Identity, Genre, and Paul Heilker

I was most interested, among this weeks’ collection of readings, in Paul Heilker’s “On Genres as Ways of Being,” both as an alternative to a typical journal article and for some of the connections we might make to continental philosophy.

I enjoyed reading the essay for a few reasons, not the least of which is that his piece potentially could give “noobie” teachers more confidence in their presence in the college classroom. That is, “being” a teacher as participating in and subscribing to a cohesive set of genre conventions seems terrifying and at the same time reassuring:

“Oh, no. I knew since the moment Christina McDonald graciously invited me to be a part of the Spilman program that writing and presenting my paper was going to call me up and out of my previous way of being in the world that I would need to be more than I was…” (Heilker 20; Heilker’s emphasis). 

Perhaps we could interpret Heilker’s entire essay as a negotiation or perhaps embracing of risk. That is, according to Heilker (or at least my reading of the essay) one seems to have to lose (or forget, suppress, etc.) in order to “be” something different in the world. For Heilker’s purposes, this loss seems to be beneficial (according to an academic’s viewpoint, that is). Inhabiting different genres allowed Heilker to advance through academia—and to, more audaciously, begin to combat alcoholism and drug abuse. The question for me becomes, then, if the world is simply a conglomeration of texts, of genres to be inhabited, do we ever, and if so when, do we encounter genres or texts or ways of being that are destructive. 

Is there such a thing as a destructive genre, text, way of being? 

Heilker might say maybe:

“What would it mean to truly discover something about yourself? And to then communicate that to an audience? What would it require of us? It would mean acknowledging that we don’t know ourselves, that there are parts of us that remain mysterious, outside our consciousness, outside our control. It would mean acknowledging that there are parts of us that may be buried—and if we acknowledge that anything is buried we face the possibility of hordes of things being buried” (26).

And thus, the real question that I think I’m attempting and apparently failing to articulate—does Heilker’s theory erase “agency” or “agent” or “free-will” or "identity" I would say that he obfuscates it: that is, only through inhabiting genre does one come to “know oneself.”

Despite this tension within the article (which some of you might be able to clear up) I enjoyed how the article more fully allows for the incorporation of the author in the finished product:

“We must be willing to make and record and share with an audience all of our ‘mistakes,’ all of our wrong turns, and dead ends and mis-steps. We must be willing to stand before an audience as deeply flawed, incomplete, untrustworthy narrators whose authority is always suspect…” (27).

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