I loved Brooke’s essay on underlife this week. Perhaps some of the things we discourage students from doing in the classroom are the very things that make them good writers. Having one’s own sense of identity and independent thought is a crucial aspect of becoming a competent writer. Once a student’s sense of identity is established through writing, teaching the mechanics of the language should not be as difficult.
Of course, students cannot just have one identity in all their work. They have to shape that identity to the writing’s audience. I’m sure underlife pops up in their writing, too. It did in mine. For my amusement, I liked to hide bizarre phrases or innuendoes in my work as an undergrad. It made me feel empowered, like I had won something. I wrote the paper, but I couldn’t be entirely controlled.
Even now, in meetings or “serious” professional situations, I find myself performing unexpected actions for the role I’m supposed to fill. But then I realize that ironically, other people are performing alternative actions too. The underlife becomes an expected phenomenon within a role someone performs.
I think this is distinctly an American/Western phenomenon. We need to perform roles, but we feel it necessary to perform them with our own sense of style. We want to stand out and be noticed above the others.
It’s really amazing how people behave when they know they’re being watched, and when they’re expected to fulfill a particular role. They both confirm to the role while rejecting the role. It’s a complicated communication process, much more complicated than writing a paper (at least a freshman-comp-level rhetorical analysis). It’s funny how students carefully construct their identity in the classroom but bomb the assignments.
The underlife idea is very intriguing as I too saw myself being described by some of the things Brooke described. While I did not hide innuendoes in my papers, I would find myself needing to stick a sentence of self-assertion into each conclusion paragraph in some form or fashion.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that people find the need to fit in while also showing how they are different from the rest - and not only in the classroom or when dealing with their voice in writing. I guess if we could find exercises/group work that allowed the alternate self to come out then we would really be doing ourself and our students a favor.