The Edge

Response — Cultural Studies (September 23)

In a midterm project for another class, I appropriated Sirc’s description of Bartholomae’s struggles with Quentin.  That project was a play in which I re-imagined Bartholomae, Peter Elbow, Harriet Malinowitz, and Bruce Horner as characters, with Quentin (and his self-negating essay) as the catalyst.  My play had a happy ending:  Harriet helps David figure out what to do, suggesting he write a personal essay, rather than a stodgy, punitive, “academic” response.

Clearly, then, Sirc’s essay had the biggest impact on me.  But why?  Not just because he reveals the softer side of David B.  In fact, James Berlin would criticize Sirc–you’re priveliging punk when it elevates the idea of individual resistance at the expense of social resistance, he would say.

But I would disagree.  By exposing the relationship between punk and “pragmatic” approaches to composition, Sirc actually engages in social epistemic thinking.  So does Elbow, when he writes in “Ranking, Evaluating, and Liking” that “[e]valuation implies the recognition of different criteria or dimensions — and by implication different contexts and audiences for the same performance.”  (I added the emphasis there.)

In fact, Sirc succeeds where Berlin fails.  While Berlin (like me) posits a “happy ending” (just adopt social-epistemic thinking, and you’ll be immune from outside critique!), Sirc leaves his piece on a more unbalanced note.  Just how much are we supposed to trust his assertion that Quentin is both “poison” and “a flower in our dustbin”?

Reading Sirc’s piece, I’m uncomfortable, and (as Julie Jung might say) that is a productive feeling, indeed.