and what we are.
¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 Implicit within the trends of critical pedagogy for the last forty years has been a commitment to a cyclical process which replaces linear models. Education is no longer viewed as the transfer of a predetermined sufficiency of knowledge from one source to another. Rather, we now look upon this transfer as secondary to the development of self-reflexive techniques which equip the individual with tools enabling both the negotiation and enrichment of their lives. Despite this sea change, methods of assessment for outcomes remain mired in quantitative evaluations which are analogs of the linear conception of education. Simply put, we hope to suggest a manner of thinking by teaching that x + 2 = 4, but the culmination of this is in simply judging whether the answer x = 2 is correctly marked. Numerous causes underlie this engineered short-sightedness, not the least of which is expediency. Beyond the need for an easily quantified benchmark, however, exists a predisposition in our expectations that an answer exists for each problem. In the classroom and in life, the individual is abstracted as a problem with a correct outcome – success. The judgment of success, however, in both instances, often remains merely a fulfillment of purely binary interrogatives that seek to definitely confirm or negate the status. This method of judgment parallels the inadequacy of assessment of classroom outcomes.
¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 The issue on which these problems revolve is not the seemingly irresolvable determination of a new means of assessment, but more pointedly on the concept of assessment as well as an examination of the definition of success in each case. To put it even more pointedly, we need to consider an examination of the parameters of failure in each case. The other day, I was reading a text on film that emphasized the way in which we judge a narrative by its realism in relation to life. What it left unsaid was how easily we may approach the ideals (or infamies) within the fictional and use them as a yardstick to judge the appropriateness of life as it is presented to us. If utopia exists in fiction, then the proper response to encountering it is not indifferent complacency sheltered in metaphor, but an interrogative which probes the impediments that prevent that utopia and a regard for the steps which can and may redirect reality to more approximate the desired fiction. In a very real sense, literary studies both reflect and reinforce pathways by which the judgment of success is relayed to the student. These pathways become assumed as normal expectations for the life paradigms within the body of literary works, but these paradigms are also looked to as reflections of reality. It is a short step from assessing paradigms of humanity to assessing the real thing, students, teachers, and all of society included. Within literary studies, the win/lose mentality is reinforced as a valid means of assessing character, and this predisposes the student to view real life in the same manner. This is only reinforced by the process which students go through in the classroom in which their judgment of the characters is, in turn, judged and accorded a grade. The paradigm of interaction with fiction is shown to be the paradigm by which their reality operates. If they are busy assessing the main character, then they understand that the instructor is busy assessing them, which logically indicates that they are the main character.
¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 1 The duality involved between the position of judge and judged is central to the understanding of the dynamic involved. Between the obvious binary lies a shifting perspective of experience, one which is so common to the social human that we tend to ignore the implications of such requisite malleability. The ideal that is central to all of this is based on communication between thinking, feeling individuals, and, unexpectedly, this turns out to be problematic. As an instructor of college students, my place is describable from two angles, as the person who assists learning within the classroom and the liaison functionary who mediates between the student and the university. As Moten and Harney illustrate in “The University of the Undercommons,” the college classroom is designed essentially as a conservative space. Critical thinking which might guide the evolution of education is observed primarily through form, presenting an appearance of challenge which resolves readily into reconciling hopes to “realities.” Scholarship is therefore, primarily, involved in the business of replication, rather than innovation, producing functional replacements for worn-out intellectuals (managers, planners, organizers, in the sense as Gramsci has it) as they conform to production in academic and non-academic settings. The Reorder of Things by Roderick Ferguson emphasizes the malleable facade of the corporate university as it presents a front of “seeming” change, displaying concession to difference by inclusion and representation, which forms a model for society’s analogous government to also concede change, “seemingly.” Tokens of representation acknowledged in receipt of difference are summarily re-valued by the university or the governing body as chits that absolve any issues that might have ever arisen out of such difference, dismissing them from the view which reassumes the consensus (majority) understanding. The university is a machine, whether it is subservient to the state or in reciprocity with it; its status as a machine cannot be denied, and it is into this inhuman space that I seek to intrude my understanding for the development of identities, a concern for me as an educator and as a human, but only peripherally as a function of the machine to which I attach myself. Thus, Moten and Harney point to the space between the lines, the “undercommons,” which is not recognized by the framework of the university machine but should be inherent in the human components that make it up. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, in Touching Feeling, emphasizes this split between institution and individual, describing involvement in protest, noting the excitement, the energy of those expressing themselves and the seawall of inertia erected by entrenched institutions, saying, “the protest function is so routinized and banalized by the state and media… that enable it” (28).
¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 What fills the gap between the binary between judge and judged is essentially human experience, one that is at the same time unique for each of us and yet, formed by similar social factors to which we tend to react in set fashions. Raymond Williams’ term for this amorphous region is structure of feeling, and affect scholars have adopted the term to their own needs. The sense of feeling that is innate within us has become intimately connected to the sense of feeling as we explore and connect through media which primarily reflects relational concepts, not simply information pertinent to replicating the function of the machine. It is the definably human within the institution. When we turn to look at the specific of how this plays out within literary studies, we are therefore looking for the human within the medium that is anything but human. This provides a concrete base with relates the experience of literature to the experience of learning about literature and the experience of life.
¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 Let me illustrate with a common text, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. This novel is still regularly examined in both undergraduate programs and, indeed, high schools and middle schools. Critically, it is famous as a nearly perfect archetype for the bildungsroman, principally following the maturation of Pip. Presumably, this makes it an ideal text for young students to relate to, providing a ready-made self-reflexive sense, as they are in a similar position to Pip, being able to look back at their recent childhood and consider their own development. When Great Expectations is taught, the primary consideration, then, is given to Pip, the main character. We ask: how is Pip at the end of the novel different from Pip at the beginning? What events occur during the novel that change how Pip acts and thinks? Does Pip always act as he should, and what are the results of those actions? From beginning to end, we require a catalogue of events and a critique of whether or not the choices made by the central character were right or wrong. Is Pip wrong to help the escaped convict? Is Pip wrong to refuse to visit Joe when he returns to his hometown? Is Pip right to covertly promote Herbert’s interests? Is Pip right to stand by Magwich in the end? Part of the engaging realism of Dickens is that his character does make some dubious choices that allow the reader to commiserate and condemn simultaneously. Maturation, however, is defined through the course of the novel as Pip accepting responsibility and gaining a sense of proportion about his relationships with others, so that in the final tally, we can say that he succeeds; Pip is a successful human being.
¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0 What I would ask, however, is how successful does a living human being feel simply by virtue of being a well-balanced person, by virtue of being their own central character? We allow a sort of consolation prize for Pip, an allowance for reaching a plateau of emotional security, but since this is an expectation within social norms for every individual, it may be seen more properly as a step on the road to success rather than the thing itself. This is reflected in Dickens’ alteration of his original ending to suggest a possible reconciliation between Pip and Estella. Many a critic has noted the need for a completed marriage plot resolution in this text in terms of Pip getting his tangible “reward” for his tribulations. Especially in the United States, where a premium is put on the tangible aspects of success, this expectation is paramount. However, as Jack Halberstam states: “Failure… goes hand in hand with capitalism” (88). While we glorify the one in a million who beats the odds and makes it to the top, the self-made billionaire, the nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine who failed to do so are simultaneously ignored within the same breath.
¶ 14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 0 What happens to them? I can illustrate what I am getting at here by referring to the work of Dr. James Stigler, author of The Teaching Gap. Dr. Stigler relates an anecdote of his graduate study in Japan, where he observed elementary school children in the course of their normal lessons. During a geometry lesson, built around students following the model of the instructor in drawing three dimensional solids, Stigler observed the instructor visually checking the work of the students. Finding one boy who had not correctly performed the task, the instructor called that child to the front of the class to try again on the board so that everyone could see how he did. Again, the child failed to perform the task, but was required to stay at the front, while his fellow students coached him on how to correct his errors until he had satisfactorily completed the diagram. For any one of us, we quickly and clearly see this as an example of utter sadism, designed to destroy the confidence of the individual. Having been so embarrassed may, perhaps, motivate the child to allow for additional study time and possible improvement, but at what psychological cost? What surprised Stigler, however, was that the child in his story was not embarrassed at all. When he, at last, completed his drawing, he did so to a round of applause from his class, cheers of “he did it!” and a smiling assertion of the student’s own pride in accomplishing, with the support of his friends. I repeat this story to underscore the important lesson that there is another way of looking at success than the one we have all had ingrained within us which depends so heavily upon the ideal of self-made determination.
