I too am sometimes disenchanted with academia because the required writing style and research methods can be so rigid and don’t often allow much for voice, regardless of what some research and scholars want us to believe. Pryer attempts to argue that this is due to the binary logic in Western thought, and the fact that academia is located in the realm of logic. It is always either/or black/white. Rarely, does academia operate in the gray, in the subjective. This is why for myself and Pryer academic writing can be so disempowering; it can “totally erase the body, the emotional”(1).
Scholars including bell hooks, Helen Fox, Rebecca Powell, along with countless other critical pedagogy activists argue that students’ discourse should be valued and included in academic writing, as a response to this disempowerment, and in this class we read Sunstein and Brenda Jo Brueggeman who argued that the researchers position should be placed into the writing as a way to call attention to the subjective. But, I would argue that many of these CP scholars (perhaps not hooks) still adhere to the binary divisions of Western thought by promoting academic English as a skill that should be learned. They are just trying to find a middle ground to learn it in. Sunstein and Brueggeman don’t argue that research should be wholly subjective. They make their argument, not to say that research/ethnography should live in the middle ground, but that it should be a science – black and white – that the biases and subjectivities should be mentioned in order to validate the work as scientific.
Pryer uses Eisner to make a different argument, however. Eisner writes, “I do not define research as a species of science. I define science as a species of research. And there are many ways to do research, of which science is one” (5). This way of thinking opens the doors for subjectivity in research. It opens the doors for Pryer’s argument that research should allow for fiction and autobiography in its writing. Pryer argues that doing this would change academia, and turn it away from a binary thinking toward a more postmodern philosophy. She wants to create a space for the subjective, so that academia and academic writing can be empowering. Using Griffin, she writes;
In western traditions, this binary splitting simultaneously objectifies, classifies and orders all existence, with one part of existence being exalted and privileged over the other. So thoroughly ingrained is this manner of thinking that in western culture “the idea of logic, reason, even the capacity for insight, thought or clear-mindedness have been situated so firmly in the duality between intellect and emotion, mind and body, spirit and matter that to challenge this duality must seem like a threat to consciousness itself (Griffin, 1995, p. 40). (2)
Her answer to this argument is if academia is going to be changed it is going to be changed by using language, and that “if we can acknowledge the disorderly, ambiguous nature of pedagogy, and let ourselves be drawn outward into the pedagogical world with a heightened sense of unknowing, we begin to nurture the qualities of astonishment and wonder in our living practice” (14). I am not sure I understand this completely, but what I think she is saying is that academia, research, and composition need to allow for more postmodern philosophies. They need to allow for feelings, emotions and the subjective. But in order for this to happen Western thought needs to make a move away from these binary traditions, and this is where I think her argument fails because I’m not sure that it is academia, which changes a society’s thinking patterns. This is a much larger question. What changes first society or academia? Who changes either? Is it government? Policy? The economic structure? Entertainment? I think it is all of the above, but where it begins I’m not sure. Academics would argue in the institutions. Politicians may argue in the state house. Economists may argue through capitalism. I’m not sure there is an answer because as I write this I am aware that I too in this moment am thinking in binary. It’s a hard thing to undo. How do we begin?
We have to begin somewhere. There are also shades of evolution in what Pryer is saying. Science is not the only way to research. Ethnography is not the only way either. Joseph Harris, remember him? “Rewriting…” our text. In it Harris is makes a point in Chapter Four using the analogy of a cover band. Cover bands don’t “copy” the original band. Cover bands perform their version of the original artist’s music. This is what we need to do when we read and respond to text: we need to read and make the text our own by adding new ideas. I think this is the essence of what Pryer is saying.
How do we begin? What an interesting question and one I think that scholars like bell hooks have already given some thought. I remember hearing once that bell hooks eschewed the language of the academy because it was often not written with clarity in mind, not written to be understood. A quote attributed to her illustrates this point, “If I do not speak in a language that can be understood there is little chance for a dialogue” (http://womenshistory.about.com/library/qu/blquhook.htm). I would add that there is also slim chance for true learning. Another scholar, H. Samy Alim, suggests in the interest of a culturally relevant pedagogy, using language learned from students. I think, though, before we talk about transforming the language, we also have to remember audience. Written results from ethnographic research should be created with a goal toward clarity for the intended audience, not conformity to a flat language.