Students and Subject Positions

Over the fall break, I began research on my extended analysis, interviewing a composition instructor that teaches courses at both New Mexico State University main campus and Dona Ana Community College. Reflecting on this interview and the difficulty my own students have with thinking of themselves as writers, I have been thinking about the relationship of classroom authority, subject positions, and interest. This led me to Brodkey’s “On the Subjects of Class and Gender in ‘The Literacy Letters’, ” which describes a postmodern view on discourse, subjects, and those who authorize texts.

The instructor I interviewed noted that there was a marked difference in the student responses to grading and peer revisions between the community college (CC) students and the main campus students. He indicated that the CC students were much more open to talking about their own work, commenting on other's work in class, and accepting peer review comments. This seemed to have to do with the subject positions of the students. Many of the CC students were pursuing education in a non-traditional avenue. Some were pursuing terminal degrees at the CC, some hoping to branch over to the main campus, and some returning students or later life students. Many varied subject positions were represented in the class.

Brodkey explains “each institutionalized discourse privileges some people and not others by generating uneven and unequal subject positions as various stereotypes and agents... Knowledge of multiple subject positions makes possible both the practical and the theoretical critiques that interrupt the assumption of unchanging, irreversible, and asymmetrical social and political relations between the privileged and unprivileged subject represented in a particular discourse” (633). In this particular situation, the instructor was applying some non-traditional composition activities and the non-traditional students found this easier to adapt to. Occupying the non-dominant subject position, the CC students seemed more open to different ways of learning to compose writing. When unfamiliar approaches were being applied, the traditional main campus students were uncomfortable with giving authority to other students to comment on their work. They were used to a structure where the teacher was the only authority that they had to appeal to. Whether they realize it or not, students are aware of how to participate in structures of normative authoritative discourse. When given the authority to evaluate peers and be evaluated, this is uncomfortable and presents a new value system.

The idea of authority figures granting validity to specific texts is important for classroom instructors and the graders in our system. This is manifested both through assigned texts that credibility is attached to and the evaluations given to students on their writing. This system seems to relate to subject position in what students think about themselves as writers- as though grades or instructor comments effect their actual subject position. They say, “I’m bad at English”, or “I’m a bad writer”, instead of “I didn’t write this very well” or “I didn’t do well on this assignment, but I can improve.” This displays a viewpoint of an internal status of being a writer vs. developing writing skills. I am interested to see if as we get into peer critiques and revisions, if the students will start to think about this differently. I also wonder what I can do along the way to help them think differently about their role as writers outside of the student-teacher authority scheme.

 Brodkey, Linda “On the Subjects of Class and Gender in ‘The Literacy Letters’.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. New York: Norton, 2009. 631-646.