¶ 15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 0 Going back to Great Expectations, I would then offer that there is nothing wrong in teaching the novel in the way we have discussed, providing Pip as the avatar, standing in for the student, where the student is reassured of the past as process grounded on progress which shows them they, too, are developing, being and becoming successful human beings. At the same time, I am stating that there is everything wrong with teaching Great Expectations in this way. Linking the student to a central consciousness within a text does allow for self-reflexivity, but it also fundamentally aggrandizes the self that is being reflected on. In a phrase, the student identifies as the main character. As such, they are, in a predetermined sense, already successful within the scheme presented, by virtue of being at the center of the story, and this understanding of placement within the storyworld can only stand at odds with the student’s placement within the real world and their expectations of placement within the real world. In the real world, the chances are that student will not be the one in a million, and will have to learn to accept the degree of success which they attain as, in essence, a personal failure.
¶ 16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 0 The critical link here lies in between the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, how we got to where we are, and the fictional paradigms that literature offers for its own characters, explicating who they are and how they got where they are. The model offered in literature allows us to define the cause and effect of the past, a static set of concepts put into words, and relate it to a condition within the present. Pip, in being a dutiful son, runs into the convict at the graveyard and precipitates his own good fortune (or bad fortune, depending on how you read it) in later life. So Dickens wrote it, and so it must always be, as the truth of Great Expectations. Yet, when we turn to reality, we must allow for something more than the facts of past singular events. As Jack Halberstam points out in The Queer Art of Failure: “The social worlds we inhabit… are not inevitable, they were not always bound to turn out this way” (147). In particular, Halberstam’s chapter on radical passivity within the book, demonstrates the universality of the quest for agency within the human while at the same time critiquing the specific definitions of that agency. Subscribing to the odd, doing the unexpected in any given system, displays and garners power over and against any dominant system, even when the unexpected action is to refuse the reins of power.
¶ 17 Leave a comment on paragraph 17 0 So, what I suggest is simply a full recognition of the implications which reside in the way was regard literature, the way we present literature to our students. Recognizing that we are involved in structure of feeling with literature is not enough; we must also be aware that this structure has implications for the identity of our students far beyond what the story might convey. The appropriate response lies most clearly in approaching literature and acting upon it in an unexpected way. If we continue to teach it solely on the basis of linear, rational explication, we make ourselves part of the problem, continuing to support a system which sets individuals up for a fall and then only allows them to blame themselves, an outcome clearly at odds with the goals we all set for ourselves to improve the lives of our students. While there are many devices we might use to accomplish this, I will suggest one that is so obvious that it is actually used, in a form, every day in classrooms across the country. It is simply to sidestep the idea of a main character. Looking back to Great Expectations, Dickens, famously, stocks his works with hordes of memorable characters, and this novel is no exception. Much has been written about the crazed Miss Havisham and the mechanical Estella, and we frequently ask that students consider these characters. However, since we situate the focus on a central, main character, Pip, any examination of those other than Pip must be seen as an interpretation through the lens that Pip provides. We need not shatter that lens, but, rather, we need to relegate it to a special space. Consider lessons dealing with point of view. For example, looking at Great Expectations, it can be noted that Dickens chooses to write his story in first person. As an exercise, we might ask that paragraphs be rewritten, transforming the narrative to third person, largely as a labor of grammar, to ensure that the student practices subject/verb agreement. At the same time, it works to give an appreciation of the intimacy involved in the written character directly transposing himself over the consciousness of the reader and how that action demands a degree of power which the third person more humbly requests. We may take the lesson further, however, and require the student to rewrite segments of the action as viewed by another character, entirely, from the focus chosen by Dickens. Consider the novel from the point of view of Mrs. Gargery, for instance. For the purposes of queering the reading, the important thing is not the incidental lessons that may be discerned by performing this exercise, but the absolute recognition that within the storyworld of the novel, the designator “main character” may be fluid and that what happens to any such character is dependent on how they link and respond to others within the storyworld.
