JAC Volume 14 Issue 1

It would be a mistake to think Knoblauch and Brannon are wholly nominalists, since representations are not themselves agents within their scheme. Rather, representations are an effect of power relations: a hint of who is in the position to represent themselves and others. However, once established, representations often seem to take on a life of their own inasmuch as people can forget to ask who is behind them. In these terms, it is too simple to say that critical teaching provides students with the intellectual tools necessary to put some space between masters and the discourse of the master. Critical teaching and literacy must deal with prejudice as it represents itself--analytically and symbolically, at the level of "even the exception proves the rule." At this level, some critical teachers--often deconstructionists and/ or Marxists--have entered the discussion. But the result of such examinations rarely moves beyond a recognition that so-called "objects of reference" seem to function as such (that is, as objects) only within a particular symbolic circuit: "how do you know that 2 + 2 = 4? because there is an arithmetical rule X which says so. How do know you that there is an arithmetical rule X? because 2 + 2 = 4."

For this reason, Knoblauch and Brannon's task is a bit more difficult and potentially interesting than a good deal of work being touted as "liberatory pedagogy"; Knoblauch and Brannon recognize that there really is such a thing as a "BOSS." And the BOSS isn't simply an illusion or a paranoiac ground for further theorization. If representation is the sole province of the master, then there is at least some possibility that the "truth" of a particular discourse is not simply a linguistic convention. After all, masters may represent themselves as masters, albeit philanthropic ones; and "teacher talk" may not be as "uninspiring" as Ira Shor and others would like us to believe.

In this regard, Knoblauch and Brannon demonstrate the same recognition of the role of the symbolic order that is found in certain contemporary feminisms: "Yes, we realize that Madame Bovary isn't a 'real woman.' She's a literary character, a fiction, part of a story. However, 'real women' have been constructed as such; they are fictions, at least as fetishes. So, Madame Bovary is a real woman insofar as she is a construction, a representation, Yes?"

Indeed, I would say Knoblauch and Brannon find critical teaching right at the place where many postmodern thinkers have left it: where one has to admit that the shadows in Plato's famous allegory are really shadows. This is not to say that Knoblauch and Brannon are comfortable with this particular philosophical position--a position which they, after Teresa Ebert, term "ludic postmodernism": "A postmodern rendering posits 'woman' as merely 'a social construct that has no basis in nature,' which then renders 'the experience women have of themselves and the meaning of their social relations problematic, to say the least.' Yet to concede so much is to place at risk a political project that has depended on its authority to denote and then take action against the oppression of materially and historically specific women, often particular groups of women marked by class or color." The authors prefer a "resistance postmodernism" which takes "its lead not from Saussure and the giddy collapse of structuralism but rather from Bakhtin and Volosinov, who view the sign as 'an arena of the class struggle.'" The distinction between ludic and resistance postmodernisms is not itself of particular interest, here. However, a brief discussion of the two, in light of the work of particular theorists, will help us to understand not only Knoblauch and Brannon's attempts to contextualize their work but also their dissatisfaction with where their theorizations have left them.

Ludic Postmodernism. In the last chapter of her Speculum of the Other Woman, Luce Irigaray tells us that the prisoners in Plato's cave would be able to know something about themselves despite their imprisonment. Although they are chained down by their thighs and necks, Plato's prisoners would have their hands free, allowing the prisoners freedom to imagine a relation between themselves as hands and themselves as shadows. But such a discussion can be pushed a little further to shed light on what grounds this double metaphorization of the human subject. If the prisoners in Plato's cave are able to observe a relation between their hands and the shadows cast by their hands, they will be able to work backwards, as it were, from the shadows cast by the outside world (what Plato calls the agathon) to that which casts those shadows: as hand-shadow is to hand, so X-shadow is to X. In these terms, the so-called real world (the world of non-shadow) is structured in terms of language. First, the real world is metaphor; it has a place as a symbol, X, and its image, shadow-X. Second, the real world is metonymy; it itself has no place for a symbol; it is full, lacking nothing except a symbol, a metaphor, with which to represent itself.

Resistance Postmodernism. It is in regard to its metonymic aspect that Bakhtin addresses the "material world." Because the material world does not function within an exchange (even one of labor), it can only exist as images of a fragmentary body--a circuit of mouths, eyes, and naughty bits held together in the utterly symbolic nonsense which metonymy proposes. This "symbolic nonsense," in turn, serves as a goad to laughter which can cut into any discourse at any time. In this manner, Bakhtin introduces the idea of "the cut," albeit not a Freudian one, as a possible reference for language. "To what does language refer?" one might ask Bakhtin. His answer, if anyone had bothered to ask, "the cut, the ironic distance and perspective which the laughter of the Other materializes as a subject position." Within this scheme, the human subject remains, metonymically, something about which one might discourse; within Plato's allegory, Bakhtin allows us to admit that the shadows are real (metaphors), just not really real (always already metonymized).

Yet, even if one alters the above formulation to make individuals sound as if they (and not some Other) are in charge, what is the point? That "language refers to the ironic distance and perspective which the laughter of human subjects materializes as a subject position in their search/ construction of that ever-illusive Other"?

