Week 8: Salvatori Difficulty Paper

 As I read Mariolina Salvatori’s “Conversations with Texts: Reading in the Teaching of Composition,” I encountered three primary difficulties. The first was Salvatori’s use of esoteric terminology, which caused me to pause while reading, circle the unclear words, and then look them up for clarity. The second difficulty resides with Salvatori’s obfuscating use of language in certain places; these are moments when her academic jargon got in the way of my understanding of the meaning of the text. Finally, I was put off at times by what seemed to be a strident, didactic perspective on the teaching of reading and writing; while I understand that Salvatori must take and defend a strong position in this academic article, I found the tone she employs to be a bit disconcerting at times, even as I mainly agree with her basic premises and pedagogical strategies.

On the issue of esoteric terminology, my reading process faltered when I encountered words such as “interlocutor” (a person who takes part in a conversation), “hermeneutical” (interpretive or explanatory), “pharmakon” (not in a dictionary), “rapprochement” (establishment of harmonious relations), “hermetic” (isolated), and “necrophilia” (an erotic attraction to corpses). There are also untranslated words from German such as “erkennen, wiedererkennen, and herauserkennen” (447). Each of these terms gave me pause and slowed down my engagement with the text by forcing me to look up unfamiliar words and then place them into an appropriate context within the article.

• Strategies to figure out the problem: this is an easy one, as most of these words can be looked up in a dictionary, and for the untranslated words, I can review a language dictionary – in this case, in German.

Secondly, I noticed that Salvatori (perhaps unnecessarily) uses obfuscating language and vague references which at times distort the clarity of the argument. For example, she refers to Coles’ proposal to get rid of traditional readings and replace them with written assignments by students “as a pharmakon,” without ever defining what a “pharmakon” is (and in fact, this word is not defined in the dictionary, but one online source referred to it as another word for “sorcerer”). Similarly, she notes in parentheses that “a historical antecedent for my attempt to read the marks on the page as traces of a method could be found in the Renaissance ‘adversaria’ [see Sherman]” (447). I immediately feel a sense of distaste and resistance when reading this, since this sentence seems to be an unnecessary, erudite allusion that was perhaps thrown in by Salvatori to increase the article’s academic legitimacy.

• Strategies to figure out the problem: This is a more challenging difficulty to overcome than unknown vocabulary words. One strategy might be to conduct outside research on the term “pharmakon” or on the Renaissance method that Salvatori refers to, although I am not particularly inspired to do so. If these references were central to understanding the meaning of this text, however, I would conduct this research.

Thirdly, I found Salvatori’s tone to be off-putting in places. For example, she writes that “Nor – an important caveat – can these strategies be lifted out of the theoretical framework I have articulated here and seen as transportable tips or prescriptions; like all strategies, they make sense, that is, are plausible and justifiable, only within the particular approach to teaching that my understanding of ‘the act of reading’ and its connections with writing calls for” (446). What this does to me as a reader is close off the possibility of ever really using Salvatori’s strategies and understanding her theory according to her impossibly high standards; this statement conveys that if an instructor emulates her approach they must do so with exact precision, according to the dictates that she sets forth, and there is no room for flexibility or trial-and-error. This then works to deter me from exploring these strategies on my own or seeing how they might be adapted within my own classroom practices. Finally, Salvatori argues against the creative writing perspective that reading can be a “magical,” mysterious process; while I understand that it is difficult to teach students to analyze “magical” moments, Salvatori’s approach seems to close off this possibility completely, to in fact eliminate joy and pleasure from the act of reading. I wonder: can’t we leave room for this possibility and encourage these moments when they occur, while also teaching reading and writing as self-reflexive, interconnected processes? Are the two mutually exclusive?

• Strategies to figure out the problem: This may be the hardest difficulty to work with, because I cannot think of a way to get beyond my distaste for the (sometimes) strident and prescriptive tone. I think this has to do with my preference for flexibility and openness, and my expressivist belief that we all come to texts with different repertoires. Salvatori’s prescriptive and rigid approach contrasts with my preference for openness. It also seems to discount the pleasure that readers can derive from the reading process. If all pleasure is removed from the process, what is the point of it? I believe (and hope) that critical thinking can be enjoyable (although obviously, this isn’t always the case). Perhaps I need to analyze my own distaste for Salvatori’s prescriptive method and ask whether it touches upon a deeper resistance I have to obeying strict authority figures, to being told what to do without being given much choice? I think my innate resistance to authoritarian approaches, and to obeying rules imposed by authority figures, is a major reason for my resistance to this aspect of Salvatori’s article.

Two other questions: 

1. Salvatori describes “the interconnectedness of reading and writing (that virtual, provisional interaction between two extremely complex, invisible, imperceptible processes that can nevertheless be used to test and to foreground each other’s moves)” (445). Yet this seems to contradict her basic premise that reading and writing practices should be critically interrogated, analyzed, and deconstructed in the classroom. How can this be accomplished if these processes are “invisible” and unknowable? She doesn’t seem to identify how these two things can be reconciled.

2. Salvatori theorizes that we need practices where “students engage texts responsibly and critically. Responsibly, that is, in ways that as far as possible make those texts speak, rather than speak for them or make them speak through other texts” (444). I wonder how we can distinguish between these two things: making texts speak versus speaking for them – since the line between these isn’t always clear?