Where’s my Vespa?
With all the discussion about identity formation and the multiple voices of the academy in the readings this week, I find I am reminded of the film Quadrophenia.
Johnson’s focus on understanding specific groups in relationship to the proscribed identity of the academy as well as his (limited) descriptions of subcultures made me think of it would be a fun ‘text’ to introduce into the classroom to confront those issues and open up discussion about them in a way that students might find accessible…also, could clear up some issues for those who have been not informed about mod/rocker subculture, and perhaps give an interesting perspective to the disgruntled (in this case not pierced, but dandy) youths that Johnson describes and how this search for identity can be applied to finding one’s place in academic writing.
And it is cool. 
Brooke/Underlife and Writing Instruction Notes; or not notes, but highlighted parts that prove pertinent to my previous statements
“It may be that the process of allowing a particular kind of identity to develop is what contemporary writing is all about” 142
“The identity we assign to a young man is greatly determined, however, by the kinds of information he chooses to give us” 142
the information game/interaction
identity: “a function of organizations…she operates in” 143
Disruptive vs. contained “looking at those activites through which individuals resist or reject the identity assigned them by institutions is a way of looking at how individuals form their sense of identity” 144
How the underlife relates to the class room…
1. related to class activities
2. related to roles of people “speaker is aware of and different from the roles asigned in the situation, that there is more to the speaker than that” 147
3. related to evaluation
4. division of attention
teacher is disruptive, students contained underlife…ought teachers appeal to and recognize the role of the students as participants in an underlife?
teachers encouraging voice: “What’s at stake, it seems is a part of their ‘identity– we would like them to think of themselves as writers rather than students” 150
“writing teachers want to produce writers, not students, and consequently we seek to change our pedagogy to allow the possibility of the writer’s identity” 151
“such a shift in education would be a far-reaching and benefical shift, focusing on the identity and abilities of the student as an original thinker, rather than on the student’s ability to comply with clasroom authority” 152
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February 25th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Rebecca. I enjoyed your post, and I encourage everyone to check out the film QUADROPHENIA (1979).
However, given the established formula of our conversations, I feel obliged to contradict and/or criticize you at this point.
First. AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973) and REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955) are better films about teenage identity and subculture.
Second. Why is there no mention of THE WHO in your post? No respect.
Third. Sting. (Need I say more.)
Now, given our formula for conversation, your rebuttal must insult me, and then finally, I will make a joke.