Unfortunately, Knoblauch and Brannon act as if there has been no answer to this question when one has been given many times: "The point of such a structural definition of 'people's revolution/ resistance' is that a people's revolution/ resistance is brought about by the foregrounding of particular signifiers--the projection of the metonymic (which functions in the position of the Other's desire) onto the metaphoric (which functions in the position of the subject's desire)" (for examples, see Gates' The Signifying Monkey). A revolution, then, seems to have a great deal to do with discourse, particularly its construction; revolution is a matter of moving from the desire of the collective and alienating Other to the separate truth of an individual agent (usually expressed in terms of the necessity, the possibility or the impossibility of some self-identification). Such is the groundwork for discussions of discourse and power: one's identity both as a name and agent is a matter of representation. Remember, this is not all that different from Knoblauch and Brannon's discussion of representation in their first chapter: "The issue is representation, the practices by which people name and rename the world, negotiate the substance of social reality, and contest prior namings in favor of new or different ones."

To their credit, the authors rightly express some uneasiness about the use of "representation" as an operative term in their discussion of critical teaching: "Awkward questions arise about the difference between representation and misrepresentation, and the relationship between representation and truthfulness or obfuscations." For example,

These worries, Knoblauch and Brannon tell us, may be a bit off the mark; "the issue of 'truthfulness' in representation may even be something of a red herring." Truth is not the concern; social impact is, "But we would nonetheless argue for, and act upon, the critical representation because there is more social harm available from action that assumes the other, popular position to be no less truthful."

Although this statement does not seem satisfactory to the authors either, they are willing to live with it, since the "alternative (which may only be conceivable rather than possible) is cultural stagnation." Surely, one can do better than that, just with the materials which Knoblauch and Brannon provide. When the stakes are high, it is not always good to take the money (or the high road) and run.

Let's begin where Knoblauch and Brannon leave off: assume that making truth-valued statements about representations is not itself a work of representation, though such an activity might be represented as such. Again, "the issue of 'truthfulness' in representation may be something of a red herring." This statement will not be surprising to those familiar with the work of Vladimir Nabokov. Reread his lectures on world literature, and you will find someone passionate in his attempt to find words, maps, and images (truths, at least truth-functional vehicles) for all the fictional things set before him.

What is more, the difficulty many philosophers of language have had in coming to terms with representations and fictions can be attributed to their conflation of "set" and "world," their confusion of names and things. How can one assign truth value to existence claims, these philosophers ask, if 1) what is true is true in all possible worlds and 2) there is an empty world (just as there is an empty set) in which nothing might be said to exist? But where is the empty world to be found? It depends on what one might think the world can be empty of. If one thinks of the world as being empty of words as words (opposed to words as things, here), then I would say that an empty world might be found in fiction even though fiction, like the world, itself is not empty. That is, an empty world is representable, and one might construct a world from such a representation.

Knoblauch and Brannon provide us with a hint at this way of distinguishing between world and set in a brief reference to Patrick Brantlinger's Crusoe's Footprints: "Bratlinger seeks a way out of the impasse, suggesting that ideology not be construed as 'a set of illustrations which the rulers of a society convince the ruled to believe,' but rather as 'the ensemble of discursive practices--that is, of representational practices--which both structure society and are structured by it.'" Although the authors pay no mind to it, notice that in the second half of the quotation Bratlinger speaks of an ensemble, not a set. The world may not be organized exclusively by names and existence claims--essential aspects of any set theory. The world may force us to make room for another principle of organization: STORY.

Again, the roots for such a discussion of story can be found in Knoblauch and Brannon--for example, in their persistent and often unstated reliance on Kant, particularly his fascination with the-thing-in-itself. If one cannot speak of the thing-in-itself as a concept (a one of many ones which are ONE), in what manner might it become available? As a categorical imperative in ethics, as a perpetual peace in politics, and as a story.

Granted, the introduction of story into the sequence above is not wholly Kantian, though it does reflect a popular use of Kant, principally in biblical hermeneutics. So one finds the authors make reference, if only by implication, to Clifford Geertz and his discussion of "thick description." And, for a brief moment, they even begin to talk about what a world might be: "The world is thick with signs and their variegated meanings; the world is a human production in continual change as signs are composed, fought over, insisted upon, marginalized, resisted, and altered." But distinctions between "naming" and "representing," which are constitutive of STORY, are never explicitly delineated.

For this reason, Knoblauch and Brannon cannot seem to address the issue of story directly. In their last chapter, they just give up trying to and introduce the subject of "questioning," particularly "teacher inquiries." This is not surprising. If one has difficulty speaking about truth and representation, then a discussion of "questions" would seem an interesting compromise. After all, what do questions represent? And what is a true versus a false question?

Yet, I can't imagine that this is where the authors would have liked to have ended up. This is not to say that speaking of questions as a form of knowledge is not interesting or important; indeed, questioning is one of the most popular ways people speak of things about which they would not like to presume knowledge. I say that I can't imagine "teacher inquiry" is really what the book is about because, at this point in the discussion, it is very difficult for me to distinguish Knoblauch and Brannon's "teacher inquiries" from Louise Wetherbee Phelps' use of "phronesis" in her College English article, "Practical Wisdom and The Knowledge in Composition." Of course, throughout the book, Knoblauch and Brannon seem to run away from the specter of classical rhetoric which they themselves conjured (they say villainized) a few years back. But there's more to this interest in questions than that--more than the irony afforded by the fact that the Other (even Aristotle) is an invention and not a symptom.

I would say Knoblauch and Brannon end with the question, not because they hope to stay always on the QUESTION. They hope to do away with the guilt (the question, "What do I want, really?") which drives much of their discussion in the book by holding fast to the IMPERATIVE of critical teaching. Their last chapter is most peremptory; it doesn't open up discussion, but closes it down with a prayer, which is a command to appreciate the QUESTION:

But to what oath has the critical teacher sworn? What actions and certainties lie at the heart of the imperative, "Make an Oath"? What (in)active duty and what (un)certain guilt? What's the story, here?