Hello My Fellow Classmates and Scholarly Friends!
For this weeks readings, the focus was centered upon the ideologies of two enormously influential, much debated literary theorists, known mutually for their significant contributions to Postcolonialism. Although difficult to define, as most eclectic analytical practices are, Postcolonialism, outlined in the text A Companion to Postcolonial Studies by Henry Schwarz, involves, “a studied engagement with the experience of colonialism and its past and present effects, both at the level of ex-colonial societies, as well as at the level of more general global developments thought to be the after-effects of empire”(93). Though I like the “minimalism” of this definition, a more thorough description is provided by Homi Bhabha:
Postcolonial criticism bears witness to the unequal and uneven forces of cultural representation involved in the contest for political and social authority within the modern new world order. Postcolonial perspectives emerge from the colonial testimony of Third World Countries and discourses of ‘minorities’ between the geo-political divisions of the east and west, north and south. They intervene in those ideological discourses of modernity that attempt to give a hegemonic “normality” to the uneven development and the differential, often disadvantaged, histories of nations, races, communities, peoples. They formulate their critical revisions around issues of cultural difference, social authority, and political discrimination in order to reveal the antagonistic and ambivalent moments within the “rationalizations” of modernity . . . The postcolonial project, at its most general theoretical level, seeks to explore those social pathologies – ’loss of meaning, conditions of anomie’ – that no longer simply cluster around class antagonism, but break up into widely scattered historical contingencies”(Bhabha, 1992).
A long definition I am aware, but necessary in developing an “understanding” of this complex critical practice, with the goal of combating the lingering effects of colonialism on culture. It is through this postcolonial lens that I have just clarified, that Edward Said and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak filter their work.
Now possessing a postcolonial background, we will move on to the discussion questions. By now, we all know the drill: You do not have to answer all of the questions but spend enough time to generate a thoughtful online discussion. If you have any questions regarding these questions, feel free to ask me to explain my thoughts. Good Luck!
Rhetoric and Cultural Explanation: A Discussion with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
1) Since the age of Aristotle, scholars in the humanities and other fields have maintained the notion that knowledge derivative of theory is superior to knowledge as a result of praxis. Why? Because one is able to take a broad view with theory and thus it is more universal. However, more recently, aware of the dangers of overgeneralization, scholars argue that theory can not account for local problems and various cultures, highlighting the importance of practice. As a result, the debate whether to privilege theory or practice remains strong and examined in the discussion with Spivak. However, rather than balancing the tensions between theory and practice, Spivak explains “I would be troubled by the balancing because balancing is, in fact, too elegant a solution”, and, “I think that tension is productive, whereas balance is suspect”. What are the benefits of not relieving the tensions created by the debate between theory and practice? How is this tension productive?
2) Spivak discusses the way in which she is “reshap[ing] what is being taught”. She is not “against the teaching of traditional great texts, but . . . cannot see how this continued emphasis on single author courses has anything to do with the memory of the tradition. That is the tradition usurping the present”. Does tradition usurp the present when one is taught the same “old” texts without reference to contemporary texts? What is the importance of teaching “with reference to the big picture”? Furthermore, what does Spivak mean when she says, “Teaching becomes intervention”? Should more contemporary texts be incorporated into classroom pedagogy?
3) When asked the question, “Do you think students should be taught to write for general audiences or should they be taught to address audiences familiar with specialized jargon, grammars, and methodologies”, Spivak responds, “I guess I’m a little old-fashioned about this”, suggesting that writing is a skill that can be taught: “I think there have to be places where you do nothing but the skill, and then the application of the skill develops”. In this framework, writing is a procedure that can be internalized. Once this skill is learned, we can utilize it in different contexts. Do you agree with Spivak? Is writing a system that we can internalize or rather a two-way activity involving interpretation and an audience? Do teachers of writing teach a skill or do they facilitate student responses to an audience?
