Returning to the focus of my posting, Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Love the Author, is the topic of this week's Critical Encounters' reading: the reader response movement.
In my previous posting, I argued, through the invocation of Roland Barthes, that the text has no meaning to the reader until he or she gives it meaning. Deborah Appleman notes that while the reader response movement began as "a friendly antidote to the tyranny of the text" (2009, 49), where the readers (i.e., the students) were the meaning-makers of the text, the movement has since become "not just a way, but the way, of reading texts..." (2009, 49). Hence, if poorly utilized, it merely replaces one form of authoritarian meaning with another.
The most problematic issue in the abuse of the reader response movement, as brought up in class, is the centralization of all meaning within the reader. This is much different than my Barthian argument that a reader creates meaning. On the one hand, the reader creates his or own meaning upon reading the text (possibly through the influence of another's opinion, while remaining open to other perspectives after the fact). On the other hand, the reader formulates his or her own absolute meaning (rejecting other perspectives).
This sort of reader response abuse is antithetical to the learning I would hope to foster in the future English classroom I hope to teach. It is vitally important to allow students to create their own opinions. But there must be checks and balances. The student who harbours his or her's ideas as being the only ones that matter is an introvert. Without a recognition of diverging ideas, the student would certainly fail to grow... and if they will not grow, can they really learn (especially in the English course setting)?
I beleive as English teachers we are going to have to get away from giving our opinions as the ones that are correct. While it does provide a guideline on what the student should be thinking about it takes away from the students experience as a reader as they don't interact with the books as well and create their own opinions if they know that the teacher is just going to tell them what the book is about. I believe we should be getting students to read to the books and get them to tell us what they have taken from it. Then later you can discuss what you as the teacher took away after they have had a chance to share their perspectives. Hopefully this will always help the students realize that although their ideas are important there are many other important perspectives as well.
ReplyDeleteCheyne Dallyn