David Seitz believes in keeping it honest–so much so that he utilizes the phrase as title for chapter 5 in Under Construction. And honest he is, indicting himself and fellow “‘critical teachers’” for failing to transmit on a wavelength accessible to many of their college composition students: “Our critical positions hold little internally persuasive authority for some of these students in the classroom, or more importantly, in the practice of their everyday lives [italics added]” (p. 65). The author focuses on Chicago area working-class students who have been exposed to theory-based instruction incorporating such elements as “difference…power relations….[and] a postmodern valuing of dissensus” (p. 66); he features three anecdotal cases concerning his own pupils as they relate to this methodology. Seitz’ assay uncovers findings which he intimates struck him as somewhat surprising: working-classers like those in his writing course decry troubling realities such as “the general disempowerment of working people” and the question of “who gets to define ‘identity politics’ in the public sphere” (p. 68). Essentially, Seitz discovers that these individuals feel “on their own….between a rock and a hard place” (pp. 70-71), perhaps even more at times than more obviously marginalized citizens of color or expatriates whose languages and cultures stand out as manifestly distinct from the hegemonic society. Ultimately, the author seems to have a “man-in-the-mirror” moment as he confesses that–at least with reference to many working-class collegians–”these critical (more academic) perspectives may be ineffective at the local level of social change (p. 76).
Viewed through the lens of topos Sincerity, David Seitz appears to pass the bar, in the sense that he is one of few writers I have encountered so far in our class texts who achieves what his contemporaries can only attempt (and that in a disembodied, abstract fashion): he comes down to earth in Keeping it honest long enough to place himself–theoretical underpinnings, methodology, personal attitudes–under the gaze of his students. He makes no bones about his own (and his cohorts’) inability to reach every student, to the degree that he openly reveals reservations over the critical approaches heretofore used in class. On this point Seitz resembles a David Bartholomae or Nancy Sommers much more than the typical UC\ISMLL contributor (see last blog). While I do not necessarily agree with every opinion Seitz shares, he clearly qualifies as sincere.