4) In some of her responses to the questions, Spivak is quick to clarify her inexperience in some disciplines and inability to provide sufficient answers. For example, in response to the question: “How do you conceptualize rhetoric”, Spivak states, “ I can’t really comment on what goes on in the discipline of rhetoric”. How does this effect your reading of her? Do you appreciate the honesty or does she seem to be “playing it safe”? Furthermore, Spivak at times seems inconsistent stating, “So, in fact, having said ‘no’, I am now perhaps saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’-as usual”. Does this highlight her inconsistency or rather point to the notion that knowledge/identity is a malleable thing?
Orientalism Reconsidered
5) Edward Said is one of the founding figures of postcolonial theory. In his article Orientalism Reconsidered, Said responds to the “general issues addressed in Orientalism“. In Orientalism, Said established the meaning of Orientalism as “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between the ’the Orient’ and ’the Occident”(2). It is “a Western style for dominating, reconstructing, and having authority over the Orient” by manipulating knowledge of the Orient (3). As a result of heavy criticism of Orientalism, Said wrote Orientalism Reconsidered. After reading the article, do you feel that Said wrote the text as a personal response to his critics, specifically Lewis and Pipes, or as a way of “continuing to look at the problems that first interested [Said] in [Orientalism] but which are still far from resolved (89)? Furthermore, Said writes, “I have been helped to achieve this broader understanding by nearly everyone who wrote about my book”. What is the positive aspect of examining the critique of your own work?
6) Said explains that it is extremely difficult to understand the Arab-Islamic world “whose principle features seem to be, first, that it is in perpetual flux, and second, that no one trying to grasp it can by an act of pure will or of sovereign understanding stand at some Archimedean point outside of the flux”(92). Is it impossible for a critical conscious to occupy a disconnected vantage point from which to understand a culture? If those occupying a space within a culture are unable to disengage from the fluctuating culture, can a stable definition of a certain culture ever be developed?
7) Nearing the conclusion of his article, Said lists various scholars who have “posits nothing less than new objects of knowledge, new praxis of humanist (in the broad sense of the word) activity, new theoretical models that upset or at the very least radically alter the prevailing paradigmatic norms”(104). These works intend the “end of dominating, coercive systems of knowledge”(106). Do you feel that these works will succeed or merely be reclaimed by the established practice of Western humanism? What is the importance of critically thinking “against the grain”?
Spivak #2
Tradition can usurp contemporary texts, when these texts are not given enough attention; however, courses teaching “single authors” are not required to include discussion about contemporary texts if the context of the traditional texts has little to do with modern works. Considering the previous statement, I do believe that contemporary texts should be included in traditional courses as a way to compare and contrast our perceptions with those of the past. Moreover, theoretical approaches should absolutely be taught in conjunction with traditional texts. For example, Joseph Conrad’s “The Heart of Darkness” should not be taught without reference to post colonialism as this is highly relevant to modern readers. So, the issue essentially boils down to how modern readers/audiences view these traditional texts and how instructors should include these perceptions in their teaching; hence, theory provides a way to fulfill this need. Of course, readers need to examine how texts imply theory rather than pasting a theory over the text. Also, readers must be aware that theory can generalize when context and other elements are absent from their interpretations. From Spivak’s comment, I gather that “the big picture” is a hermeneutical approach to teaching where one studies and applies other relevant material to the subject at hand, Spivak says, “If I’m giving a lecture on Derrida and Foucault, I check it out with the work of Mahasweta Devi, who is almost exactly Foucault’s age. She relates rather differently to the question of theory because she is basically an activist who has been an academic and is also a creative writer;” thus, Spivak uses various opinions and approaches for teaching the same material.
Said #6
Again, this harks back to Burke’s terministic screens and Lu’s piece on Orientalism. Unfortunately, I don’t believe an objective “vantage point” exists; instead, one can only learn about a culture through one’s lens. What’s more complex is that these screens occur with in various members of a culture. Perhaps, the platonic scheme (in Berlin’s essay) captures the reality of understanding Orientalism. He says that “Truth can be learned but not taught”. Furthermore, the material world is in constant flux making knowledge unreliable. Truth in the platonic view is discovered through a “private vision of a world that transcends the physical”. On the other hand, we should not seek understanding only through this method. We must take a hermeneutical approach by having considerable knowledge about other cultures, other languages, and our own language and culture. In other words, translation can only be accomplished when we consider other factors beside the language. To tackle Orientalism, we should minimize (because elimination is impossible) the stereotypes and ethnocentric views we’ve accumulated while listening to the views and knowledge of scholars (even including the common man) of different cultures.
