Robert's Post

[Robert Greco]

#729

At several points Gendlin’s work spoke to questions that I have about my teaching, especially this semester, where I’m struggling with a curriculum that feels difficult for me to grasp. I’m currently teaching a Writing across the Curriculum course that poses as it’s basic principle the teaching of rhetoric as a tool to explore disciplinary writing. Throughout his piece Gendlin makes points about collaboration, creativity and voice that make me long for the free wielding days of the course I taught last semester, a more free wielding course on iniquity. A few of my favorite Gendlin nuggets:

“Because we are inherently interactional creatures, our implicit intricacy opens more deeply when we are speaking to another person who actually wants to hear us.”

“Whereas everywhere else in the University only what was clear counted at all, here we cared only about what was as yet unclear. If it was clear I said ‘We don’t need you for this; we have it in the library already.’ ”

“The situations in which we find ourselves, the body, and the language form a single system together.”

“At that point collaborative interaction can create a new social product right here in the room”

I’m heartened to think of the ways that TAE and BFS can help me to frame new possibilities about creativity, collaboration and exploration in the classroom. However, it’s Gendlin’s discussion of “pre-existing public discourse” that pushes me to the most to think in new ways:

“People, especially intellectuals, believe that they cannot think! They are trained to say what fits into a pre-existing public discourse. They remain numb about what could arise from themselves in response to the literature and the world. People live through a great deal which cannot be said. They are forced to remain inarticulate about it because it cannot be said in the common phrases. People are silenced! TAE can empower them to speak from what they are living through.”

As taken as I am with these ideas, I can’t help but wonder–as Nolan did in his post–about how the constraints of, say, disciplinary writing, as a form, can be productive. Academic forms encourage orthodoxy, typically mediating what can be said and on what basis it should be said. Nevertheless, they also offer nodes for understanding a question or a prompt, and the exploration of multiple discourses, even formal ones, can create bridges that demonstrate the power of language and form to restrict expression, but by illustrating the many faces of restriction, these bridges attack monolithic assumptions about language. An alternate mode of expression implies another and opens the possibilities of unique expressions. If possible, I want to capture this energy in my course, find a way to show my students not only that the genres of academic discourse exist but also that their existence validates the possibility of new forms, forms that my students can both use and create.

[Sondra Perl]

#736

Several responses:
1. A course on ‘iniquity’?
2. Nolan’s critique: ditto what I wrote to him.
3. Great quotes from Gene. It ‘heartens’ me(note my response to Hilarie) that you have located 5-6 points from Gene that seem to resonate with you. I’m not sure you could have done so a few weeks ago. Or at least it seems to me that you have grown in your appreciation of Gene’s work.
4. You write: “by illustrating the many faces of restriction, these bridges attack monolithic assumptions about language. An alternate mode of expression implies another and opens the possibilities of unique expressions. If possible, I want to capture this energy in my course, find a way to show my students not only that the genres of academic discourse exist but also that their existence validates the possibility of new forms, forms that my students can both use and create.” I’m not sure I follow — but this could be where you are sensing something new and need to think at the edge of these ideas. What do you want the work ‘bridges’ or the word ‘form’ to mean?

[Author]

Posts