Reading Discussion
Encouraging you to conceive of different academic disciplines within English studies as discourse communities, I seek (as much as possible) to demystify research and writing within those communities. This approach replaces “This is the way it’s done because it’s the way it’s done” with “The conventions of research-based writing (and flexibilities within them) serve the values and needs of the community that uses these texts.” As graduate students seeking to participate in one or more disciplinary discourse communities, you can access and make sense of conventions and expectation by attending to and inhabiting the values of these communities.
An inherent feature of any community is that it has an inside (those who belong) and is defined in opposition to an outside (those who do not). At the same time that I encourage you to inhabit the values of an academic discourse community in order to belong (to research and write effectively), I recognize that communities within English studies often maintain implicit values that you or I do not want to inhabit. “English” has a long and persistent colonial/imperial history, not just within British societies, as Lyiscott demonstrates. English was and is used as a tool to valorize white cultures and societies and to demean societies and cultures including but not limited to those of Indigenous, Black, and Brown peoples. Even descriptivist approaches to English describe the language use of some and ignore that of others, maintaining a political or problematic limit to belonging.
In an initial post of 300+ words by Sept. 19, process what you learned from the Week 5 readings or what about them articulated what you already know, face, and experience along these lines. In the essay “How to Read Literature,” J. Hillis Miller writes,
It seems a feature of language possession that human beings should join together in ‘communities’ of people who see and judge things in similar ways, though no conceivable society is without its prejudices and injustices. That is one reason why democracy is always ‘to come.’ It is a far-off horizon of justice toward which all should work. (252)
In your initial post and in at least two responses discussing others’ posts and one response to discussion of your own post (due Sept. 26, at least 250 words total in these 3+ responses, with, for instance, 100 + 75 + 75 fulfilling this length requirement), consider how we might resist the values of discourse communities in English studies to better pursue this “far-off horizon.” Draw on the writing by Ngũgĩ, Young, Lyiscott, Anzaldúa, Barrett, and others made available to inform and support your thinking, which understandably may be provisional, uncertain, fraught. What might you change about past thinking or action within English studies contexts? Why? What challenges seem especially hard to face and why?
Keep in mind that opening up the “we” or inside does not seek to take power away from heterosexual Anglo-American/European white males who built the English disciplines (and in that term, I want to amplify the resonance of punishment, castigation, and control). Rather, to resist and reconceptualize academic communities increases our collective epistemology and knowledge.
In your discussion, mention all articles included.
Work Cited
Miller, J. Hillis, “How to Read Literature.” The J. Hillis Miller Reader, edited by Julian Wolfreys. Edinburgh University Press, 2005, pp. 252-258.
