CRITICAL ISSUES: LIMITS OF IDENTIFICATION: THE PERSONAL, PLEASURABLE, AND CRITICAL IN READER RESPONSE

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1 CRITICAL ISSUES: LIMITS OF IDENTIFICATION: THE PERSONAL, PLEASURABLE, AND CRITICAL IN READER RESPONSE Cynthia Lewis UNIVERSITY OF IOWA In this article, I argue that the most common use of reader-response theory in the classroom is misguided in its emphasis on personal response and identification. After reconsidering the meaning of the "aesthetic stance" as defined in the work of Louise Rosenblatt, I discuss the social and political nature of readers, texts, and contexts. I include two examples of teachers talking about a work of children's literature to illustrate that when a text is about characters whose cultures and life worlds are very different from the reader's, disrupting the reader's inclination to identify with the text can heighten the reader's self consciousness and text consciousness. This stance should not be viewed as less aesthetic than a more direct or immediate relationship between reader and text. Finally, I argue for a broader view of what aesthetic reading can mean, one that addresses the social and political dimensions of texts and invites students to take pleasure in both the personal and the critical. J LR V. 32 NO PP

2 J LR Lewis AT A TIME WHEN MANY ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS nationwide have adopted literature-based reading programs, it is imperative that researchers and educators learn more about literature instruction in elementary classrooms. Perhaps this is even more important now that the political tide is changing and many states no longer require preservice teachers to take a single course in children's literature, let alone literary theory (Freeman, Lehman, & Scharer, ). I share the concern expressed by others that when literature is used in the service of teaching reading it is often "basalized" (DeLawter, 1992; Goodman, 1986). That literary texts are most often taught through the language and technology of reading comprehension is not surprising, however, given that most elementary teachers receive little training in literary genres, theory, or pedagogy compared to that which they receive in reading (Walmsley, 1992; Wolf, Mieras, & Carey, 1996). In this article, I address a related problem, one that emerges from the kind of instruction that is offered as an antidote to the "basalization" of literature. This instruction is loosely grounded in reader-response theory, but it is an interpretation of reader response that emphasizes the personal at the expense of the social and political. I argue that those of us who research literary response and teach literary texts at any level need to examine our use of reader-response theory in terms of two questions that can lead us to consider the sociopolitical dimensions of readers, texts, and contexts: First, what do we mean by aesthetic reading and how is it different from personal response; second, what is the relationship between aesthetic and critical reading? Reconsidering the "Aesthetic Stance" Although reader-response theory takes many forms (Beach, 1993; Tompkins, 1980), the way that it has been practiced in schools - largely, in opposition to New Criticism - is to highlight the life of the reader through personal response. Louise Rosenblatt's (1938,1978) work on reader response is most often cited to support this focus, yet a close reading of her work reveals that her interest in the reader does not privilege personal response. Rosenblatt identifies her work, along with that of Iser (1978) and Jauss (1982), as "reception theoryt which she calls a "reader-plus-text-oriented" theory rather than one that is "reader-oriented" (Rosenblatt, 1991, p. 59). Yet, "personal response" has become privileged in the classrooms of teachers who have taken an interest in reader response, an interest often generated through preservice and in-service education. What frequently happens in these educational settings is a watering down of reader-response theory through the use of textbooks and articles that summarize Rosenblatt's work rather than readings of the primary sources. In quick and easy fashion, 254