My response to the Spivak Interview, Question 2:
The issue of what texts should be included in the so-called canon is a hotly contested one, and I am essentially in agreement with Spivak’s solution for including marginalized voices alongside studies of major authors. She mentions her practice of teaching French Feminism by bringing in Algerian feminists to broaden the conversation with the French feminist writers. It is hard to disagree with such an approach, and mostly I do not. What I do take exception with is her seeming readiness to eliminate authors from the canon that she deems unworthy, and her comments that condemn what she terms “single author courses.”
Regarding the former, Spivak appears to counter the interviewer’s assertion that the canon in not a zero sum game in which any addition of a new author must prompt the erasure of an old one, saying that “there is a lot of room to eliminate things.” I have difficulty taking side with this because, on the one hand, I do not think the canon is a zero sum game, but a flexible collection of respected authors and works that of necessity must evolve and grow. On the other hand, from a practical perspective, only so many works can be included in a textbook or taught in a finite curriculum. Perhaps decisions do have to be made about dropping certain authors so more relevant ones can be brought on board. The problem with that process is deciding who makes the decisions—and what their agenda is.
In my experience with textbooks pruned of old masters for the sake of the formerly excluded, the results are sometimes uneven. The best example I can think of is not from the literary canon but from the study of art history. My undergraduate class in art history relied upon a five-pound, glossy-paged textbook meant to cover the topic from a world-spanning perspective. Its editors thought it profitable to allot an entire page of the book to a single colored-pencil drawing made by a young Native American while he was being taught to read and write in a reservation classroom in 1875. The spread includes the drawing in full color and an extensive explanation of the circumstances of its creation. At the same time, these editors who decided to make space for Howling Wolf’s classroom drawing found no place to include such an important figure as Hieronymus Bosch, who receives nary a reference in the entire volume. Perhaps similar replacements may be taking place in the survey textbooks that we study in the English department. I am not claiming that these formerly unrecognized pieces are not deserving of attention, but I ask: What is lost by the spirit of such an elimination as I describe?
As for Spivak’s objections to “single author courses,” I’d offer Said’s comments about the study of Shakespeare: “Each age . . reinterprets Shakespeare, not because Shakespeare changes, but because despite the existence of numerous and reliable editions of Shakespeare, there is no such fixed object as Shakespeare independent of his editors . . [and] the hundreds of millions of readers who have read him . . .since the late sixteenth century.” Said goes on to say that what seems to be an inert relic of the past “gain[s] some of its identity from its historical moment interacting with the attentions, judgment, scholarship and performances of its readers” (92). When we study the great works of the past—the ones that have stood the test of time, the ones valued by our culture for their excellence and their ability to make the past speak to us—we also study ourselves in their long reflections. Of course, studying marginalized works offers this reflective view as well, and from a different angle, too. But the great works of the traditional canon are the foundations of our cultural heritage, not the edges. All have importance, but how can one understand the opposition of the margins until one understands the strength of the center? Spivak says as much when she comments that “it is only with reference to certain kinds of memories that one constructs alternative memories.” Yet, she still decries “the usurping of the ‘current’” by what she terms a “sort of orthodoxy” in which “tradition usurps the present.”
I say to that, what happens when we unmoor ourselves from our own roots to grasp after what is current? One possibility is that we lose our grounding. One work becomes as good as any other in an egalitarian homogeneity of all things being equal. We forget the lessons of history that are found in the great works of the past, and we lose a sense of connection to anything beyond what is “current.” I say that continuing to study the traditional great works of the English canon is not a case of the past usurping the present, but that the past becomes the present when we delve into these works. As a student of English literature, I delight to experience these ‘old’ texts. Time is short and there is so much to read. I want to spend the bulk of my time reading texts that have been remembered as great for perhaps hundreds of years, rather than on works that will likely be forgotten in a few decades in the overwhelming rush of literary production we now live with. I know that many see the canon as nearly as much a political construction as a literary one. But either way, the works in it survive because they have something irreplaceable to offer, something the current must age a little bit before it can challenge on level ground.