¶ 18 Leave a comment on paragraph 18 0 If we take the typical view of linear development, Mrs. Gargery’s point of view would be a handicapped one, since she remains in a single location in the novel, while the action proceeds away from her. Further, Mrs. Gargery dies before the action of the novel is completed. However, when we take the step to think about how Pip’s older sister might perceive what goes on, we go a long way on the road to reaching out and lending agency to someone who is cut off from the main current by virtue of the focus of the narrative and by our own sentiments. I contend that this is not a useless exercise, as the position of being cut off, sidelined, minimalized is much closer to the experience of the individual in the modern world than ever consistently being the hero of the story. In reaching out to those that have not had their voices fully articulated, we provide the pattern for being able to express our own voices. We fulfill the messianic impulse described by Walter Benjamin, saving the dispossessed, the silenced, and at the same time, setting the stage for our own salvation. Within Ghostly Matters, Avery Gordon applies the tenets of Raymond Williams’ structure of feeling in order to investigate how to approach, through sociology and literature, that which is unspoken, that which is only felt. That is where exploring Dickens’ storyworld through Mrs. Gargery leads us. From Pip’s view, she is an angry, violent, domineering presence, and we discount the punned phrase associated with her, how she brought up the boy “by hand” (5). Her presence seems to have no influence on the young Pip; it does not color his expectations of motherhood, femininity, or sibling feeling. Except as she is able to lay a hand upon the child, she is already separated from him, powerless within the confines of the narrative. Once we consider the impotent fury of Mrs. Gargery, we recognize the limitations that bind the character. She is a woman denied even acknowledgement within her own right, except as wife to Joe, sister to Pip, until the penultimate chapter discloses her own name, Georgiana, which turns out to be a name she shares with her dead mother, another ineffectual non-presence within the life of the main character. Yet in the display of her wrathful will, Mrs. Gargery conveys a human sense of frustration and desire that is, if anything, more intriguing as a starting point for a story as the happenstance of the innocent Pip meeting Magwich. Imagine Georgiana Gargery haunting the work of Dickens, expressing the view she must have of what has happened to her, what does happen to her, and how it contrasts with the course of events for her younger brother. Where would the sense of proportion and justice fall then?
¶ 19 Leave a comment on paragraph 19 0 A popular meme of today taken from James Baldwin, novelist and social critic, reads: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” Baldwin suggests the kind of connection we love to see, where literature becomes real. Rather than simply searching for that connection, the process I suggest requires the investment to proactively create such links to make a practice of the commitment to dig out the dead from the pages of novels and to invest them with lives that they were only tangentally suggested, even by their own creators. Rather than relying on the chance of relating with a single main character, the reader has, instead, the option of searching the storyworld for their emotional counterpart and exploring the narrative through their compatible eyes. The central character may remain, not as a normative standard, but as a referent by which the myriad revivifiers in any class may touch base in organizing their discussions of their separate, equally valid explorations. This way of looking at the novel encourages the validation of the student’s sense of identity while at the same time reinforcing the sense in which the storyworld that they explore is a community, not the realm associated with any single, privileged character. Encouraging a sense of community is an essential curative to combat the persistent myth of the do or die, make it or break it, course of individual success. Will this replace the standard, linear approach to outlining narrative action and essentially learning “what happens” in a novel or a story? I sincerely doubt it, but I fervently believe in the unfathomable potential of literature when used as more than a timeline for events. In conjunction with any given imagination with its unique set of attributes and contexts, literature may be the springboard to the infinity within us all.
Works Cited
¶ 21 Leave a comment on paragraph 21 0 Baldwin, James. “James Baldwin: Quotes.” Goodreads. Web. 13 Oct. 2013.
¶ 22 Leave a comment on paragraph 22 0 Benjamin, Walter. “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken, 1968. Print.
¶ 23 Leave a comment on paragraph 23 0 Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Mineola: Dover, 2001. Print.
¶ 24 Leave a comment on paragraph 24 0 Ferguson, Roderick A. The Reorder of Things. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2012. Print.
¶ 25 Leave a comment on paragraph 25 0 Gordon, Avery. Ghostly Matters. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2008. Print.
¶ 26 Leave a comment on paragraph 26 0 Gramsci, Antonio. An Antonio Gramsci Reader. Ed. David Forgacs. New York: Schocken, 1988. Print.
¶ 27 Leave a comment on paragraph 27 0 Halberstam, Judith. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham: Duke UP, 2011. Print.
¶ 28 Leave a comment on paragraph 28 0 Moten, Fred and Stefano Harney. “The University and the Undercommons.” Social Text 79.22 (2004): 101-115. Project Muse. Web. 06 Sep. 2013.
¶ 29 Leave a comment on paragraph 29 0 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Touching Feeling. Durham: Duke UP, 2003. Print.
¶ 30 Leave a comment on paragraph 30 0 Spigel, Alex. “Struggle for Smarts? How Eastern and Western Cultures Tackle Learning.” NPR. 12 Nov. 2012. Web. 13 Oct. 2013.
This is, overall, an attempt to expand on my first writing assignment, channeling the concept into some practical form with some practical justification.