3 Rosenblatt's efferent stance becomes associated with the traditional focus on reading comprehension, and her aesthetic stance becomes associated entirely with the personal, often in terms of whether readers can identify with and respond experientially to characters in a literary text. This misreading of the "aesthetic stance" is evident in the kinds of reader-oriented suggestions for response offered in many texts for teachers. Karolides (1997, p. 167), in arguing that Rosenblatt's aesthetic stance has been oversimplified, suggests that questions for students such as "do the characters remind them of anyone" and "is the situation familiar in any way" do not do justice to the complexity of Rosenblatt's theory. Conflating the personal and the aesthetic is problematic, because it strips the aesthetic stance of its interpretive and critical possibilities. Rosenblatt's work in reader response does define the aesthetic stance in terms of "lived through" experience, and she contests the "remoteness" (Rosenblatt, 1985, p. 37) often assigned to the reader's role in relation to aesthetic texts. She rejects comparisons made between her aesthetic stance and James Britton's (1970) spectator role, finding spectatorship "a metaphor that obscures the directly experienced, dynamic character of the literary work" (Rosenblatt, 1985, p. 37). Given this view, an emphasis on personal identification seems more aligned to Rosenblatt's work than the more distant aesthetic judgments that Britton (1970) believes readers as spectators make once they have experienced the artistry of a text. However, Rosenblatt's notion of experience is not as simple as the one described above, adopted in many classrooms and in research studies. Rosenblatt views the text as central to the literary experience and finds the focus on the personal advocated by other reader-response critics (e.g., Bleich, 1974; Holland, 1985) too remote from the experience of the text itself: JLR Critical Issues: Limits of Identification Like the Rorschach inkblot, a verbal text may be used to stimulate personal "free" associations and memories of childhood traumas. But this makes the text simply a passive tool in the psychological study of personality. The emphasis is then on free association, whereas - when the text is read aesthetically - emphasis is on selective attention, guided by cues provided by the text... it should be recognized that an overemphasis on personality moves the discussion out of the realm of a primary concern from the literary transaction and the teaching of literature. (Rosenblatt, 1985, p. 36) For Rosenblatt, it is through the "cues provided by the text" that readers can achieve a "lived through experience." What others see as a necessary distancing from the text (being a"spectator," for instance), Rosenblatt views as a direct experience, an evocation of the text which she defines as "a process in which the reader selects out ideas, sensations, feelings, and images 255

4 J LR Lewis drawn from his past linguistic, literary, and life experience, and synthesizes them into a new experience..." (Rosenblatt, 1985,p.40).Ironically, what other reader-response critics see as deep personal connections to texts, Rosenblatt sees as overly remote from the text, because privileging the personal separates the reader's emotional life from the textual codes and conventions. Her attention to textual codes and conventions is evident in the way she defines the aesthetic stance and its resulting evocation. In keeping with Rosenblatt's attention to textuality, some scholars argue that elementary teachers need to educate students in how to read literary texts (Cai & Traw, 1997; Sipe, 1997) in order for students to understand and interpret texts at a level beyond the level of personal connection. Cai and Traw (1997) point out that classroom applications of Rosenblatt's work have been limited primarily to an emphasis on personal response and enjoyment of texts. However, in contrast to my argument that Rosenblatt's notion of aesthetics is not limited to the personal and pleasurable, they place these categories of response within Rosenblatt's "evocation," and argue that students need to move beyond evocation to interpretation, a skill that can only result from an understanding of the codes and conventions of literary texts. I share Cai and Straw's concerns about the way that Rosenblatt's work has been applied in elementary classrooms, and I can see the benefits of distinguishing between evocation and interpretation. However, I want to trouble this distinction a bit, because I believe that the more we separate the aesthetic and what Cai and Straw refer to as the interpretive or critical, the more we deny the possibility for a critical engagement that, in my view, can bring together the personal, critical, and pleasurable. The terms efferent and aesthetic become problematic when they are set in opposition to one another, an opposition that Rosenblatt undeniably perpetuates in some of her writing. Aesthetic reading, by its very nature, has an intrinsic purpose, the desire to have a pleasurable, interesting experience for its own sake. (The older the students, the more likely we are to forget this.) We should be careful not to confuse the student by suggesting other, extrinsic purposes, no matter how admirable. That will turn attention away from participating in what is being evoked. (Rosenblatt, 1982, p. 275) Here Rosenblatt suggests that the two purposes for reading stand in opposition to one another, that to focus on efferent means to neglect the aesthetic. So although many of her writings underscore the fluidity of the stances and remind us that the efferent and aesthetic stances exist on a continuum, other writings suggest more rigidity about the functions of each stance. Researchers and educators often appropriate this polarized view. 256

