Genres: Existential and Sublime?

 

Hey everybody, I know I’m a little late to the discussion on last week’s readings, but I didn’t want to write unless I had something to say.  (The meaning of this text rests with you anyway, right poststructuralists?) Anyway, I'm no composition specialist, so thank you for reading despite my limitations.

Every time we discussed the best ways to communicate genre related knowledge in our classrooms, I kept thinking of myself as an undergrad.  I was an unfocused student, and genuinely had no desire to “connect” with my teachers in any way.  I would get to class at the last second and think, “The moment the bell rings to go; I’m out”.  If my instructors did do something differently in the class that I knew would demand relational commitment, I always thought, “I’m out”.  In fact, I was looking for excuses to disconnect. Thus, when we discussed creative ideas to grant new ways of thinking about genre, I asked myself “What do we do with those students who come with an a priori conception of class, and an uncooperative attitude”?  Can teachers just create interest?

When I read about the generative nature of genres, I thought, “Is that objectively so”? When students have a comfortable approach to writing, and we aim to undo it, we will as Kill has suggested, “face resistance” (216).  This resistance can be both good and bad. Kill quotes Lu who suggests a “productive resistance” that arises from sensing the ability to have voice (216).  However, voice is only appealing to those who are committed enough to speak it.  When I thought of myself as an undergrad, it bothered me that all our wonderful creative lesson plans would probably not have worked on me.  Interestingly, Heilker’s Genre as a Way of Being, the article that did not seem to enthrall anyone else, addressed my concerns pretty squarely.

What worked for me as an undergrad?  When I really got into a class, it was usually because we left the classroom environment and used our knowledge in the public. Because of that I felt torn at how much I liked Heilker’s article. I really respect what Bawarshi said about genre, but it was different than Heilker. In fact, I noticed two distinct, yet related differences between Bawarshi’s and Heilkers articles.  One difference was ontological and the other had to do with invention.  The ontological focus was brought up by Heilker (20).  I would add that his perspective of genre is positively existential. Heilker privileges the sense of becoming that arises out of experiencing the creation and completion of an assignment.  In other words, Heilker wants his students to perform genre related learning outside the cloistered classroom in order to experience a more real knowledge (whatever real knowledge might be).  Bawarshi dismisses Heilker’s claim that “Writing teachers need to relocate the where of composition instruction outside the academic classroom” and into “real rhetorical situations” by stating bluntly that the classroom is a “real rhetorical situation” (131-132). 

Another difference concerned invention.  Rhetorically, Bawarshi addresses invention as “the world the speaker lives in” as “…not so much an act of turning inward as it was an act of locating oneself socially, a way of participating in shared desires, values, and meanings already existing in the world” (104).  When Heilker addresses the way of being associated with genre, he states, “…in writing an essay, our acts of discovery are inward journeys as much as they are outward expeditions” (26). 

So the differences were in the questions of where and how.  That is pretty significant.  I have to side a bit with Heilker though.  We just have too much in common. I as well am an amateur in a room full of experts, or at least people who are far more proficient than I am.  I also am unafraid of being wrong or embarrassing myself.  Without getting too biographical, I felt with Heilker”s perspectives allowed me to “experience” the article in a profound and real way.  That experience is at the heart of the difference between Heilker’s and Bawarshi’s conceptions of genre as applied pedagogy.  It also gets at what was troubling me.  I think rhetorical creation in environments other than the classroom are not as exclusive as Heilker let’s on, but are still more important than Bawarshi lets on.  More importantly, I also think that we as teachers need to be ready for change, but students just have to be ready as well.  For instance, Heilker describes his own experience

 “I had to be sick and tired of being sick and tired, completely beaten down, utterly defeated, hopeless, powerless, and coming up pretty damn quick on death’s doorstep before I was willing to read and write and dwell in these discourses” (23). 

Heilker goes on to describe experiencing a new way of being.  He is committed to the new genres and the sublime and important sense of change that comes with a new way of being.  He wants to see this in his pedagogy.  Bawarshi sees becoming rhetorically agile the goal of the assignment in class.  Know how to approach a genre creatively in a few rhetorical situations, and you learn to adjust to rhetorical situations.  However, Heilker sees something intrinsically valuable in the personal reactive experience of the moment in situ—physically.  Whatever that experience is, is valuable to learning for Heilker. Bawarshi’s perspective is that of the teacher trying to come along a student to help them become a better, person/citizen/thinker.  Heilker focuses on “ideologies, values, ideas about what we should believe, what we should want, and how we should be” (Heilker. P. 24).  So both approaches to genre are value laden, but one puts onus on the teacher, and the other sees value in existential experience of genres both from student and teacher.

Sometimes, rhetoric in social criticism can be pessimistic because of its understanding of power, subjectivity, and sophistry.  When all our desires to influence become suspect, driven by capital, or driven by oppression, the “rhetorical situation” can feel like another expression of opportunism, and we have difficulty orienting ourselves in the classroom.  I wonder if all along, what we were looking for was some hopeful invitation to experience the good stuff that comes with new situations.  I think I was looking for an answer to how we motivate the disinterested (e.g. undergraduate me). Maybe the students need what I needed—the possibility of experiencing the existentially sublime while learning. Though I’m not convinced yet, if new genres are capable of existential, sublime change…I’m in. 

Works Cited

Bawarshi, Anis. Genre and the Invention of the Writer. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 2003. Print.

Heilker, Paul. “On Genres as Ways of Being.” Writing on the Edge 21.2 (2011):  19-31. Print.

Kill, Melanie. “Acknowledging the Rough Edges of Resistance: Negotiation of Identities for First-Year Composition.” College Composition and Communication 58.2 (2006): 213-235. Print.