Week 1 Reading Responses

Bruce Robbins. Epilogue: The Scholar in Society.

Summary:

This article is an exploration of the, “crisis of the humanities.” Basically, as literary scholars, we find ourselves in a precarious situation between trying to change the world and trying to interpret it- all while the majority are trying to keep our steadily decreasingly available adjunct jobs. To make things more complicated, this decision has to be made while constantly having to legitimatize the field from society’s perspective. Robbins asserts that this “state of crisis” that we are in is less a momentary crisis than a persistent structural weakness. From this weakness stems the experience of uncertainty about how committed our society is to the continuing existence of any jobs in departments of Literature. It is this uncertainty, even in a time of relative calm, which leaves literary scholars with the seemingly inherent urge to constantly justify our existence and push research in order to stay on the proverbial cutting edge of culture.

Robbins goes on to talk about our obligations to students of humanities. Part of this battle we share with many other disciplines: we all exist in this unstable relation to the shared object of knowledge which can never truly be possessed anyway and which can only be maintained by continually shattering what we once defined it to be. However, what sets students in the humanities apart from those in other disciplines is their desire for inspiration. As a result, our challenge not only becomes getting them to work, but getting them to believe that what they are studying is significant beyond the classroom. Oftentimes, this challenge is what spurs literary scholars into political action. Robbins goes on to discuss whether politics, in this sense, serves as an appropriate measure for all work in cultural studies.

Robbins continues to look at society and politics, and the way that they impact the lives and classrooms of literary critics, through the lenses of Theodor Adorno, Ian Hunter and Bill Readings. They address the issue of globalization. Readings suggests that culture once defined the work and scope of the humanities but now, in this era of globalization, society ceases to exist as we once knew it. As a result, according to Readings, the university (as an institution) can no longer be based on or responsible to this society that now ceases to exist. In lieu of this society, Readings prefers ‘the community of dissensus,’ which basically fosters diversity while maintaining individuality. The article closes with Robbins’ discussion of constructionism where he makes and defends the suggestion that we should mix relishing in our distinctness from other disciplines with an equally proper and necessary consciousness of the grounds for legitimization that we share with them as scholars. It is essentially this skill that will enable us to reach this continually redefined ‘society’ by perpetually having to reinvent our discipline.


Response:
I thought that it would be interesting to consider the Robbins text using Aristotle’s topoi, The Advantageous/The Disadvantageous. I am confused, however, on the perspective I should be writing from. Am I supposed to categorize what Robbins is saying as advantageous/disadvantageous to society or am I supposed to make a claim about whether or not I think what Robbins is saying is advantageous/disadvantageous to society…so I guess I will touch on all of the above.
It is clear that Robbins is declaring that teachers in the humanities (particularly those in Literature) and the humanities as an entity of its own, are advantageous for society to maintain. In fact, he even states that, “Literature must be valued, saved, and taught (and must not be displaced from the secondary school curriculum, as has been proposed, in favor of reading and writing skills) because, the argument goes, it makes the experience of others available- in short, because it does the work of representation.” The fact that I am in this program is testimony that I agree with this statement. With every ounce of my being I uphold that it is advantageous for our society to maintain literature as part of English canon because, for many students, it is experience. Many students, especially those where I work in San Bernardino, have a very limited range of experiences available to them. Oftentimes, the only experiences that these students are able to have other than those that they are relegated to at school and at home, are those made available to them through literature- which I would say is actually available in the home (as opposed to school) less than 10% of the time.

Another element that I would like to touch on from the Robbins article is the debate between allegiance to politics (changing the world) and teaching (interpreting the world). It does not appear that Robbins chooses a side or declares that one is advantageous while the other is not. I could be completely wrong, but I think that he advocates the middle ground between taking a political stance and teaching subject matter. Robbins states that teachers who are truly successful are those who communicate feelings of urgency, necessity, and relevance relative to subject-matter so that their students can internalize the ‘why’ the subject is important and pertains to them. He says that we need to stop trying to convince our peers that what we are saying is important and start convincing our students. I would imagine that as a professional it gets hard to focus on impacting the lives of your students, especially when you believe that your research can push the field or change the world. This is the grey-area that Robbins is talking about. It is quite a conundrum- use your own research to elicit change and legitimize your job/field, or prepare the minds of the future to recognize and act upon their own realizations of what the next need for change might be. Is there a more noble battle?


UNDER CONSTRUCTION: Feminist Methodology ‘Dilemmas for Graduate Researchers”

Summary
In this article, Shirley Rose and Janice Laur outline some of the typical problems and situations encountered by composition researchers that are committed to a feminist methodology. Some of these problems include defining a research question, choosing a research site, designing a study, negotiating a relationship with participants in the study, and making public the results or outcomes of their research. The very first thing that these women do is situate themselves in relation to their inquiry in order to address the “politics of location.” This keeps them in line with their argument for a feminist methodology that is self-conscious about the researcher’s own motives beliefs, and experiences. By identifying the positions from which they write, they participate in an endless cycle of recreating their positions and commitments. Taking these things into account is particularly important because Rose is the Director of Undergraduate Composition and Laur is the director of the graduate program at Purdue University.

They speak a great deal of their experiences and obligations as key contributors to the lives of their students. Each of their jobs entails complex systems of interconnectivity and obligations to different members of the university faculty, students, alumni, and their greater academic community. They must maintain a delicate balance between pushing an agenda and preparing their students to conduct classroom-based research with their own students. Finally, Rose and Laur outline some key characterizations of feminist methodologies. They describe feminism as more than a way of interpreting the world, but as a way of being in the world. Feminism is unique in this case because the goal is ‘unalienated knowing’ which is prompted by the desire to change the status quo. It is interesting to note that the fact that these things do not solely belong to the feminist perspective is testimony that the feminist agenda has resisted social and cultural oppression by changing institutional practice. The purpose of this article is to examine and expose some of the dilemmas faced by feminist researchers, and as a result, broaden understanding of these challenges and remove some of the obstacles that challenge feminist methodologists in order to promote research that is consistent with their theoretical commitments.

RESPONSE

For this response, I have chosen to compare the Rose Laur text with the Robbins Epilogue. They are very similar in theory, but the Rose and Laur essay takes Robbins' argument a step further by narrowing the scope to feminism. The Robbins text is focused somewhat generally on the need for professionals in the humanities (particularly Literature) to continually re-invent and legitimatize themselves because of the non-tangible desirable outcome of knowledge. Similar to Rose and Laur, he begins with a discussion of the vast obligations of the literary professional and acknowledges the unique nature of the students marching to join the ever-limited ranks. While everything that Robbins asserts in his article can be applied to feminist methodology, Rose and Laur contend that it is a beast all its own. The relative youth of feminist method, and the fact that it has its roots in the desire to change the status quo, make research from this perspective an extremely delicate process.

It is interesting to parallel these articles because while they have many similarities, they have one inherent difference. Robbins questions the relationship between education and the responsibility that educators have to ‘society,’ and maintains that the definition of society is in constant flux or may no longer be extant. Rose and Laur, on the other hand, don’t address this particular obligation even in their lengthy lists of obligations! This is noteworthy because the feminist methodology that they are advocating was birthed by a desire to change the status quo, which in effect, is established and maintained by society. Perhaps this was too much depth for them to go into since they were performing a ‘service’ as opposed to scholarly research, but it was an interesting omission nonetheless. So while both articles touch on the need for literary scholars to continually re-invent reality and challenge norms, the Rose and Laur text neglects to address society as the same villain even though it overtly impacts feminist research.