5 In a study by Zarrillo and Cox (1992), for instance, teaching activities observed by the researchers were grouped into categories of practices that would direct students to either an aesthetic or efferent stance toward literature. The researchers were interested in finding out how teachers viewed the teaching of literature, particularly important when one considers the focus on reading comprehension that often takes over the reading and teaching of literature. Although I admire the study and its purposes, I will point to a few of the teaching practices designated as aesthetically or efferently oriented to show that these stances are not fixed, but instead are situated within the context of a particular moment, place, and set of readers and texts. Creating another text or medium based on the original literature is categorized as an efferent activity, for instance, but is it not also possible to live through the literature aesthetically in order to create from it something new? The activity could be either aesthetic or efferent depending on what students are asked to do, how much they enjoy the text, the depth of their knowledge about how literary texts work, which peers they are able to work with, how much help they receive at home, and so on. Allowing children to choose their own books is listed as an aesthetic activity, yet choosing one's own book might be more related to creating a particular impression within a particular classroom context than to individual enjoyment or interest. My purpose in troubling the distinctions we accept as inherent to reader-response theory is to open the way for another view of engagement with literary texts, a view that melds the personal, pleasurable, and critical in aesthetic response. J LR Critical Issues: Limits of Identification The Text as Constructed World If we consider Rosenblatt's own comments thus far included in this article, it is obvious that she, herself, is not entirely clear about whether or not a critical approach to literature can be aesthetic. Wade, Thompson, and Watkins (1994) argue that Rosenblatt's stances do not include a category to encompass analysis and critique. Although Rosenblatt (1990) points out that her work has always included the questioning of social and cultural assumptions, it is difficult to determine where she would locate analysis and critique on her efferent/aesthetic continuum. Rosenblatt (1985) argues, for instance, that to apply a particular kind of "ready-made system of analysis" (p. 39) to a text would constitute an efferent response, but this suggests that it is possible to have an aesthetic response that is ideologically innocent, a position that many cultural and critical theorists would contest. As I have written elsewhere (Lewis, 1999), Rosenblatt (1991) sees the individual reader's transaction with the text as primary over the local context of classroom or sociocultural contexts beyond the classroom: "The importance 257

6 J LR Lewis of the cultural or social context is stressed, but transactional theory sees the convention or code, as, e.g., in language, as always individually internalized" (Rosenblatt, 1991, p. 60). I want to argue, on the other hand, that we must broaden our view of reader response to acknowledge the social and political dimensions of response in particular contexts. The social dimension of response to literature is foregrounded in some recent research on reader response in elementary classrooms (e.g., Enciso, 1998; Evans, 1996; Lewis, i997).this work argues that interpretation itself is a social act and that understanding the transaction between reader and text involves examining the many social conditions that shape the stances readers take up as they interpret and respond to literature. Through such examination, status and power negotiations become clearly visible, underscoring the critical role of the peer dynamic and posing a challenge to the concept of the classroom as a unified learning community so often idealized in educational literature. Despite the multiple and often conflicting social stances foregrounded in more recent research, the term "reader response" among educators and literacy researchers in the United States is still very much associated with the transaction between reader and text as defined by Rosenblatt. To illustrate the political dimension of response, Surber (1998) argues that reception theory (how readers respond to texts) "must not lose sight of the facts that readers not only produce interpretations of texts but are produced as subjects by the texts they read..." (p. 245). This is not a new idea, given the work of Marxist theorists like Althusser (1971) who remind us of the ways in which we are ideologically formed as subjects and the later work of Bennett (1979), who coined the term "reading formations." The reader/text relationship, according to Bennett, involves readers who are formed as particular social subjects and texts that are formed in ways that promote a set of available readings. Yet this view of readers is absent in most classroom studies I have read about reader response. In my role as manuscript reviewer for various journals, for instance, I often read studies that focus on readers' responses to multicultural literature but overlook the work of the text in forming readers as subjects. The researchers examine the personal connections the readers make or the interactions that occur with others in the classroom, but do not consider how using a particular literary text - say, one about a non-european culture but still written from a Eurocentric perspective - forms the reader as a particular kind of subject. Hade (1997) eloquently discusses several such texts in his chapter on what it means to read multiculturally. He points out, for example, that the best selling children's book Brother Eagle, Sister Sky ( Jeffers, 1991) does not represent a particular Native American culture so much as it affirms the 258