Kyle,
Excellent questions! Unfortunately the Said article doesn’t open so I can only address the Spivak ones.
I will address #4 first. Spivak’s blatant honesty is commendable in my opinion. Many times when reading an author’s works, it can become overwhelming to think about how such-and-such a person is so well versed in so many fields. By Spivak coming forward to say what her expertise and knowledge is in, I feel like I can read her work as the work of a human. I may not fully understand what she is trying to convey but I know that she is aware that we all are not experts in every field and therefore is likely to take that into consideration in her own writing. I feel that her “wishy-washy” inconsistencies make her arguments all that much stronger because there is no set-in-stone right and wrong. The answers can change just like our opinions on the results can change as time passes and experience is given to us. Our identities are constantly changing so why shouldn’t our opinions on academic affairs, such as composition and rhetoric, change as well?
As for your question #3, the teaching of writing can become a very hairy mess sometimes. I do agree with Spivak that writing can be internalized. No matter if a person is writing for a grant proposal, a chemistry report, or an English paper, there are rules and conventions that are followed in each. Those genre specific rules and conventions are not what I feel Spivak is referring to when she discusses the teaching of writing. Rather, I feel that Spivak is referring, as she does in several questions, to the “bigger picture.” This bigger picture isn’t always the specifics of a genre but the conveyance of ideas. The ability to convey a specific idea/thought/argument clearly and concisely is a skill that must be developed in a writing class. Many times, writing classes become swept away with the technicalities of an English paper that we have all grown to know and love. 12 point font, 1″ margins, headers and page numbers, etc. When these issues are de-emphasized and the audience, message, and presentations of ideas is emphasized, the writing system becomes something that can be internalized in any person and transferred to any field. But perhaps I am just a little “old school” like Spivak.
Question 2-3
“I think there have to be places where you do nothing but the skill, and then the application of the skill develops”.
It’s interesting how Spivak relates writing to a skill. In this context it appears writing can be acquired through practice just like an individual can learn to play basketball by playing daily. I agree with Spivak in that learning to write takes practice, but must that practicing be in a controlled setting where writing is occurring for the sake of learning writing? Isn’t writing across disciplines practicing writing? Isn’t writing an email practicing writing? Spivak states, “First of all, in any kind of a course, since writing is a tool that goes across the board, I should care if it’s done competently”. In this case I interpret her argument as follows: writing an email or writing in a science class may not follow the mechanics of academic writing, so therefore it is not adequate practice of writing? This is where Spivak’s argument becomes confusing to me. Are we teaching students to write or are we facilitating their responses? I feel teaching writing is a two-way activity involving interpretation and an audience. I enjoy reading a student’s writing and helping them shape their arguments in an effective manner, but helping them not lose the sense of self that is captured in their writing. I encourage students to write outside of an academic setting, to write journal entries without the constant worry of adhering to grammatical mechanics, and to write with the freedom of “just writing”. I understand that we must teach students to adhere to academic writing, but I don’t feel it is the only “competent” way to write. I may be distorting Spivak’s argument entirely, but my intention is to argue against the “old-fashioned point of view”.
Question 2 goes against the “old-fashioned point of view” toward the question, “Should more contemporary texts be incorporated into classroom pedagogy? Spivak argues against the single author composition course stating “In other words, the student who comes to my class to do Foucault and Derrida is obliged also to consider the texts of Mahasweta or Ife Amadiume”. In this context, learning about the old must intertwine with conventions of the new. Anne goes against this stating, “I say to that, what happens when we unmoor ourselves from our own roots to grasp after what is current? One possibility is that we lose our grounding. One work becomes as good as any other in an egalitarian homogeneity of all things being equal. We forget the lessons of history that are found in the great works of the past, and we lose a sense of connection to anything beyond what is “current.” I agree with Anne, reading about the past without the presence of the future preserves what the author at that time was trying to convey. It is difficult to relate Shakespeare’s time period with ours without distorting what he was really trying to convey about his time period; if we throw in Capitalism and Technology and try to relate it to Shakespeare’s time, there is no real comparison, in my opinion. I am not however disregarding using modern texts to teach old texts. I just feel we need to be conscious about what we are trying to convey by comparing modern and old texts.
