Teaching Literature of Resistance, Part III

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Parce que le crayon sera toujours au dessus de la barbarie...

The reality of the American academy is that the public institution creates so many meetings to justify itself, its bloated administrative bureaucracy, as well as meeting demands of the state's own bureaucracy that the central mission of learning-through-teaching is obscured. One can rationalize the necessity of learning objectives and accreditation, especially within the language of competition, standards, and other jargon, but ultimately the arguements end up in a cul-de-sac of ad absurdum when the collaborative relationship between/with students and professors is erased. That's pretty much how my last week went.

Part I and Part II of this mini-series.

The Study of Literature as a Critical Thinking Dialog

Irvin Peckham quotes Freire:
“Finally, true dialogue cannot exist unless the dialoguers engage in critical thinking-thinking which discerns an indivisible solidarity between the world and the people and admits of no dichotomy between them-thinking which perceives reality as process, as transformation, rather than as a static entity -- thinking which does not separate itself from action, but constantly immerses itself in temporality without fear of the risks involved. Critical thinking contrasts with naive thinking, which sees "historical time as a weight, a stratification of the acquisitions and experiences of the past, "from which the present should emerge normalized and "well behaved." For the naive thinker, the important thing is accommodation to this normalized "today." For the critic, the important thing is the continuing transformation of reality, in behalf of the continuing humanization of [people]." 
As the semester finally begins again, I've reflected and revised each of my syllabi to emphasize a dialog of critical thinking within and beyond the classroom, from the first moment of the FYW course to the "Literature of Resistance" course I'll initiate. To be clear, however, I purposefully have not completed the syllabus for that course, as I want the students to revise it with me on the first day, so that the course will launch as a liberatory exercise in critically examining institutions, especially what I feel is a safe institution of my our classroom through language and writing. 

I've designed the Resistance course through selection of European, Anglo-American, African-American, Native American, Latin@, and even South African texts of resistance. We'll take a neo-Marxist approach to examine production, circulation/distribution, and consumption of the texts and evaluate those processes vis-a-vis our own writing and other contemporary texts.

Minor writing will include responses to the texts and their validity to the student's personal values of resistance' "resistance posters" that emphasize multi-modality writing as well as explore how the texts might have been produced, circulated, and consumed differently if generated in the early 21st century within our technological environment; and video critical essays. The end of course project will be chosen by the students, but will likely emphasize primary and secondary research to understand unwritten lore of resistance of the Houston area in some form, from the personal family lore of resistance, to projects as widely known -- but still sadly undocumented -- as the SEIU strikes to the La Huelga schools of the 1970s.

Through these projects, of course framed within a dialogic/multilogic classroom discussion, I hope that our study of these literary texts will support our personal exploration of personal freedom, social injustice, contemporary controversies, and ultimately to critically examine our own calls to action for personal and institutional change.


  1. Examining personal freedom: starting with Locke and proceeding through OWS and across the continents, these texts force us to examine the relationship between personal freedom and social consensus and responsibility. Though we look at the canon of Enlightenment democratic texts, I want us to bring Jefferson, Wollstonecraft, Locke, and others to the very local to examine how these ideals are and are not practiced, and if they indeed can be practiced fully. Ultimately, this is a question of what makes community, and how rhetoric confirms and disconfirms the idea of community in the 21st century
  2. Examining social justice: we know that democracy is unfinished; perhaps it is even less powerful now than in decades past. We know that rights are routinely violated by institutions. Recent events in the US have brought the question of social justice to the foreground again, but we must become aware of the local violations of justice, too, even though these violations don't make headlines and students rarely are aware that their rights are being violated. Proceeding from the Enlightenment into the 19th and 20th centuries, our texts will ask us to examine what justice means and we'll bring those questions back to the students' local experiences.
  3. Examining controversial topics. Ug. After this week in Paris, the murders at Charlie Hebdo, the question of freedom in the face of intolerance must be examined. It should be the topic in every classroom in every college in ... everywhere ... this week. What Ahmed Merabet died protecting needs to be questioned and requestioned. I realize that the relationship the French have with religion, with Algerians, is not quite the same as my American [sic] students have with religion and colonialism, but that's the point. That's why they're in college -- to learn beyond themselves. The "controversy" of Charlie should be beyond controversy, yet I feel similar strains of intolerance against freedom of ideas, speech, writing here at my own institution, in a state that claims that individualism is godliness. 
  4. Examining the call to action: Save for several memorials, moments of silence, and protests, most of my students have never experienced real call to action. Houston is a very passive environment. We don't "resist" here in Houston, in Texas. Austin has protests, but Houston -- because of history, economics, and especially geography -- doesn't know what a real protest looks like. The Moody Park riots are forgotten. The "Si Se Puede" walkouts are a memory. The SEIU strikes were barely covered by the press. My students probably don't know where Yates High School and Austin High School are, much less know their place in history. One question we'll examine is why students are expected to remain quiet, why their institutions refuse to communicate ideas to them, and how these literary texts confront these silences.
Going to be a fun semester.

Be strong, and courageous.
Dixi et salvavi animam meam
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