When I mentioned to Lisa my interest in the intersections of Desire and Composition last week, she suggested I read Marshall W. Alcorn’s Changing the Subjct in English Class: Discourse and the Construction of Desire.
So far, I’m liking it a lot. I’ve read the introduction, in which Alcorn lays out some groundwork and explains what he will do in each chapter. Alcorn discusses the political objectives of cultural studies composition classrooms, but notes the lack of discussion of desire in them. For Alcorn,
The problem of politics is a problem of desire. It is an argument about who gets what and why. If politics is to be fair, we must fashion a culture in which everyone understands who suffers, why they suffer, and what those who suffer desire. Politics then requires a real, on-site understanding of human experience and a form of public discourse that can effectively communicate that difference. (4)
Alcorn firmly believes that we shouldn’t be teaching a specific/set/certain ideology, but rather develop an “anti-ideological identity.” Like Victor Vitanza, who was concerned that cultural studies classrooms were teaching knowledge but not making change, Alcorn believes that “Such knowledge will always be used in accordance with existing ideologies and their repsective desires and identities. In order to use knowledge for social progress, desire must be mobilized to use knowledge. Desire itself must be altered if knowledge is to be effective in solving social problems” (5).
Because “Teaching a particular ideology oversimplifies the quest for political justice and the real power dynamics behind any oppressive discourse,” Alcorn “want[s] to advocate a theory of democratic participation that allows information about human experience to circulate in discourse comunities with the least amoutn of pathological distortion — that is, without the translations and libidinal coercions that all ideologies make in order to justify and maintain their power” (7).
So, If I could sum up this chapter, I’d say Alcorn is arguing that rather than teach a specific ideology (say, anti-Humanist, or anti-Enlightenment, or anti-Capitalism), we should interrogate our identities and “give up identifications with the master” (6), which is emotional work and emotional understanding of ourselves. Thus, we can change the way we desire somehow, and we can begin to understand the suffering and desires of others.
Alcorn, Marshall W., Jr. Changing the Subject in English Class: Discourse and the Construction of Desire. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2002.
