my little historicists
at some point this will have to be addressed –
what seems to be the convergence of novel theory (the marxists, the post-modernists, the new historicists) and the effects of these debates manifested in my students’ writing, especially their orientations toward literature and the way they situate it in history.
what to make of things like…
‘back in ye olde 19th century, everyone was racist, unlike in our current day when we know better…’
‘representations of slaves in 19th c. literature was overwhelmingly negative’
the things they need/want/have to believe in order to secure themselves in the contemporary moment?
jameson might fit into this somehow.
consumed
in a week i’ll start teaching another round of freshman comp. i should have a reader put together by the end of the week, but what to include? the consensus seems to be that derrida, benjamin, and volosinov are too much. a few other thoughts aswirl in my mind as i plan for this course, hopefully the last of the sort that i’ll teach for another three years:
the most thoughtful papers i’ve received in the past year and a quarter have been those that force students to reflect on their practices of cultural consumption. to see how their choices of entertainment and art are social and political decisions that are inflected by and negotiated through their experiences, relationships, social status, and the institutions and discourses that structure these … if i can get my students to this point, or approach it somehow, that would be ideal.
close reading. how does one teach this?
writing: organizing arguments; being attentive to an audience but not strictured by it; stylizing oneself without resorting to cliches; taking chances with language; writing strong sentences (and being able to recognize these, and articulate why they are so); writing elegantly (or to recognize what this might be); recognizing and parroting (fine, and appreciating) “academic discourse.”
how does one teach rhetoric without reinforcing the norms that rhetoric presumes are in place to be recognized?
but mostly i’m into social aesthetics. why do they enjoy consuming what they consume? what social and aesthetic hierarchies buttress the evaluative remarks they make about a cultural text? how is the literary (or musical, or artistic) genius constructed? to even get my students to accept genius as a social, political concept — if we can get here, i’ll consider the political side of my job fulfilled.
sensei benjamin and volosinov
a gem in the end o quarter portfolio pile:
“It has been a fascination especially among students to imagine would it would be like for two masters to face one another. This could be applied to martial arts such as karate versus kung fu, or two b-boy break dancers to battle. It could also be applied in less physically violent terms such as, maybe, philosophy. Walter Benjamin and V.N. Volosinov were both well established philosophers having written essays on their beliefs. “