Ideological Death and Grief in the Classroom: Mourning as a Prerequisite to Learning

In the last twenty years the character of writing instruction in English departments all over the country has changed dramatically. Basic assumptions about how writing should be taught have shifted from a paradigm that seeks to regulate correctness in writing to a paradigm that seeks to advance political progress in a body politic. Ten years ago, when this shift began to show clear momentum, there was considerable hope for at least one desirable consequence: that the power politics existing between student and teacher would disappear. Richard Boyd writes:

It was to be expected that the old narratives of instructor and student locked in a struggle of will would be replaced by a new version of a far more peaceable classroom where teachers might act more as collaborators than as adversaries. (590)

At least two thoughts supported this hope for a more peaceable classroom. First, the development of collaborative learning and writing made the teacher's position less central. He or she was no longer the single authority in matters of advice and evaluation. This was often experienced as liberating for both students and teachers. Second, however, the new theory itself offered a promise for easy change. New understandings of subjectivity argued that the self was not some category essential to human experience, but something imaginary. Because the self was not some real object, but an effect of language, it appeared something able to be easily shaped by language practices. Lacan's discussion of the mirror stage and Althusser's analysis of interpellation suggested to many that the powerful social forces that worked to construct subjectivity might also work in the classroom to reconstruct subjectivity. Many of us in the field of writing are trying to understand why this practice of working with human values, working with problems of ethics or politics in the classroom, is so difficult. The hope of happy students seeking personal and political understanding has been dampened by hard