Constructive Reading, Accountability, and construction of the read
Charles Bazerman (bazerman who-is-at humanitas.ucsb.edu)
Sat, 16 Dec 1995 09:49:04 -0800 (PST)
I have some thoughts concerning the discussion about the dialectic
between our own reconstruction of meaning from reading and the struggles
we have to understand what others have written.
Usually this question is discussed as an issue of individual
psychology or morality or spirit--On the psychological side the view we
cannot help reconstruct meaning
idiiosyncratically from our own resources triggered by the text is set
aginst the view that language and our linguistic interpretive ability
provides an adequate bridge for intersubjectivity.
There are of course social-psychological middle grounds on this.
>From the moral/ developmental side, the iossue becomes the heuristic
value of creative reading to work through issues on our mind versus the
value of extending ourselves through reaching out towards the other.
There is much to say on all sides of these issues.
I think, however, it may be useful to go at this issue from a
different angle--from that of the social circumstances of our reading and the
social accountability we may have for our sense-making of what we have
read. Think of two extreme examples--
1) reading a novel on a long trip, with no
one to discuss it with. You can presumably make of it what you will,
accountable to noone for what sense or nonsense you make of it, what
amusement you derive from doing idiosyncratic things with the text.
2) reading an eye chart to your optometrist--you must immediately
provide an account of each letter you read, of the sense you make of the
chart, with specific
consequences both for the cooperative enterprise of diagnosis and the
kind of glasses you will wear.
Now think of all the middle examples--
--reading a student paper where you must be accountable for the
sense you make of the paper, not simply foor justifying the grade (that
is, if the student suspects from you comments that you have not read the
paper carefully or have read it with an idiosyncracy which cannot be
supported by a persuasive acoount, the student has a right to complain)
but much more seriously to be able to carry on an educational dialogue
with the student.
--reading theories and findings that you may discuss or rely on
in your own writing--so that you will be providing public accounts of
your construction of those texts. If those constructions of others texts
are highly idiosyncratic you can be held publically accountable for your
reading, although you may then be able to provide a plausible account of
your reading.
--reading case law as a lawyer in order to produce a persuasive
brief in court.
--reading an instruction manual which you will have to turn into an
account to guide your own actions, such that the operations of the
computer or VCR will hold you accountable.
--reading theories and facts of the environment or the stock
market or the p[olitical process to help guide your commitments and
needs into actions in those spheres, which will hold you accountable not
necessarily to provide a verbal account, but by challenging you to
perform in a way that will indeed fulfill your commitments and
interests.
--reading a spiritual book for personal development, whether to
be discussed among others where you will be providing accounts of your
views and readings (even though you may not be coerced into official or
more normative readings), or whether to guide your behavior which will be
witnessed by other members of your community, or whether to simply make
your own thoughts accountable to your own conscience or an internally
experienced sense of a higher being.
--reading poems in English classes and psychology textbooks in
psychology classes, philosophy boooks in philosophy classes.
--reading novels to be discussed among your friends or a reading club.
--reading to participate in a publically dispersed and
pervasively distributed set of fantasies and wish-fulfillments, developed
and rehearsed over many texts and supported by extensive economic and
organizational structures.
Reading, though it may touch us in the most private part of our
minds, where we are alone with our thoughts, is far from a private
matter.
Chuck Bazerman