Composition and Cornel West

I just finished the text and am floating on a Brother West high.

The interview at the end is outstanding, and I know I'll be on a West kick from it for the rest of the summer. I'm looking at his memoir, Democracy and Race Matters, Prophesy Deliverance!, and Evasion of American Philosophy as texts that I will at least check out, if not read in full. Democracy Matters and Evasion seem like they have the most to say to my work and I want to know more about how West does what he does everyday, and I think that means reading his memoir.

As far as the text goes, I like the fuel that interview gives to the work done in a composition classroom. Coming into the text, that's what I wanted. I want some texts and motivation and philosophy when I step in the class on Monday mornings. The first three chapters and the interview did that for me. Chapters four and five I wanted to be closer to West's ideas and closer to the composition classroom, although they were interesting in their own right.

Did any body find it interesting how West danced around the notion of rhetoric in the interview? It seemed like Gilyard wanted him to speak directly about the traditions of rhetoric and how they affect him, but West has a much broader view, speaking about voice and embodiment, talking about where words are lacking, and talking about the "cerebral song" of academia with its lack of soul (105). West was a fish that couldn't be caught in Gilyrad's net of rhetoric, and they moved on to talk about the classroom where there was much more agreement and excitement.

Teaching here at LMU, high on a bluff over LA and with Hollywood in sight, I was hit hard by what West says with school as this "manicured, deodorized place" that doesn't engage with the world or connect with the tragic (at least in most instances) (109).

West says that deep education has "everything to do with awakening" and that happens through acknowledging the tragic, absurd, and mysterious, and feeling them: "They [students] are part of a whole larger system, too. But that's going to be painful. And the only way that pain is real is when people feel as if those claims are tied to them" (111).

This reminded me of a student coming to class and saying that he and a group of friends at dinner had realized that there was life outside of LMU. They had forgotten in their first semester in college that life existed elsewhere. There was so much to do and think here that they hadn't read the news, or thought of life beyond the bluff. Here, at LMU, the admin privledges social justice and the education of the whole human, but that obviously isn't ingrained or my student wouldn't have come to class this way with all the students agreeing with him.

This made me think of the one moment this year when I really saw LMU engaging with the tragic, and that was in the 20th anniversary of the Jesuit martyrs (november 16, 1989). They dyed the fountain red to represent their blood and they made crosses for each of the martyrs and put those on campus. This felt like a real connection to the tragedy in history and it tied into the United States military empire attacking the Jesuit tradition, and so I think that many students felt it in a real way and they became critical about the history, awakened to the structural violence in our society, and through protests, prayer, and vigils here and at the SOA protest, they acted on new possibilities for the future.

Now, the question always for me is: how do I tie this into the classroom? How do I get students into this critique and into possibilities beyond market ideals?, and how do I do that while justifying my practice to all the stakeholders involved? And, when and if I do this, is it enough? How do I know that that practice in the classroom has importance and relevance once those students hit the streets and life outside the university, down away from the bluff?

Defining 'radical' and 'critical pedagogy'

Ben,
I thought I might twin those two themes because of their proximity. Firstly - I think I am with you on the self-defining 'radical'. What does it suggest? In what sense is the word being used and understood? I can't help but think of it in terms of the 60's, and Shor (not to overuse the interview but they touch, candidly, on such a wide spectrum of the rhet/comp field) was one. So I think in looking at how he has evolved, how this active radical now defines himself, is interesting. Like to me the questions are of constraints and conditions. What is possible? And how do we know that?

Shor: The last thing I'll say is that sometimes we think of transforming pedagogy in an historical vacuum and don't consider that the political climate has been hostile and conservative for twenty years now. What's possible in such a political climate is less than what's possible in a more insurgent or progressive era. I'd like us to blame ourselves less for some of the restrictions or limits that we discover in experimenting and transforming, and understand that we're pushing against some powerful limits set by the climate. What we can do, we accomplish inside a specific setting in a real history.

I really really dig your friend's thoughtful response: I'm a political liberal but an educational conservative. Ben I think your thought that it is a state of mind, a "deep state of solidarity with the students and their struggle to find meaning/voice/access/understanding/purpose. i think it is also an acknowledgment that the teacher is not ordained to be the only expert in the classroom."Spot on! I'm open to describing myself as a radical as long as I'm committed to that term's meaning as open and requiring constant interrogation.

So to me the next interesting question is, can this "deep state of solidarity" be achieved in a mode that doesn't exactly resemble critical pedagogy. Like if I were to discuss what my class looks like, in this composition/lit course, it looks like the following: the students are in groups and i'm standing or sitting not in a circle (the power actually feels too centered for me in that mode, and all that empty space in the middle) but close almost'within' their groups. Not necessarily at the front of the room, but trying to be among them. What I try to create is a discussion of literature that is situated, deeply, within their own experiences, and one of the risks I take is that I try to bring my own odd and out there life experiences and their connection to the text, in such a way that it lets them feel free to do so. I'll say something ridiculous in the hope that they might start to make really interesting, and unconventional connections to the text. Make them feel that their thoughts aren't odd but compelling and rich and worth weaving into the text. This, however, might be a romantic idea.

And the way I'll respond to a student's reading attempts to be really open and inquisitive, like "tell me more", and respond within a vocabulary that draws, loosely from pragmatism, but is also, hopefully, explicitly empathetic. So - like "I find that really persuasive", "That is a very cool connection you've made", and if I don't think it's persuasive I'll try and say "Hmmnn I'm not sure I'm completely convinced but I'm open to the idea, definitely". Is this 'frontloading' student discourse? I'm not sure.

And then it brings up this question (and all of its perils): How did I learn best? And if I can figure out how I've learned best, can/should/what are the risks of applying that to my students? I learned by seeing profs engage the texts in ways that I thought were alive, and cool, and interesting, and I tried to model them. So if that means in my class the "student discourse" wasn't frontloaded, it worked for me, regardless, and allowed me to find my voice.

The penultimate week of classes

As we approach the end of this spring semester I realize how much I'm looking forward to reading within the spheres of rhet-comp that I find most compelling. I'm envious of Ben and Tim's future in the fall and am stoked to hear from them what the experience is like. In the meantime, I think this forum will be a really cool space to test out ideas and see what seems to take hold and what doesn't. As an extension of the discussions that Ben and I have in person, I'm just stoked to have a place to bring and unravel these thoughts and notions. I think it's likely that we'll all be bringing our own diverse backgrounds and out approaches will be idiosyncratic and unique, and were that not the case I think we'd learn less. Allright - enough bluster from me. Here's Shor in 1997 interview with Graff in JAC. So I have to be honest and say that I'm more unsure than comfortable with some critical pedagogy, only in the sense that I don't know if it work for me. What Shor posits here though I find really strong:

"Here's what I have in mind: instead of this vast, subordinated enterprise called "freshman comp," we would recover writing as a rhetorical and social act of making meaning, constructing the self in society, producing culture. Concretely, when students come to campus, their writing requirement is to affiliate with a project."