a(stereo)typical

either or

Today, on the second day of my holiday, i decided to devote some time to my new area of research interest, social and educational research. The course does not start until September, but the resources are out there and so is my intention and curiosity. I printed a couple of articles from the online library on self-stereotyping, a topic that had been on my list for a while, for professional and personal reasons. In this very limited bibliography i read that one attributes ingroup characteristics to the self or one may generalize self-characteristics to the ingroup. In the first case, "i am like my group" and in the second, "my group is like me." Obviously, the directionality issue is crucial in determining self-stereotyping; the authors concluded that both processes are at play and prevalence of one over the other depends on the relative status of the group one belongs to. I read the article, i followed the argument and understood the conclusion; i do not possess the knowledge and the skills to critique this type of research. But it left me wondering how i would define my ingroup, in my current social setting, and whether i use a deduction-to-the-self or induction-to-the-ingroup process of self-stereotyping. I concluded that i could very well be an ingroup of one, were i to factor in differentiations that could break up the starting ingroup of, for example, women. In other words, i am my group.

neither here nor there

It struck me as a sad and dangerous conclusion, sad because it sounded lonely and dangerous because it sounded schizophrenic. I discussed it with my better half and i pondered; i mulled it over and i lamented the fuzziness of it all. And i concluded that if i am indeed my group, it is an advantageous position, offering me a perspective that better people might envy. Lack of an ingroup entails a lack of loyalty that binds and deductively or inductively, stereotypes. Maybe this came, very conveniently, after a discussion i had this morning whose subtext read as, yet again, a binary opposition that can be resolved only in hierarchical terms, only after a certain power and status struggle is involved. Native or non-native, X or Y, black or white, with us or against us. Mental constructs or constructed reality? False perception or self-serving representation? Binaries, i believe, serve a very basic interpretational purpose that educators should strive to steer away from. If our students are to be open-minded, reflective, caring, knowledgeable communicators and thinkers, we should be aware of the plurality and diversity of ingroups, as well as the possibility of emerging ingroups or, potentially, groups of one or two. Shifting ingroups, as well as the variability and versatility of ingroups depending on context. This will develop their "sympathies to other selves, other domains, other dreams, other words, other territories of concern" as Susan Sontag described her own engagement with literature.

so what?

As a group of one, i am the other. A departure point and a destination, in my book.

the end of world literature

It's the time of the year when IB schools prepare to send their students' World Literature Assignments to examiners. World Literature is a component of their A1 course and because assignments are borne out of the teaching of the World Lit texts this gives the component a beginning a middle and an end, making it a product-driven process. For this reason i have to suffer the same loss every year. The end of World Literature.
Luckily, the IB has come to my rescue and i have the chance to remain part of the World Lit process after my students' work has left the nest, in my role as examiner. What is more, the IB seems to be looking at the teaching of World Lit a bit differently these days with the introduction of the new syllabus. In the new order of things, the World Lit component will not be so much product-driven, although the final production, i.e. the assignment is still required, but will focus more on the teaching/studying of the works. To the IB's credit, the new syllabus gives the teachers the option of including up to three more World Lit texts than the number required in their syllabi. And wait, there is more. Works from the Prescribed Literature in Translation will be included in both the new Language A courses. It is a new dawn for World Literature indeed. I will not have to do without World Lit ever again.
For the first time, I feel that someone out there heard me pondering and musing and wondering and sent a response of some sort to my question: "What is World Litearture?" Let me count the ways in which i can approach this: 1. literature from all over the world, i.e. from any part of the world, 2. for a specific time and place, literature from another time and another place, 3. any work of otherness, however that is defined, 4. (almost) any evolving text form.
Well, the IB did not really respond to my question, but they did acknowledge the validity of it and the level of interest in the matter for IB stakeholders. Beyond IB purposes and planning, however, the question remains, with its conceptual loops and perceptions with a political aspect. The state of affairs is very different from the first use of the term World Literature by, for example, Goethe, who saw his work reflected back to him by the foreign press. He saw Weltliteratur as a matter of national pride which he invited his fellow counrtymen to join. The mirroring principle that Goethe experienced originally led him to understand the world as an expanded version of home. Interestingly, after several readings of non-German texts, he notes, in Conversations with Eckermann the kinship with other writers, but also remarks on the range of distinctive features in their practice. The two ideas do not need to be mutually exclusive. They involve a contradiction that is also symbolic of the human experience, otherness could be a question of degree. Goethe's paradox is not perceived as such by my students. Is this the impact a common language, i.e. English, has on them? Is this a sign of cultural or literary de-sensitization? Or are distinctive cultural and literary features taken for granted, so much so that they are not really noticed?
The debate has significant depth and range and my readings on this are fragmentary. It is fascinating to read Stephen Owen's criticism of a new World Literature that is too westernized in What is World Poetry: The Anxiety of Global Influence (1990) and Rey Chow's response that the problem is not the writer, but the anxiety the Western critic feels due to his loss of authority in Writing Diaspora (1993). Right now, i am in no position to take a side and claim that writing is falling victim to global consumerism or that the euro-american critical status quo is feeling threatened. Maybe i will be able to express an opinion in the future. To me, what is fascinating, and intriguing but also, in a way, more pertinent to the learning experience in the classroom is the predicament, relevant to World Literature, that Salman Rushdie discusses in Imaginary Homelands when he says: "Many have referred to the argument about the appropriateness of [English] to Indian themes. And I hope all of us share the view that we can't simply use the language in the way the British did; that it needs remaking for our own purposes. Those of us who do use English do so in spite of our ambiguity towards it, or perhaps because of that, perhaps because we can find in that linguistic struggle a reflection of other struggles taking place in the real world, struggles between the cultures within ourselves and the influences at work upon our societies. To conquer English may be to complete the process of making ourselves free."
Thank you, Salman. Thank you, IB.