Reading

Charles Bazerman (bazerman who-is-at humanitas.ucsb.edu)
Mon, 25 Dec 1995 10:22:14 -0800 (PST)

I have been mulling over the very rich strands on dissertations and
reading that took place while I was away from email for a few days. My
thoughts haven't really gelled, but I feel impelled to respond. The
various accounts of disserations I think attest to how much the differing
educational settings and perceptions of cooperative/contestatory/evaluative
enterprises influence the quality and value of the experience and the
nature of the text that arises. As Eugene points out dissertation
writing happens primarily within and for the committee (although reaching
backward and forward in various ways and out to various other discussions
mediated through the dissertation writer's discipline and interests and
the the disciplines, interests, perception of the dissertation writer's
project, and sense of professional gatekeeping of the committee members).
The dynamics within that small group (nested as it may be in larger or
other groups and institutions) frames the value and meaning of the
dissertation experience. It is also, insofar as the advisors either
impose or represent standards or models of what a professional ought to
know, ought to have read, and ought properly to procede in an
investigation, a key location of intensely felt pride and
shame/anger/resentment/imposition, as Jay points out about
reading/not-having-read guilt. Again this affects the stance or
suppressed stance of the writer and the consequent text toward the
endeavor, the disciplinary and other relevant literatures, and the
profession. The poignancy and pressures of the dissertation period
highlight some of the social interactions that pervade all literate acts.
A couple of other disjointed but I think somehow relevant
observations:
--Michael's comments about the cooperative endeavor that drives
most reading and writing, rather than a direct dialogic connection
between writer and reader, I think points to the importance of thinking
about our use of language in more externalized ways, as language being
out there in-between us and we use that in-betweenness as mediating. All
this is implied in the concept of language-as-a-tool, but perhaps we
might pursue the implications of that in an interpersonal as well as a
cognitive mode. Much of our talk about reading implies some kind of
internal reconstruction of meanings as the end point, whether that
meaning is of a deep dialogic connection or establishing a
chronologically organized set of procedures for filling out a tax form.
However, there certainly has been enough research on instructions for
us to perceive the procedural interaction of text, tax form, and pencil
work which requires only a limited mental reconstruction of meaning--much
smaller than the task accomplished externally.
Seeing how texts operate
between us may also help de-mystify those powerful moments when authors
seem to speak directly to our hearts. Skilled writers at times can be
quite aware of what they are tryiung to do to us as readers--or at least
what they are trying to do to the text, so as to affect us. I frequently
remember the opening scene of the movie Fitzcarraldo, when the obsessed
hero makes a long and dangerous journey down the Amazon to hear Caruso
sing at the new opera house at Manaus. After breakdowns, swampings, and
other travails he finally arrives in tatters at the closing moments of the
opera--having lost his ticket and not meeting the dress code. He forces
his way in, and manages to get a partail glimpse from the standing room
at the back of the large crowded hall. He hears only a few notes of the
great Caruso singing to the thousands gathered, but Fitzcarraldo is in
raptures and says, "he is singing just for me."
--Bakhtin's discussions of dialogicality and heteroglossia are
pervaded with conflict, double-voicing, parody, and evaluation. Although
Bakhtin has come to stand as a kind of Buber figure of I-thou mystical
union with celebration of diversity added in, his is a much more ironic
conflicted social universe. And it is a universe constructed entirely
from the novelistic perspective of creating an encompassing view of the
world about you, creating a certain kind of appreciative consciousness,
rather than from the perspective of participating in a world of
cooperative endeavors (although he makes small steps towards activity and
social participation in the essay on Speech Genres). The point of this
is to suggest that Bakhtin does not get us out of our internalist focus
in thinking about reading, even though he seems to provide a somewhat
more socially conscious account than most.
--This is not to say that there isn't an important process of
personal meaning construction both in response to an individual text and
in our dveloping set of linguistically formulated personal concerns in
interaction with the many texts and utterances we have come in contact
with, but that these meaning makings might perhaps be usefully understood
in larger activity settings--much as in speech act theory propositional
acts only gain force within illocutionary acts. Our internal
constructions and reconstructions of meaning are part of our
participation as sopcial beings, even as they may provide the basis for
novel and even radical social action and even as they point towards new
concepts and behaviors that create possibilities for new forms of social
interaction and participation.
For those of you that have indulged me to this rambling point, I
thank you for your holiday tolerance.
Chuck