7 romantic images of Native American environmental responsibility that have replaced previous images of the "savage" in the minds of many European American readers. The text and readers work together to create a particular reading formation that makes the image of Native Americans in touch with nature both appealing (more appealing than anger, resistance, or the negative stereotypes of the past) and available to European American readers in contemporary postindustrial culture. In discussing what she sees as critical fictions, stories that challenge dominant discourses and reading practices, hooks (1991) argues that the imagination should not be viewed as "pure, uncorrupted terrain" (p. 55) but as colonized by dominant discourses. She is speaking specifically about the imaginations of those who have been directly oppressed by such discourses rather than those who may benefit from power relations as they now stand, but I want to extend the metaphor to all readers. Through this metaphor, then, we can view the imagination as colonized by dominant discourses or ideologies that become naturalized ways of thinking in the present and imagining the future. To apply this line of thought to Brother Eagle, Sister Sky, the book speaks to the colonized imagination of European American readers for whom distinct Native American cultures have been rolled into one culture and idealized to fulfill European American desires. Such discourses can be deconstructed, hooks suggests, through the writing and reading of critical fictions that force us to interrogate that which in our imaginations becomes naturalized and taken for granted. In so doing, hooks challenges three assumptions about aesthetic reading that many in our field have taken from Rosenblatt's work: (a) the primacy of the individual's mind/imagination; (b) the notion that one's personal life or personal choices are indeed one's own; and (c) the detachment of aesthetics from politics, culture, and social relations. These assumptions have been challenged for the last three decades by work in critical literacy, feminist theory, critical race theory, poststructuralism, and cultural criticism. In recent years, scholars have written about the pedagogy of cultural criticism in the teaching of literature very pragmatically, providing questions or issues meant to help students and teachers examine the social, cultural, historical, and political construction of texts and readers (including Apol, 1998; Beach, 1993; Bishop, 1997; Corcoran, 1994; Luke & Freebody, 1997; Morgan, 1997; O'Neill, 1993; Simpson, 1996; Sims, 1983; Willis & Palmer, 1997). These theories as they relate to literary reading suggest that another kind of aesthetic response is an awareness of the text as constructed world. Notwithstanding these developments, most studies of literary response among elementary teachers or in elementary classrooms are grounded in theories that use Rosenblatt's notion of aesthetic stance in ways already J LR Critical Issues: Limits of Identification 259

