On Seriousness

People tend to say serious things, and then add the caveat that they shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Recent misunderstandings on this subject reminded me of a comment (non-blog) that a professor made about me in an all-purpose reference letter he wrote when I was finishing university. These things are always full of hyperbolic praise, so I guess the caveat is supremely applicable in this instance (or, as some guy I know might say, it should be taken with a ton of salt), but I’m going to risk further self-immolation by copying an excerpt from it here:

In the subsequent seminar… [her] aptitude for theory-based, practice-oriented teaching was established beyond any doubt. In an essay with a title that itself says something about her ability to engage in instructive, entertaining, serious play… she addressed the central problem with pedagogies that focus on academic discourse: “The challenges and genuine opportunities for critical thinking offered by Ways of Reading are both rigorous and provocative… However… the contrary feelings of satisfaction and panic, solidarity and isolation, ‘love’ and ‘hate,’ define for me a ‘pedagogy of ambivalence’ that carries over from the pages of the textbook to the dynamics of the classroom.”… In the course of this analysis, she makes it clear why she insists that teachers “relinquish the definable in favor of the problematic, joining students in a genuine endeavor of critical co-investigation.”

I was clever then (i.e. full of myself and full of baloney), but so was my professor. I was trying to undermine him and his fascist authority to impose an unteachable textbook on us and all our poor Comp 101 students, and he turned it around by presenting my (in)sincere vacillation as a virtue. That’s how the game was played -- and is still (being) played now.

One of us thinks it’s all about sex. The other has yet to make her platform known. Somebody else thought of it first, of course, but for me, it’s all about serious play.