10/29/23, Critical Encounter in Secondary English (Chapter 8: Postmodernism)

 I think that this chapter's concerns about the fallout of deconstruction is a little silly. The crisis caused by saying "this text might not have a specific meaning" is a good and important one to spur in a classroom. Britzman writes that deconstruction "called into question the foundations of their personal identities and core beliefs," and I think that exact questioning is essential to critically developing one's own identities and beliefs (125). If I did not constantly deconstruct myself, I would be a worse and more miserable person. To not question the foundations of one's personal identities and core beliefs is both a mark of power - I have to constantly evaluate how being a trans woman affects how I exist in the world to just stay safe, whereas I do not have to do the same for being white - and a missed opportunity for growth. I think you could handle introducing deconstruction better. I would like to introduce it further from the end of the semester, ideally near the beginning, so we as a class could develop how we approach texts (not) having a meaning.

I want to talk about Vladimir Nabokov for a second here. I haven't read much of his work: I read most of Pale Fire and know of Lolita. However, I know he's an epitome of a postmodern author, which I infer from the idea that deconstruction is a useful tool for the interpretation of his work. He also hated literary critics. He would simply lie in interviews and letters and lectures about what his books meant and Pale Fire is a book in which a literary critic (the narrator) horribly misinterprets the titular poem. Now, I want to talk about Nabokov's literary critics: one quite popular interpretation of Pale Fire is that the critic is clearly accurate in his interpretation and the author of the poem was secretly in love with the critic. Many people think Lolita (a book about pedophilia) is a beautiful love story because that's how the narrator talks about it. 

I've written before here about my experience reading The Clansman. How I gained any meaning from it was via deconstruction: asking what rhetorics it engages in and where and how it engages in them. I did it via racial and gender lines, for sure, but I also definitely found spaces where the author gave me meanings he simply would have disagreed with and was not leading me to. An example: the book describes the white male protagonists as "lions" while describing the black male villains as "tigers" and the black female villain as a "leopard," which gave me an understanding that within this text these different groups share many commonalities and are only villainized on grounds of race and gender. Perhaps another part of that is my knowledge about these animals, 

I think one of my favorite texts to deconstruct is the animated short Deadline by Joel G on YouTube. I am under the impression that the text itself says very little but is clearly evocative. However, it is clear to me that it can be fruitfully analyzed in terms of class and gender, and I've had fun deconstructing it the many times I've rewatched it.