I really like your questions Kyle, and thanks for the Postcolonialism definition; it definitely helps in making sense of the text.
Spivak
2. I don’t think that tradition usurps the present when teachers only use the same “old” texts without referring to contemporary ones. I think it’s almost impossible to look at traditional texts without considering the present. The way that students view traditional texts is based on their contemporary ideas, not the traditional ones. So I think that the present is always a part of the classroom when traditional texts are used. I think that the incorporation of modern texts is helpful to students; it allows them to understand the traditional texts better and they may have an increased interest when the traditional is paired with the new.
In teaching “with reference to the big picture” instructors are able to introduce students to new ideas and scholars in similar subjects; they’re able to look beyond the traditional text in front of them and into other texts. I think doing this encourages students to be aware of what exists beyond the traditional texts; it teaches them to step outside the box. Students learn more when their introduced to fresh texts. When Spivak writes “Teaching becomes intervention” I think she’s referring to the role of the instructor as a person to step in and divert students from the traditional texts, to students to view traditional and contemporary texts as partners in crime rather than enemies.
I think that more contemporary texts should be incorporated into the classroom. For me, when contemporary texts are paired with traditional ones, I find myself having an easier time making sense of the traditional. There are times when traditional texts have language that is confusing or considerably different from the contemporary, and using modern texts can aid in decoding the traditional language. I also think that contemporary texts have the potential to make classes more interesting.
4. I found Spivak’s brief answers to be a turn-off. I realize she was being honest, but at the same time, I felt like I deserved more explanation as a reader. When she answered one question with “A domestication, a circumscription,” I felt like she was shorting the interviewer and her audience. She wasn’t providing a substantial answer; she wasn’t giving me enough to really understand what it was she was saying, and maybe that was her intention. I thought that maybe she was “playing it safe” and that irritated me. Why would she need to do that? For me, her answer of “yes and no” suggested that she couldn’t make up her mind, that she was divided on the issue but didn’t want to come right out and say that. It made her seem insecure and unconfident. For someone who is obviously very intelligent, she sold herself short in those answers.
I like how you ask if her answers point out that knowledge/identity is flexible; I hadn’t thought of it that way. When I was reading the interview, I didn’t think that; I just thought she was inconsistent, but maybe that is what she was trying to achieve in her response. I guess I’m still not entirely convinced though.
Said
5. As I started to read Said’s work, a part of me thought Here we go again. It’s like Ramus all over, but as I kept reading I changed my tune, thinking that Said was actually going to reconsider Orientalism as his title suggests. Unfortunately for Said, his ending left a bad taste in my mouth, and I put him right back in the same category as Ramus. When he gets into the “one critic” who openly attacked his book, I became annoyed. If the guy wanted to vent, why did he waste my time doing it? Why didn’t he pay a psychologist to listen to him go on about how he felt? Throwing in phrases like “a comic effort” and “a particularly weak book” as well as, “intellectually scandalous generalizing” made me glad that I didn’t have to pay for his book and instead could just read it online. This glimpse made me not want to read it. Needless to say, I think he wrote it as a personal response to his critics. If that wasn’t his intention, he shouldn’t have consumed so many of the pages with his reactions.
I think examining a critique of your own work can help a person to improve in their future writing; it can reveal ideas to the author that may have never been recognized. What’s important is that the critique be constructively used. It makes me think of what my art teachers always told me, “When you make a mistake, make something out of it.” It’s important to turn the critiques into something positive, to use the negative feedback as a way to turn around the next piece of writing, as a tool to prove the critics wrong. I don’t think that’s what Said did here. Instead, I think he retaliated, gave the critics a reaction, which is maybe what they were looking for like an older brother taunting his sister hoping that she’ll snap. Said definitely snapped. Instead of using the criticism as a tool, he used it as a weapon and did to his critics what they did to him. In a way, he stooped to their level.
