I found an interesting intersection in this week’s readings as I happened to be assigned Ch. 8 on deconstruction in Deborah Appleman’s book. As I read, I realized that much of what she discusses in terms of the deconstructionist approach to literature was also central to Rodriguez’ Teaching Cultural Sustaining and Inclusive Young Adult Literature and Kumashiro’s chapter from Troubling Education.
Appleman outlines how deconstructionism “seeks to show that a literary work is usually self-contradictory” (2015) by identifying areas where an author’s language contains contradictions, unintended meanings, or where its logic may collapse in on itself. For instance, a student in one of her classes deconstructs a poem saying, “The poem is very contradictory. [The author] attempts to dissect death and make it smaller, but the contradictions in the poem thwart the attempt and death ends up staying powerful and frightening” (2015). While Rodriguez, Kumashiro and Appleman all favor the use of deconstructionism in the classroom, Appleman also presents a look at the implications of deconstructionism on adolescents’ psychological well-being during what can be an intense period of identity formation for them. After considering the three readings, I argue that Appleman’s concern is merited, and also consider how deconstructionism might be most helpfully introduced in a classroom setting. In particular, the Kumashiro and Rodriguez readings assert that deconstructionism (also referred to as ‘poststructuralism’ in certain texts) is useful in the classroom because it empowers students to read literature critically and serves as a powerful tool that students can use to critique oppression and power. Indeed, Kumashiro goes so far as to assert that “although educators have come a long way in detailing approaches that address different forms and different aspects of oppression, they need to make more use of feminist and queer readings of poststructuralism and psychoanalysis in order to address ways that oppression plays out differently in different situations” (2002).
While Appleman also asserts that the theory can be useful, I was interested in her specific mention of how troubling -- even frightening-- the theory was for her students. She describes how students often fell into fear or sadness at learning about the theory. It seemed that deconstructionism made them question everything that they had learned, and some felt as though they weren’t sure if they liked a world where no knowledge could be considered certain. She notes that “the fragility and instability of identity construction during adolescence apparently makes the nihilistic nature of deconstruction too painful for adolescents to integrate” (2015). This was where I felt my own personal experiences and thoughts come into play. While I see value in teaching students to look for contradictory meanings and the workings of language in a text, I also definitely see the role of educators as one of instilling self-efficacy and confidence in students. And although comfort is not the goal of education, the readings made me wonder if adolescence -- particularly because teens are in such a tumultuous period of time developmentally and socially-- is the most effective time in which they should be exposed to deconstructionism. In particular, I questioned this because so much of what we have been reading has been focused on, like in Rodriguez’ work, the practice of sustaining students’ culture, literacies, and backgrounds. Especially when so many students from marginalized groups have, to a certain extent, had their worldview de-legitimized by society, I wonder if the introduction of deconstructionism may only serve to create more instability in a developmental moment where it could be helpful for them to be building a more stable (not in a rigid sense, but one in which they feel safe and that reflects their true sense of self), positive self-image? While I don’t feel these concerns mean deconstructionism should never show up in the classroom, I appreciated Appleman’s nuanced approach to its introduction. She recommends focusing less on how deconstructionism allows for meaning to collapse on itself, and more on how “...a text will have multiple meanings, depending on the ways in which an individual reader may attempt to resolve the ambiguities and inconsistencies in the text” (2015). I also thought about how having students learn ‘deconstructionism’ in concert with other literary theories can also be helpful. In seeing deconstructionism not as the ‘right’ or ‘only’ way of viewing a text, but rather an option on a menu of many literary theories to adopt, students hopefully will be able to realize that it is not the only or “right” way of viewing a text, and therefore they can also hold that their own life experiences and perspectives are ‘safe’ in the process of exploring. Resource Link: What is Deconstructionism? This article out of Bowie State University gives a high-level, relatively simple explanation of deconstructionism as a literary theory. Given its complex nature, it may be helpful to have some additional articles and textual resources for students encountering the theory for the first time, and this could be one of them! References: Appleman, D. (2015). Critical encounters in secondary english: teaching literary theory to adolescents. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Kumashiro, K. K. (2002). Troubling education: queer activism and antioppressive education. New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Rodríguez R. Joseph. (2019). Teaching culturally sustaining and inclusive young adult literature: critical perspectives and conversations. New York, NY: Routledge.
1 Comment
Christa Alger
10/14/2019 06:50:05 am
Hi Kathleen, thank you for bringing up this very important tension. I remember going through high school and sometimes feeling very depressed and put-out by what we were reading and talking about, and that wasn't even getting into post-structuralism. I think facing the grim and unjust realities of the world is always going to have that effect on students and may be necessary to a degree, but they are much more vulnerable to nihilism as you discussed and we do need to remember that before we overload them with critique. I similarly found in my chapter of Appleman about feminist and gender theory that many students were extremely resistant to thinking in that way, and I wondered as I read if it was better saved for college, where I first encountered both of these theories.
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