Why Should I Read This? the Reasons and Pedagogical Tools for a Multiethnic Literature Classroom

WHY SHOULD I READ THIS? THE REASONS AND PEDAGOGICAL TOOLS FOR A MULTIETHNIC LITERATURE CLASSROOM A dissertation submitted to the Kent State University College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Mayuri Deka December 2008 © Copyright by Mayuri Deka 2008 All Rights Reserved ii A Dissertation written by Mayuri Deka B. A., St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University,1999 M. A., Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, 2001 M. A., Kent State University, 2003 Ph. D., Kent State University, 2008 Approved by Mark Bracher Director, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Raymond Craig Members, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Martha Cutter Members, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Masood Raja Members, Doctoral Dissertation Committee David Odell-Scott Members, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Anne Heiss Members, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Accepted by Ron Corthell Chairperson, Department of English John Stalvey Dean, College of Arts and Sciences iii TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction: Why should I read this? The Reasons and Pedagogical Tools for a Multiethnic Literature Classroom………………………….................................. 1 2. The Focus on the “I”: Prosocial Pedagogy and Identity Maintenance......................... 49 3. Imagining the ethnic Other: Prosocial Pedagogy and the Arousal of Empathy……. 120 4. Prosocial Pedagogy and the Decision to Help the Ethnic Other………………….… 188 5. Conclusion……………….……………………………………………….………… 229 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………… 237 iv Chapter I Why should I read this? The Reasons and Pedagogical Tools for a Multiethnic Literature Classroom What is literature, and why do we teach it? To understand society so that it can be changed? Or to see ourselves and our world as a way of understanding human life and the society it deserves? Why read a slave narrative in a survey of the nation’s literature? To instruct ourselves on the inequities and suffering imposed on our fellows by slavery? To recognize that African Americans too can organize their experience and commit it to paper? Or is it for the sake of the narrative itself, to appreciate it in the context of human narrative generally, to expand our grasp of what we can suffer and create? Richard Ruhland “Art and a Better America” It is not uncommon for an ethnic literature instructor to have to defend the worth and the value of the texts included in the syllabus. “Why should I read this?” is a common question that most of us teaching in the field have been faced with. And it usually leaves us scrambling for an answer anywhere from a list of aesthetic and/or moral advantages from reading “different” literature to a defensive “why not?” The student’s 1 2 reactions, in return, are not always the expected avid enthusiasm for the material or the ideas. The consequences of this lack are tackled in the conventional responses of redoubled attempts to instruct, interest, and motivate the students. As Mark Bracher points out, educators usually attribute this failure to appreciate the material “to [a] lack of cognitive ability or intelligence, or lack of interest or motivation” (xiii). The response is the “standard story” that Gerald Graff describes in Beyond the Culture Wars, “which implies that the business of teaching literature is basically simple: Just put the student in front of a good book, provide teachers who are encouraging and helpful, and the rest presumably will take care of itself” (72). However, the continuing student’s lack of interest in the classroom suggests that this approach is not working and that it is not enough to just provide new information. There also has to be a redoubled effort to teach differently. The multiethnic literature classroom can, in fact, create an opportunity for the students to become not only active learners but also prosocial thinkers. Dee Fink defines learning in terms of lasting change that is important in the student’s life. I agree with this definition of learning. Learning must involve some sort of noticeable change in the student’s life which encourages them to interact with Others in more novel ways and develop new affective responses, cognitive representations, and prosocial motives. Teaching differently within the classroom must involve incorporating questions of social change. Students must learn not only how to engage in new kinds of intellectual and social actions by integrating different realms of their life (between school and life beyond 3 the classroom) but also understand the personal and social implications of their knowledge. The more they care about something (people, interests, or feelings), the more energy they will have to learn about it and take positive action that results in social change. Thus, when students learn something about themselves and/or about Others it gives them a new image of their self and a vision of what they want to become through interactions with Others. This project formulates a pedagogy of multiethnic literature designed to enhance students’ prosocial behavior by supporting their identity development and security and by increasing their capacity for empathy. Prosocial pedagogy does this by supporting a secure sense of Self in the students and developing their empathic affects and motives within the classroom so that there is an alteration in their cognitive process to lead habitually toward prosocial change. Research by Damon shows that people are more willing to help another person if they can empathize with them and identify commonalities between the Self and Other based on universal affective states (happiness, sadness) and life-conditions (like birth, death).1 An openness to finding similarities with the ethnic Other requires a Self who is secure in itself. A secure identity is characterized by certain typical qualities which have to be present before a person can engage empathically with new information. While some of the qualities are concerned with the intrapersonal process of maintaining a sense of Self, the rest are enacted in the relationship of the Self with the Other. “Consistency” refers to the integrated nature of the Self without which a person would have no sense of self. Simply put, consistency is the enactment of specific identity-components that define 4 the Self as a unique person who is different from another. “Continuity” is the sense of permanence of the essentiality of a person. It is not only the physical continuity but also the emotional and psychological persistence over time. “Distinction,” on the other hand, defines the Self in terms of difference from another. It is the experience of this quality that draws the margins and defines a person’s personality. However, the sociophilic tendencies in humans lead them to form groups. As Bracher explains, “…one’s sense of self is a function of one’s experienced effects on otherness: without at least a rudimentary effect on otherness, there is no evidence that the self exists” (7). Therefore, it is equally important to have a network of relationships with other people along with an essential sense of self for a unified identity. Finally, “meaning” comes from a feeling of mattering in the world through the relationships that people form with others. As Beck points out, The experience of pleasure and pain [depending on whether the Self is being validated] reinforces our sense of personal identity, which is further consolidated by other people’s defining and rewarding or punishing us. As other people mark their boundaries, they also serve to define our sense of being separate individuals. (30) An identity-supporting pedagogy has to provide recognition for these qualities in order to maintain the students’ secure sense of Self while bringing about lasting change in their identity-components to include more empathic, prosocial elements. Empathy is defined here as the ability to take the space of the Other and occupy affective states more appropriate to another’s situation than one’s own. Indeed, because of human beings’ ability to represent events and imagine themselves in another’s place 5 and the power of these represented events to evoke affects, people need to only imagine the Other’s suffering to feel empathic distress. Reading a novel, listening to an interview, or watching a video can evoke empathic affect that results in a desire to help the victim. Research by Batson, Klein, Highberger, and Shaw, which will be discussed more fully in Chapter 3, shows how reading a note or listening to a radio interview results in the participants feeling empathic distress for the people they read about or listened to and taking steps to help the victim. However, this process of identification is only possible if the Self is secure in its identity as a continuous, coherent, and vital agent. Indeed, as Fink’s taxonomy of learning shows, pursuing one’s own desire and deepest needs results in empathy and caring for the Other, which is crucial for the student’s embracing the pursuit of social justice and prosocial action as a life-long goal. As the definition of the Self is dependent on the Other, the desire for a coherent identity in a person is closely related to the desire for the Other. In Lacanian terms, the Self is modeled through a constant exposure to otherness so that it shapes itself in the Other’s image or in opposition to it. The Other is a sum of all the unconscious desires and the Self’s own projection (mirror-image). Any hate or admiration directed at the Other, therefore, pertains to the affects directed to the Self’s own mirror-image in its efforts to fulfill its desire for the Lack. The Self desires what the Other represents to regain the original sense of wholeness (jouissance) that was lost with the entry into language and the symbolic order. Prosocial pedagogy attempts to transform the Self’s quest for fulfillment to reflect a desire of the Other’s well-being.

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