The Alternative Orange (Vol. 3): An Alternative Student Newspaper
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An Open Note on Emerging Alignments

(including Professor Champagne's "Suggestions for Helpful Talk")

Bob Young

Revision History
  • Spring 1994Newspaper: Funded by Syracuse University students.
  The Alternative Orange: Vol. 3, No. 3 (pp. 5)
  • September 17, 2003Webpage: Sponsored by the ETEXT Archives.
  DocBook XML (DocBk XML V3.1.7) from original.

On Tuesday, January 11, I briefly met with Professor Zebroski to talk about enrolling in his class (English 700-3 Graduate Reading: Composition Theory: 1963-1993). I wish to publicize this meeting because the position advanced by Professor Zebroski is symptomatic of a larger institutional project to erase the space of critique.

First it was made clear that "his" course was not an "ETS" course and therefore was not going to deal with "Postmodernism" or "Poststructuralism." Then the condition for "his" consent for my enrollment was my willingness to adhere to "Rosaria's Rules" (a code of ethics recently established in Professor Rosaria Champagne's English 700 course to facilitate "compassionate dialogue"). "His" course policy, which points to an emerging political alignment, is found in the syllabus: "1. We shall be following Professor Champagne's Suggestions for Helpful Talk, printed in the description of her graduate course in the English Newsletter last term. If you cannot agree with and abide by these 'rules' for conversation, I highly recommend that you drop this course immediately. Participation in class is 50% of the final grade." And the justification for "his" course structure? It is "his" course and he will do with it any way he likes and furthermore this is not a matter for discussion--a decisive neo-authoritarian maneuver enabled by the privatization of the discursive space.

“Rosaria’s Rules”

I value good colleagueship and compassionate dialogue in the classroom. To facilitate compassionate and fruitful discussion of course material, I have established the following guidelines for interacting with each other.

  1. Each member of the class is equally entitled to speak, despite the fact that everyone may not feel equally entitled to speak. University status, incest survivorship, advanced feminist consciousness, or theoretical sophistication do not make some voices more meaningful than others.

  2. Each member of the class is entitled to an equal share of class discussion time. A few voices will not be permitted to dominate this course.

  3. Each member of the class has the responsibility of speaking from her/his own experience. This does not mean that any unwanted or uncomfortable self-disclosure is necessary to “authorize” one’s analysis. This does mean that attacking the positions of classmates is not productive. Use “I” statements rather than “you” or blaming statements when conflicts arise.

  4. If you feel you have information that the rest of the class needs in order to value your point, then teach us in a compassionate manner. It is unproductive to shame your colleagues because they haven’t read the same material that you have, or don’t share the same knowledge base or political commitments that you do.

  5. The class will be grounded in thoughtful discussion of the reading material. If you haven’t done the reading, or have done so sloppily, don’t expect your point to carry much weight.

  6. If you are more skilled at listening, be willing to practice speaking. If you are more skilled at speaking, be willing to practice listening.

  7. Listen to each other. Assume that each person in the room has something to teach you. Listen without interrupting.

[excerpted from the course description of Professor Champagne’s ENG 700-2 Graduate Reading: Feminist Theory and Incest Narratives in the English Newsletter, November 1993, Volume 6, Number 2, p. 18]

The deployment of such formal procedures points to the effort underway to consolidate forces against critique-al practices. Rather than systematically and theoretically engaging oppositional discourses, this new block is instituting formal procedures to eradicate the space of opposition. And why the erasure of critique? In the absence of critique, the liberal technology of "difference" may continue to fetishize the experiential and never have to account for its own situatedness within the dominant ideological boundaries; these liberal discourses produce the cultural understandings necessary for the continued legitimation of the prevailing economic order by directing theoretics away from global mechanisms of domination and towards experientially configured discourses. Various members of the A.O. staff have pressured these liberal discourses to the point of crisis (by revealing their complicity with the regime of wage labor) and liberal efforts to suture this crisis have led to a "police academy." There are (class) limits to "openness" and "diversity" and "difference" and the function of this emerging political block is to patrol and protect the borders of dominant intelligibilities.

Bob Young

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2003-10-29		To the “Alternative Orange” staff: