Exciting! Secret! Thoughts!

Some of our readings thus far have described the splits among departments which necessitate the WAC program etc. to combat the dissociation that has taken place. “But, what about within the department?” I wondered as I read Bishop and Corder and found myself pulled in a variety of directions. To follow rules while writing creatively? To write with articulated outlines, overviews and defined objectives while commending maverick-ism? To romanticize the past or to idealize the future? Surely the English Department is suffering from a psychotic break with reality.

There are, as we all know, many subsets in our discipline: literature, rhetoric/composition, creative writing, folklore, African Diaspora, linguistics, critical theory (did I get them all?) with more and more division as one goes.  If literature:  what period, British, American, some unspecified other?  If creative writing:  poetry, creative non-fiction or fiction? If the other ones (which I don’t know enough about to break apart): similar examples?  There should be a workshop:  Writing Across the English Department.

Not only must we break into separate factions, we are asked to do so as quickly as possible i.e.:  At welcoming party meant to acquaint the uninitiated with the department, one is asked by dozens of impressive and intimidating persons: What’s your area? (my reply) A blank look, thank you.

We then cling to this definition of self at all costs and once having declared oneself of a certain sect, it seems assumed that one is already an expert in it and is thrown into classes where jargon is considered common knowledge and conversation seldom stops to catch one up.  So, in the confusing and segregated corridors, we cling to the path that we have found- or perhaps stumbled upon- for fear of being further lost and thus miss valuable opportunities to explore other options.

In doing so, it becomes hard to recognize the points of interaction: how does studying rhetoric result in a creative essay, how does obsessing about rules result in prose?  How do we reconcile the creative voice of the student with a class expected to teach correct academic writing? Why do the creative writers (as Eric describes) get to hang out in dark pubs smoking cigarettes and being generally gritty while literature people have nicely brushed hair and a list of conference presentations that occurred somewhere in a romanticized past that I am not a part of? 

In any event, both Bishop and Corder seem to have made some sort of commendable re-integration of these intra-departmentally (to say the least) severed selves.  They simultaneously have dirty little secrets to tell while having clean, college-ruled notebook paper on which to tell them. And somehow both ended up at the same conclusion: we are doing something wrong.