ed 366 967 aut7or title institution report no pub date note ... - ERIC

12 Reconsidering the WorkshopJune 21, 1991Dear Jan,I liked your letter of the 13th a lot. I liked the Steinian rhythms thatpunctuated some of your observations about the old benign workshops.I liked the way your discussion of that now impossible old model comesaround at the end to the question not only of textual autonomy butalso of the autonomy of the creative writing workshopas a practice,I'm going to addin the context of our graduate program (and ofprograms in other places).Well, I'm guessing you'll agree that the workshop can't claim autonomyany more than texts can. Workshops are, in a way, texts, discourses,and as such are invaded on every border by ideologies, reading practices,goings-on in the department, in the discipline, in the profession, etc.The question is one of usefulness and intellectual energy, not autonomySo, just for the heck of it, I'm going to take two opposite positions,leaving myself open to charges of dichotomous thinking, rhetoricaldisingenousness. etc., etc. (One can't say anything nowadays withoutstumbling across a thousand poststructuralist taboospolarity, hierarchylogocentrism. phallocentricism, any kind of center, essentialism,foundationalism, HUMANISM, etc.)Position #1 (Prone) Workshops Are the Worst Place to EncourageResponsible Talk About Writing and Ought to Be Banished. They havedeveloped no publicly examinable practice or discourse, statementsabout themselves (in ANT Bulletins, Teachers Collaborative, etc.) constitutethe most lugubrious species of touchy-feelies, guru-ism, magicintuitions, etc. (although they are covertly vulnerable to every fad in themarkets, whether lit mag or NYC publishing). At the same time theyare critical troglodytes, hanging on tenaciously, as you suggested, to thetenets of a long-dead formalism. Their marginalization is self-inflicted,a misguided insistence on isolating themselves from the evil influencesof the academy of which they are a part, on claiming for MFA studiodegrees education sufficient for college teaching. Maybe all this comesfrom the Romantic mystique about the inviolable soul of the artistasdangerous a hyperbole in its own way as the disappeared author inFoucault, Barflies, Machery et al. Anyway workshops create a companyof know-nothing navel-gazing isolates. Put them in the third book ofGulliver's Travels with instructions to the flappers never to awakenthem again.Position #2 (Supine) Workshops Are the Best Place to EncourageSerious Talk About Writing and Must Bc Kept as an Integral Part ofAny Good Grad Program. Iiiwkshops save us from the inadequaciest.)