Describe how Foucault can help us engage with the issues that Ohmann and Selfe raise and/or describe how Foucault can help us with the issues we've discussed so far in 597. In sum, use Foucault as a lens and see where it gets you.
Many things came to mind this week, but Ann Petry’s novel, The Street, is what I thought about most while reading Tuesday’s articles. The protagonist, Lutie, laments throughout the novel “If only I could get a leg up.” It’s a naturalist novel, and I see it as one that has been and continues to be the story for so many people. This “leg up” that Lutie refers to is her inability to pull up her bootstraps, no matter how hard she tries. In a world with changing technologies, she had to resort to extreme measures for her family (which did not prove to be successful for her). I will not regale you with the intricacies of that novel, but my point is that access has always been an issue for those who are not afforded particular opportunities. Cynthia Selfe’s discussion of access to materials is quite lucid as she provides a thorough critique of what counts as literacy in society. She paraphrases Graff as saying “official literacies usually function in a conservative, and reproductive fashion --- in favor of dominant groups and in support of an existing class based system (103). Selfe goes on to say that “the national project to expand technological literacy has not served to reduce illiteracy … rather, it has simply changed the official criteria for both ‘literate’ and illiterate’ individuals, while retaining the basic ratio of both groups” (103). Ohmann concurs with Selfe as he talks about the history of the words literacy and illiteracy, noting that they had a “global and qualitative meaning ---well read and civilized, or the reverse --- rather than indicating a line that divided those who could read and write from those who could not” (20). Thus, history tells us that being well-read was the same a being civilized. So if someone simply read what was available to them, what did that make them? Although the definitions have changed (rather slightly), the fact is that this issue is one of binaries, literate or illiterate, which creates problems that have and will continue to hinder and perpetuate class systems, as was the case with Lutie.
So, there is a real divide that continues to grow with this notion of new literacy, technological literacy. The fact is that division, marginalization, hegemony, power, and social hierarchies have always been around. Foucault in "The Eye of Power" mentions that “power is quite different from and more complicated, dense and pervasive than a set of laws or a state apparatus. It’s impossible to get the development of productive forces characteristic of capitalism if you don’t at the same time have the apparatuses of power” (158). Here again, is this notion of access. So, like Foucault, Selfe and Banks, I see a real divide that did not just start with technology, but serves as the same mechanism that has worked to keep hegemony in place. What we have here is just a remodeled panopiticon used as a “privileged place for experiences on men, and for analyzing the complete certainty the transformations that may be attained from them” (Panopticism 204). This “gaze” is able to watch society and we, as scholars write about the truths that we see. After the damage is done, however, there is always hindsight that says, that was wrong. But, for example, the hundreds of men who were unknowingly injected with syphilis had already suffered and died. My point is that the damage is often realized when it is too late. Now that we have "discovered" that many students are being left behind, what can we do about the students that did not have access to information? In that same vein, what can we do about binaries as the definition of literacy changes as technology changes?
Foucault reinforces that there are problems all around us, not just in academia. However, reading him in conjunction with Selfe and Ohmann did provide a nice sounding board that reaffirms the need for larger view of the past as to understand how structures and teachings are re-inscribed in different ways. As I commented last week, I think that Selfe’s approach is one that is very radical, almost grassroots type of political action. As teachers, she calls on us to appreciate the many literacies that our students bring to the table. We must also be able to show them how to compose in different modalities to best convey their literacy (if that is what they choose) to be able to compete in an changing society. Reading Foucault, at the same time, with Selfe and Ohmann, raises many questions for me, too. How do we change perceptions of what constitutes literacy? How can we, as teachers, provide a space that does not reinforce hierarchies (especially if those hierarchies are the basis of our own profession)? How can teaching with technology work to reinforce Bentham’s panopticon? How do we counter this idea of surveillance, especially if we are involved in writing, recording, and publishing within and out of new media?
i know that i said i wouldn't default to responding to you, my friend, but i can't help it - you have a pretty powerful blog post AND I WANNA TALK ABOUT IT!
ReplyDeletei can't help but seem to have the phrase "left behind" echo in my head, but through the dreadful "no child left behind" that bush enacted when he was in office. so proud of that legislation, he said, and yet, it seems to me like it is exactly what foucault talks about with the panopticon. he writes that, "this enclosed, segmented space, observed at every point, in which the individuals are inserted in a fixed place, in which the slightest movements are supervised, in which all events are recorded, in which an uninterrupted work of writing links the centre and periphery, in which power is exercised without division, according to a continuous hierarchical figure, in which each individual is constantly located, examined and distributed among the living beings, the sick and the dead - all this constitutes a compact model of the disciplinary mechanism" (197). that description is numbing and terrifying, you know? and foucault seems to mean it to read that way. it continues on, clause after clause after clause, and i can't help but wonder if the "no child left behind act" reads that way as well. that's precisely what it was. discipline. as in, teach these materials. teach to these tests. read these books. write this way. and punish. as in, don't teach this way? don't teach to these tests? don't teach these materials, or write this way, or perform this way? WELL, ALL YOUR MONEY IS TAKEN AWAY. NOW SEE IF YOU CAN TEACH THOSE IDIOTS NOW, HUH?
okay, that might be harsh, but i really hated that stupid piece of legislation. new topic. that was really talking at you.
i really want us to get into a discussion in class about the ramifications of what selfe was talking about last week and this week. a few class members were definitely not on board with this whole aurality thing, or revamping or changing composition style on a grand scale, and i can certainly understand their (and hesse's) reservations. who's gonna pay for this? what does this mean for the man? for the intricacies of departments?
but i think the bigger concern ought to be, "who is left behind when we privilege a writing literacy above all others"? and we don't even privilege ALL writing literacy but just CERTAIN writing literacy - the literacy of college. what did one person refer to it as..."normal english?" now, you know what i'm referring to, and i think in a very general sense i might share this story with the class today. no names, no specifics, but i think that example brings us to the real problem. when we as instructors have that style of composition and literacy ingrained so in our heads and our pedagogy, we can't help but assume the role of punisher, of discipliner, and when our students don't precisely mimic back what we think literacy should be, we call them remedial. we call them "non-traditional" students - AND WE'RE GOING TO MAKE THEM TRADITIONAL, DAMMIT, IF IT'S THE LAST THING WE DO.
blah. thoughts?
I don't know if ya'll have heard Barbara Monroe go off about this point, but she's on it when she says "what happened to the critical eye we used to bring to technology?" It used to be the case, in the mid-late 1990s that all C&W scholarship was about how technologies empowered some, disempowered others, etc. (for eg, edited collections at the time on race, class, gender and technology) But, today so much of what we see the focus on are things like copyright, or Web 2.0, or social media, and what these things do or can do for us. There's not a lot, yet at least, on "who is left behind when we privilege a writing literacy above all others?"
ReplyDeleteI ask this not only about "the essay" but also about, say, social networking. I was going to work w/ some high school kids from my reservation when I go back in October and talk to them about how they use facebook. but guess what, THEY DON'T USE FACEBOOK. They don't have computers at home, they don't have fancy cellphones that they can do more than call & text on, and the school computers all have FB locked out. So, when we think about teaching w/ social media in our classes, who are we excluding?
So I agree with you, yes. I also think we need to think about who technology might isolate.
I look fwd to our discussion on Thursday, and I hope you 2 will bring a lot of these issues up.