Not upsetting the Prevailing Paradigmatic Norms
Response to Question #7
Both of the readings of this week are thought-provoking and interesting. Referring the last question of Kyle that nearing the conclusion of his article, Said lists various scholars who have “posits nothing less than new objects of knowledge, new praxis of humanist (in the broad sense of the word) activity, new theoretical models that upset or at the very least radically alter the prevailing paradigmatic norms” (104). These works intend the “end of dominating, coercive systems of knowledge”(106). I do not agree that these works intend to end any kind of dominance of the Western opinion or try to alter the prevailing paradigmatic norms. These works intend to in the words of Said to “investigative open models of analysis” (106). I think these works will provide the contrastive view point to the already existing work, and this contrastive analysis will pave a way for the better understanding of the Orientals. I do not know how much success will these works make in the western scholars understanding of the Orientals, or will get any voice in the Western scholarship. But I agree with Said that there is a greater need for “crossing of boundaries, for greater interventionism in cross-disciplinary activity, a concentrated awareness of the situation – political, methodological, social, historical – in which intellectual and cultural work is carried out.”(107) I think such works are not the product of thinking “against the grain”, rather they must be taken as an effort to “sharpened the sense of the intellectual’s role both in the defining of a context and in changing it.”(Said: 107)
We should accept one reality that we are living in a new world, and many of us are the inheritors of colonial world. In the words of Homi Bhabha “the postcolonial project, at its most general theoretical level, seeks to explore those social pathologies – ’loss of meaning, conditions of anomie’ – that no longer simply cluster around class antagonism, but break up into widely scattered historical contingencies”. It is really essential to understand the representation of other cultures, societies, histories; the relationship between power and knowledge; the role of the intellectual; the methodological questions that have to do with the relationships between different kinds of texts, between text and context, between text and history.
Response to Question#2
Spivak discusses the way in which she is “reshap[ing] what is being taught”. She is not “against the teaching of traditional great texts, but . . . cannot see how this continued emphasis on single author courses has anything to do with the memory of the tradition. That is the tradition usurping the present”. I do not agree that the tradition usurp the present if we study the classicist. First as a student of literature I feel it is impossible to interpret any text without applying it on our own life and era. The universality of literary text lies in the fact that it must have some aspect that has the ability to affect the lives of people of all ages and regions. So it is not usurping of the present by the tradition. I agree with Ann where she quotes Said about the study of Shakespeare: “Each age . . reinterprets Shakespeare, not because Shakespeare changes, but because despite the existence of numerous and reliable editions of Shakespeare, there is no such fixed object as Shakespeare independent of his editors . . [and] the hundreds of millions of readers who have read him . . .since the late sixteenth century.” Said goes on to say that what seems to be an inert relic of the past “gain[s] some of its identity from its historical moment interacting with the attentions, judgment, scholarship and performances of its readers” (92). The function of reader response theory is also the same to give importance to the voice of the reader. It is reader who interprets texts. Without the incorporation of the contemporary text the teaching cannot accomplish its effects. I have personally studied American, Pakistani and Indian literature besides British literature, and it opens new channels of thinking for me. I agree with Spivak approach of teaching French Feminism by bringing in Algerian feminists to broaden the conversation with the French feminist writers.
My Response to “Orientalism Reconsidered,” Question 6:
In part, the prompt asks “can a stable definition of a certain culture ever be developed?”. I ask, why would we ever want to develop a stable definition? I realize that putting things in categories and labeling them so as to convince ourselves that we have understood them is a fundamental human activity, however, culture is endlessly dynamic and therefore a stable definition is neither possible not desirable. As soon as you think you have one, it will be inadequate. Those who attempt to define a culture from the inside can offer intimate knowledge of its subtle motivations, but they are often blinded from fuller self-knowledge by its ideologies. Outsiders may bring to bear a contrastive and dispassionate perspective, but they generally lack true intimacy with a culture’s contextual assumptions and their descriptions can never escape the ideological entanglements of their own culture.
