Politically engaged lit. class
Regarding the politics of our course: I don't take sides, in a partisan sense, where class is concerned. Do I have my own opinions? Sure. But I studiously avoid partisan politics in the classroom, and I would never dream of telling a student to support one party or another, one candidate or another. On the other hand, I certainly have my own ideas about what is right and wrong in our society and in the world, and how literature helps us to understand and rethink our most pressing political and ethical dilemmas. If I didn't have such ideas, I doubt you would want me as your world literature professor. You are always free, of course, to disagree with me. In fact, I very much enjoy political and ethical dialogue and debate, as long as we respect each other's different viewpoints and remain civil with one another.
posted by Lincoln Z. Shlensky at 11:53 PM
1 Comments:
Scott, I appreciate your comments, your perspective, and your personal experiences. As to whether a change of administrations in Washington would ultimately produce an alteration of policies or outcomes for the better, I cannot say. When Patrick voiced his opinion about that the other day, I wanted to make a space for him to share his personal experiences and his truth. I would think that we are all aware that this was only his perspective, and most of the rest of us know very little about his reality.
Nor can we easily put ourselves into his situation, which sounds very difficult at the moment -- I'm fairly certain that the rest of us have houses that are still standing after the storm. We're not struggling in the same way with the aftermath of a disaster that has left all of our relatives without houses, as he says of his own family.
What Patrick had to say about his situation seemed to me also to expose some of the intersecting difficulties he is facing: it wasn't just the storm, but also how the local authorities dealt with his neighborhood. Patrick indicated that this was likely a class issue, and perhaps a racial issue as well. I felt that it was important to listen carefully to what he was saying because the most troubling issues of class and race are so often rendered invisible in public discourse.
And this is relevant to our course materials, as well as to our daily lives. For example, Gulliver mentions that the Houyhnhnms marry with attention to retaining the purity of their breeds (or "race"), and that the only question they ever hotly debate is whether to exterminate the Yahoos. Gulliver is oblivious to the troubling racial implications of these ideas, but Swift is not: his satire seems designed explicitly to raise such issues for his readers.
Of course, there are many ways that one might interpret the kinds of experiences that Patrick was describing, just as there are many ways of reading and understanding Swift's satire. As I say, I wanted to clear a space for Patrick to voice his ideas about what was happening to him and to offer his interpretations from up close. I would also want to give others the chance to voice their ideas and to present their realities -- yours, to be sure, is just as valid as anyone else's. I'm glad you are willing to express your perspectives -- that can only help all of us in the class to understand that truth is rarely, if ever, reducible to a single idea.
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