8 T LR Lewis described. An exception can be found in Wolf, Ballentine, and Hill's (1999) profound study of preservice teachers struggling with difficult questions related to the relationship between aesthetics and authenticity in children's multicultural literature. With no easy answers in sight, the discussions led students to question the meaning of aesthetics in terms of the history of oppression and the politics of children's multicultural literature. As they explored the significance of an author's insider or outsider status related to the culture represented in the text, they began to question their initial certainties about aesthetic judgment. Students began to understand that such judgments are not universal, but instead shaped by social, political, and historical conditions. Discussions of this nature are crucial to the development of teachers as they prepare to read, teach, and experience literature with children. The Sociopolitics of Reader Response To further address the questions I posed at the start of this article, I include two excerpts from a teacher discussion of the children's book The Watsons Go to Birmingham (Curtis, 1995), about a close-knit African American family at the time of the Birmingham church bombings. Again, I am interested in rethinking assumptions related to aesthetic, personal, and critical reading. According to many scholars, a primary goal of reading multicultural literature is to change the reader's perception of self and other within the context of examining the structural inequalities within which cultural identities are constituted (Cai, 1997; Hade, 1997). As Fang, Fu, and Lamme (1999) claim, multicultural literature "should be considered sociocultural and political texts (Taxel, 1992) for fostering students' understanding of the historical and material forces underpinning the construction of cultural identities" (p. 270). Recently many scholars have argued that when teachers and students relate their personal experiences to texts, they begin to search for common experience, thus universalizing across differences that are shaped by dominant epistemologies and institutions (Cai, 1998; Lewis, 1999; Rabinowitz & Smith, 1998; Rogers & Soter, 1997). Pearl Rosenberg (1997) discusses the dangers of this kind of identification, claiming that her preservice students "often use other people's oppression in the identification and interpretation of their own lives" (p. 83). Harris (1994) argues that although literature can help readers to understand what it means to be human, readers must also take responsibility for interpreting the political messages of texts. Yet teachers are rarely taught to read children's and young adult literature as political texts nor are they encouraged to read bibliographic resources with a critical eye (Harris, 1993). In addition, White readers some- 260

9 times resist the political messages in multicultural texts that seem to threaten their values and identities (Beach, 1997). According to critical theorists, literature discussions should invite readers to question the discourses that shape their experiences as well as to resist textual ideology that promotes dominant cultural assumption. The two excerpts that follow, taken from a study of White rural teachers discussing multicultural children's and young adult literature (Lewis, Ketter, & Fabos, in press), show how aesthetic pleasure in a text can work in negative ways when readers fall back on personal experience and in more positive ways when the aesthetic stance is broadened to include the text as social and political construct. As participants in the literature discussions, Jean Ketter (with whom I am collaborating on this research) and I had raised the question of intended audience, in part to get at how the author positions the reader in terms of race. In the case of The Watsons Go to Birmingham -1963,1 pointed out that I believe the book will appeal to both African American and European American readers. I had been concerned that other books we had read were written primarily for the purpose of teaching White readers about racism. This book, on the other hand, seemed more in keeping with what Sims (1983) calls "culturally conscious" books, books that "deliberately set out to recreate a uniquely Afro-American experience, primarily for a Black audience" (p. 22). Nonetheless, the conversation used the aesthetic pleasure of personal response to devolve into a discussion of universal appeal, which I took up with all the others in the group: Cynthia:... I guess I was thinking a lot about audience for this book, and one of the things that seemed appealing to me is that unlike a lot of books, it seems to me that it would be equally appealing for a Black audience or a White audience. Denise: and young and old Cynthia: or young and old. Denise: I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I think kids would enjoy reading it. It's you know, it's really is, um very much, it [has] a lot of wide appeal. Cynthia:... I would think... as an African American parent reading it, I would find it appealing. Maybe as an African American child too. I'm not sure it would be as, I would be as conscious of it, but with talk I would be. I would find it appealing that the characters are, you know, aware of oppression but not over... overwhelmed by it... sort of, take the upper hand and... Sarah: Well, and they're all so human. That's what I [like], the humor, the family situations and all. It's just like anybody else. Cynthia: Everybody can identify with them. Denise: You know, I was reminded of what our speaker said [referring to J LR Critical Issues: Limits of Identification 261