If, as Said says, there is no Archimedean point outside these two barriers of understanding, must we not finally abandon the attempt to create stable or complete definitions of other cultures and admit that partial understanding and passing definition is the best we can hope for? That may offend our desire for positivistic answers, but it is at least honest. I would compare the attempt to know another culture to knowing another person. Most of us spend our lives trying to find others who truly know and understand us. That intimacy of understanding between two people is one of life’s great pleasures. At the same time, who would want to think that we could be finally or completely defined by that other person’s knowledge of us? Although our selves may have continuing features and a history that shaped us, we are growing and developing, possibly even experiencing radical changes in viewpoint or behavior, as long as we are alive. To be finally defined is to be dead. And even that is no guarantee, as we can see from the way historians continue to revise their understanding of past events and persons.
Regarding Said’s explanations about the difficulty of understanding the ever-in-flux Arab-Islamic world, cannot the same be said for that culture’s attempt to understand our dynamic culture? In my observations of recent and not-so-recent historical events between these cultures, one factor stands out to me as responsible for much misunderstanding: the loud voices of extremist minorities who claim to be (or are taken as) spokespersons for the larger heterogeneous culture. Fundamentalists of various stripes on both sides make provocative statements. Fearful watchers from the other side assume that these strident voices represent consensus. Of course, more moderate factions protest that they do not endorse extremism, but their moderation is easily drowned by threats, violence, and fear.
I believe that most people in most cultures want to understand and accept people and cultures who are different from themselves. Difference is beautiful to experience, interesting to explore, and challenging to complacency. Others, however, seem to want everyone to be the same, even if it means violent imposition of cultural standards. Because we have to deal with the world as it is and accept the limitations of our abilities to understand or define others completely, I see efforts to illuminate the ways that intercultural understanding can go wrong, such as Said’s Orientalism, as very important. If other scholars argue with it, so much the better, since the issues are being discussed instead of ignored. Dominating cultures must recognize how their mechanisms of power and knowledge creation shape their own actions and reactions, often to the disadvantage of the colonized, and sometimes to the colonizer’s own detriment. Know thyself is one of our culture’s oldest proverbs. And as the saying goes, knowledge is power. But knowledge that empowers is what will make the world a better place.
These were great questions, Kyle…I couldn’t open the Said link, so I’ll respond to a couple of the Spivak questions.
1) “What are the benefits of not relieving the tensions created by the debate between theory and practice? How is this tension productive?”
When I think of the benefits of not relieving tensions between theory and practice, it kind of reminds me of political debates. There is the long-standing tension between Republicans and Democrats, and there is no clear winner or answer. I think the real beauty of the system is the fact that there isn’t a winner—it forces both sides to think about the other sides’ values and ideals. Similarly, with the debate between theory and practice, it forces both those that favor theory and those that favor practice to think of the benefits of both sides. I think that, like Spivak says, to find a “solution” would only take away from a constant strain of productive back-and-forth debates, debates which point out both the strengths and flaws in both methods.
2) “Does tradition usurp the present when one is taught the same “old” texts without reference to contemporary texts? What is the importance of teaching “with reference to the big picture”? Furthermore, what does Spivak mean when she says, “Teaching becomes intervention”? Should more contemporary texts be incorporated into classroom pedagogy?”
In my opinion, tradition does to an extent usurp the present when ancient texts are taught without reference to the contemporary ones. Suddenly all the importance is placed on the past with no relevance to the present. New texts are more relevant to the students, so they should be taught alongside the past ones. Texts tend to repeat the same themes throughout history, so if anything, only further knowledge can be gained from including more contemporary works. When Spivak said “teaching becomes intervention,” I think she means that teaching is about taking a topic and looking at it from all possible angles, about giving students as much to interpret as possible. Topics need to examined with different cultures and time periods in mind, a mesh of the past and present. To give students all of these possibilities is to give them the best possible shot at understanding, since even if they might not understand Aristotle, most can understand a multicultural view or a view that is more contemporary.