The infamous Ryan Gosling "Hey girl" meme, Foucault style.Credit to the "Sex Radical Ryan Gosling" tumblr.
Foucault makes me cringe, mostly because I have a hard time conceptualizing how his theories can apply to a composition classroom. This response attempts to focus on the concept of power as authority.
I believe the concept of power in the composition classroom is tied more to the authority of the teacher than the authority of the institution. Each instructor values and expects different criteria from the students, and therefore each section of composition holds a different weight. Although the English department specifies what criteria should be present, ultimately each instructor holds the power to teach and grade (judge? interpret? rule?) as they choose. The fact that Dr. Bad and Dr. Evenworse have different expectations means they also have different authority over the students. The simple point is that the teacher—no matter the expectations—will always be the teacher and will therefore always have power over the students. In fact, as long as a grade is given, there is always some sort of authoritative control.
Nicholas Thomas has a nice little quote that ties in pedagogy and Herzberg (from our other reading) that summarizes my main concern: “Spellmeyer used Foucault’s work to debunk the capacity of a teacher to teach writing because subjectivity would only ever allow teaching to be didactic. Spellmeyer then came to the same conclusion Herzberg had, that the impossibility of escaping power means that the best we can do for our students is make power transparent” (155).
The idea of “transparent power” can never be possible in the classroom because students will always receive a grade. (Obviously, you say. OH!, I exclaim, except for that one class that…Elbow?...taught where they had to make special notes on transcripts explaining why the student received a pass/fail...but even then passing requires an authoritative voice to make that judgment.)
Instead of focusing on the final product, which must receive some sort of evaluation, I wanted to consider different practices or assignments that could work toward Thomas’ suggestion to “disrupt your powers of surveillance” (173). First I thought of Elbow’s contract grading, because I always think of Elbow (see above.)
If you don’t know what contract grading is, check out this blog article in The Chronicle. Then look at the comments. You’ll be able to get a decent grasp on the opposing side of the argument. And like Hara admits, Elbow and Danielewicz explain it much more thoroughly. I see contract grading as a removal of power but only if the contracts are negotiated, just as Chronicle reader russhunt mentions in his comment. In this way, a student has some control even if a higher power decides what constitutes enough work to receive a particular grade.
That slight bit of control is still rather weak, so I continued to think of ways instructors can relinquish authority. This led me to Shipka’s article from last week, “A Multimodal Task-Based Framework for Composing.” Although she does not reveal the exact assignment she discusses, Shipka claims the freedom of the assignment allows the students to take control and “…the opportunity to begin structuring the occasions for, as well as the reception and delivery of, the work they produce” (279). Thomas would be pleased if this assignment did, in fact, make students uncomfortable (173).
So is assigning multimodal compositions the best practice for surrendering our authority as instructors and increasing students’ agency? (Yes, Foucault, I just used war terminology.) What other ways can instructors make power transparent? Perhaps before answering how, give your opinion on why they should or shouldn’t.
Can you define Foucault’s definition of power as if he was referring specifically to a composition classroom?
How and where does “truth” exist in a composition classroom?
Works Cited
Hara, Billie. “Using Grading Contracts.” Profhacker. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2 Oct. 2010.
Web. 8 Apr. 2012.
Shipka, Jody. “A Multimodal Task-Based Framework for Composing.” College Composition and
Communication 57.2 (2005) : 277-306. Print.
Thomas, Nicholas. “Pedagogy and the Work of Michel Foucault.” Jac 28.1-2 (2008) : 151-180. Print.
Thanks for this introduction, Ashley. I like the Gosling meme and these questions that you're asking us toward the end. I'm attracted to the idea of "stupidity" and "stupid questions" as a means to disrupt and force out explanations of unspoken assumptions. I find it interesting that you see power as issuing from the individual instructor. I can remember being very surprised when I first began teaching that no one was "checking" on me. I would often find myself expecting to see someone peek in to the classroom from the hallway. Surely someone would notice whether I taught or failed to do so...whether I suffered from performance anxiety or made students laugh... So I like your argument. But it also makes me think about the quote in the meme. Gosling's appropriation of Foucault tell us that "institutions such as schools rely on internalized self-control" as a means to regulate power. So here's a "stupid" question. How much of our authority and power as teachers is merely self-regulation according to internalized power structures and appropriated discourse? How much of what we do in the classroom comes from who we are and how much comes from our performance of the identities we borrow from culture (big and small narratives)and institutions (the schools we attend, the schools we teach in, rhet/comp as disciplinary institution)?
ReplyDeleteWow. I am nervous about answering the question on "truth," so I'll focus on how/why instructors should surrender authority sometimes. I think that sometimes it's good for instructors to surrender authority so that students can see that we are, in fact, human. Plus, it's another tool for my soapbox strategy of remaining relevant to students. For example, allowing them to bring in their own music videos/ads to analyze based on visual rhetoric gives them power to choose how class discussion will be shaped. Maybe another method would be to have pairs of students prepare class discussion based on ABGW or AR for their assigned days.
ReplyDeleteI'm particularly interested in how Thomas argues that power in a Foucault-informed praxis need not be totalizing. “We, the subjects, may not be able to get outside power, but the incompleteness of power’s domination often gives us ways of involving ourselves in powerful transformations” (154-55). I don't understand, to be honest, how "powerful transformations" could come from within "power's domination," even if it's incomplete. I find myself returning to Audre Lorde's "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House" and wondering if we aren't engaging here in some wishful thinking about universities, institutions in general, personal agency, and power. We may be working hard to resist power's totalizing potential, but it seems to me that our students are--for the most part--not only embracing it, but here specifically to be given "the Master's Tools." I wasn't able to get beyond this from the week's reading, but I'm probably (and hoping that I am) missing something?
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