Politics, Pedagogy, and the Profession of Composition ... - JAC Online

Bruce Homer 137
Ellsworth's questions and my critique seem to suggest not simply that we
should expect from all pedagogies a degree of un know ability , but also that
this unknowability justifies absolving ourselves of responsibility for our
pedagogy on the grounds that the effects of what we do are, after all, not
strictly speaking under our control; they are ''unknowable.'' Such a
conclusion, however, would only evince nostalgia for transcendent certainty
and would effectively give sway to the dominant culture's claims
of certainty through retreat from resistance to such claims.
Furthermore, that nostalgia again demonstrates a commodified notion
of pedagogy, for it places on pedagogy a burden it cannot possibly
bear alone, assigning it a task it cannot by itself perform. Indeed, we can
see evidence of such a view in the exclusiveness of the concern both
Ellsworth and her critics have with power in the classroom. Such a focus
is suggested by Ellsworth's assertion that for her purposes, "The most
important interruption of existing power relations within the university
consisted of transforming business-as-usual-that is, prevailing social
relations-in a university classroom" (299). This statement makes sense
only if we accept both a unitary conception of power and a homological
view of its exercise in different sites. That is, the specific relations of
power occurring at a pedagogical site are seen as equivalent to relations
of power at all other sites; consequently, to interrupt the business-as-usual
of the university in any ofits sites constitutes interruption of that business
at all its other sites. Business is business.
If carried to its logical extreme, such a strategy would constitute a
recipe for full containment of counterhegemonic efforts, since it would
effectively direct such efforts to those sites the dominant has already
foresworn as inconsequential. This is notto dismiss the significance ofthe
politics of teacher-student relations but to insist that we locate those
relations within their specific material sites, differentiating between the
significance of power relations in specific instances and locales and
considering the interaction of those relations among sites. We can account
for the particularly complicated and angst-ridden experience of C&I 607
that Ellsworth describes as being the result, in part, of her initial failure
to differentiate power in such ways.
By contrast, the pedagogy ofthe unknowable that Ellsworth ends up
calling for appears to require such location, for it is defined as a practice
"profoundly contextual (historical) and interdependent (social)" (323).
As I have argued above, Ellsworth's invocation of a pedagogy of the
unknowable itself suggests a lingering desire for a commodifiable pedagogy,
albeit one that paradoxically fails to "deliver" a consumable