Ultimate+Purpose

"What" are you attempting to address in the teaching of the text? How is this related to your principled approach?
For Wilhelm and Novak, the ultimate purpose in teaching any text is to create and facilitate an experience where transactional responsiveness can take place—an experience where students both feel part of their selves within the text and feel the text within. In such a scenario, the text—whatever work of art it may be—is understood as a “transitional object,” a device that mediates the transactional experience (66). Conceptualizing the text in that way supports the authors’ view that the teaching of English ought to move students from a dialectical vision of the self and the world to a communal one where students gain a sense of the responsibility inherent in coexisting in the world with others.

It is not good enough, however, to remain within the framework of texts mediating experience. Ultimately, Wilhelm and Novak hope that students will crystalize a worldview of coexistence and internalize a sense of social responsibility without relying on texts as transitional objects. They want to lay the foundation for students to create the place “that art and other transitional objects create between self and world. . . without the use of these objects as props” (145). Using texts to understand how they relate to the world at large, students internalize those experiences and become socially responsible agents on their own. While the authors do envision students moving beyond the text and rethinking both their interaction with and role in the world, they do not underestimate the importance of students first feeling that sense of involvement in a classroom community.

As students experience transactional responsiveness through engaging a text, the perceived separation of self and the world disappears, creating what Wilhelm refers to as “third space” (174). One way to understand this psychological phenomenon is to envision the coming together of minds through space and time. This is what happens when we experience art, and it is one of the reasons that enduring works—be they literary, musical, or visual—continue to inspire across centuries and cultures. Such a loss of self, referred to philosophically as Dionysian deindividuation, simultaneously obliterates the self as it is created anew through the psychic material composing the art. While all of this sounds somewhat lofty and overly metaphysical, the experience is rather common. We may understand it as “getting lost in a good book” or having a sense of euphoric oneness with our favorite album, but the idea to take away is that however we want to express it, that experience is powerful and real.

Just as those boundaries between the self and the world can at times seem to dissolve through the inner experience of an individual, a similar phenomenon can occur between individuals themselves, forming a “kind of intentional community” where “psychological third space can be made the underpinning for social third space” (174). Through transactional responsiveness, students first familiarize themselves with the experience of unifying with concepts of otherness—ideas, perceptions, and worldviews—as they move closer to being able to unify with other diverse individuals and the stories that accompany them. Wilhelm and Novak envision this happening first on a small scale within classrooms and community centers, but they ultimately feel that a large-scale “political third space” is possible (174). They describe this sense of global shared ownership of selves as “//cosmopoiesis//: the sense that we are acting as responsive and responsible citizens of the world, co-creating the world through the life force that is the best part of each one of us” (191).

Admittedly, as far as big ideas go, that one is way up there. There is indeed a huge space between reading a book in English class and saving the world, but cutting through the grandiloquence to examine the spark or catalyst that puts such change into motion, it becomes clear that the idea of connection—human connection—is at the core of such a wonderful possibility. It is that necessity of connection that makes the teaching of //1984// relevant to the project of //Teaching Literacy for Love and Wisdom//. Wilhelm and Novak’s book expresses a possibility for the teaching of English (or “Personal Studies”) that is optimistic nearly to the point of delusion, and while such high hopes could easily serve as the basis for derisive attacks, they also reflect what is best about human nature: an ever-present desire for perfection. As “The Party” of Orwell’s dystopian classic crushes its citizens with fear and oppression, it becomes clear that the people are not simply being denied freedom; they are finding their very humanity—their core human essence—being corrupted and disfigured beyond recognition. The vestiges of humanity that linger—loyalty, reverence, hatred, love—are all robbed of their authenticity and perverted to serve the Party’s purpose through propaganda and re-education. Underlying all of these sinister machinations is a fundamental drive to obliterate human connection. Any emotion that is not manufactured by and for the perpetuation of the Party is a thoughtcrime; sex is divorced of its pleasure and intimacy in favor of cold, mechanistic “duty to the Party”; even time itself is arrested as the future becomes as unimaginable as the past is vague (Orwell 59).

When students read //1984//, there is an initial resistance that seems to spring both from the dreary depressing mood and the introspective nature of Part One. It can be difficult for some students to latch onto the story because so much of it happens within Winston’s mind. Lacking the support and frame of a lot of plot-driven action, a common complaint might be that nothing is happening. However, when urged to explore the salient issues addressed in the novel—memory, identity, control, freedom—students are quick to seize the gravity of what is at stake. Through discussing the “mutability of the past” or Winston’s sense of rebirth during his love affair with Julia, students find themselves coming to discoveries and revelations about memory, identity, hope, and connection—what it means to be human (Orwell 23). By entering an ironic world where people are never alone yet entirely isolated, students come to understand the importance of reaching out to others and allowing others into your life and story.