10 J LR Lewis an in-service speaker] when I was reading this book, how there's so much more similarity in this book than there is difference. And you just identify with the family and the funny situations and the things that happen, You know, the sibling rivalry, and so many of those things were just... Sarah: It calls to mind things that happened in your family that were similar. Denise: Exactly. Exactly. That's exactly right. Sarah: The Buster Brown and all that stuff that those of us who are older remember those things, and... Abby: I had Buster Brown shoes. Cynthia: I had Buster Brown shoes. Earlier in this discussion, we had discussed the young narrator's description of his sister's new Buster Brown shoes. He was secretly delighted by the idea of her tramping on the White figure of Buster Brown imprinted on the shoe's soles; so it was particularly interesting that we returned to Buster Brown shoes as a point of similarity when the author took pains to set up these shoes as a symbol of a secret resistance. Also, although the book does depict humorous scenes of sibling rivalry and parent/child conflict, the book ends with the youngest child nearly dying in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, something our discussion at this point seemed to skirt or ignore in our shared enjoyment of the book's "universal" appeal. In my next brief example, which starts a few turns after the connection we made to Buster Brown shoes, Denise, one of the teachers, pointed to the identification she felt with the characters in this book, but she linked this identification with an aesthetic understanding of how the text was constructed. Her comment followed one of mine, in which I pointed out that the family's values are easy for many readers to identify with, but in the end, when readers "live through" the experience of the church bombing, White readers are forced to understand that their experience cannot be the same as this family's. Denise:... Maybe you really are totally pulled into the, the... Sara: Touchy, feely, oh this is good, and then bingo! Denise:... how you identify with this family. How they are like you. How we are, you know, so similar, and there are so many things that you share. And then, as you said, at the end, then you realize... Denise: but they're just like us. You know, we're all the same. You know why, why is this the device [to end the book]? Here Denise's observation helped us to understand how this text positioned us as White readers. That is, we made the connections that the text 262

11 invited us to make - through images of family life, sibling rivalry, and humorous family stories - and in so doing, we viewed the text as one that focused on universal themes. In the end, however, we were reminded of the limits of that identification, limits that were heightened by the artful language and structure of the text. The limits of our identification as White readers deepened our aesthetic appreciation of the text and our ability to understand how racism permeated the life of this family. Yet, the novel does not allow any reader to see this family as mere victims of a racist society. It is not until they travel south to Birmingham that readers see their lives as circumscribed by racism, and even then, we see the family responding to these limits with savvy and satire. As Denise pointed out, Mrs.Watson "takes great pains to make sure that they're in the right place at the right time," referring to her careful planning of where it would be safe to stop for rest and food. Mr. Watson eases the tension by mocking the voice of a White Southern racist as he imagines the family stopping for lodging or food. For readers who are insiders to these experiences of racism, an aesthetic reading of this text may well include identification with character and plot. For readers who are outsiders to these experiences of racism, an aesthetic reading is not about identification, but about understanding how the text works to position particular readers as outsiders. This position deepens the understanding of the characters lives as separate from the reader's own in important ways. In disrupting the reader's inclination to identify, the text heightens the reader's self consciousness and text consciousness in a way that should not be viewed as less aesthetic than a more direct or immediate relationship between reader and text. Certainly, we have all experienced the pleasure of identification as we read, and I do not wish to minimize the significance of this pleasure in my own life or in the lives of the children I have taught and the university students I now teach. I am persuaded by Dudley-Marling and Murphy's (1998) claim that pleasure is often characterized in relation to its binary opposites - pleasure and work, pleasure and pain, and so on. The authors speculate about what a "discourse of pleasure" (p. 113) might mean as it relates to reading and writing, practices that signal the serious purposes of school and work. One possible way to address such a discourse, they suggest, is to focus on the "risks of reading" (p. 113). To recognize the limits of identification is one such risk, but it is a risk that can result in what McGillis (1997) refers to as "a creative reconstruction of that which we read" (p. 130). Using the power to reconstruct, McGillis adds,"results not only in an understanding we would not otherwise have, but also in what I have no other word for except 'pleasure'" (p. 130). If pleasure in elementary school literature programs generally takes the shape of personal response and identification - the most common J LR Critical Issues: Limits of Identification 263

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