Nolan's Response to TAE

[Anonymous]

#725

In David Lodge’s 1984 “academic romance novel” Small World, we watch, with great pleasure, Professor Rodney Wainwright struggle to compose a paper for a conference on the Future of Criticism. He is hopelessly ensnared in a rhetorical structure all-too familiar to academic writers: “The question is, therefore, how can literary criticism…” In the end, this is as far as Rodney’s thoughts will travel. Gendlin might say that Rodney, along with the rest of us, are “trained to say what fits into a pre-existing public discourse.” However, when this pre-existing discourse fails us (as it often does), we get stuck, we panic. Gendlin writes: [We] remain numb about what could arise from [ourselves] in response to the literature and the world.”

I acknowledge this critique (this word of caution) from Gendlin. I too (though I know better) often find myself paralyzed by narrowly conceived discourse expectations surrounding academic writing. And yet, I worry that Gendlin hasn’t acknowledged the sometimes generative function of such pre-existing structures. I’m thinking now of Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein’s handbook They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. These “moves” were gathered and outlined for students in order to help them express complex ideas that, without the necessary structures, they felt unable to express. For Graff and Birkenstein, these pre-existing structures function as silence-breakers, not silencers.

[Sondra Perl]

#734

In my humble opinion, I think Gene would say, “Of course,” as he does when he nods to the advances in science that help pilots fly planes or doctors make diagnoses. He tends not to disparage what helps as much as attempt to offer something that can get lost or remain out of sight when we only use what’s already known. Does this make sense to you?

[Author]

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