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Textual Orientations: Lesbian and Gay Students and the Making of Discourse Communities
Textual Orientations examines two emerging, mutually illuminating rhetoric/composition and lesbian/gay studies. It is a thorough, fascinating study of the complex rhetorical features in operation for lesbian and gay students in college writing classes. The research from which the book evolves centers on an unusual lesbian, gay, bisexual, and heterosexual together in a class for which lesbian and gay experience is the theme. What happens in such a circumstance? What kind of discourse community is formed? What kinds of new work does it enable? The book illustrates that in an academic environment that is "queercentric," the complexities of lesbian and gay subjectivity can be drawn upon to frame the very acts of composing from which they are usually erased. Using social construction theory, liberatory pedagogy, feminism, ethnography, and queer theory as frameworks for analysis, the author proposes a pedagogy that uses the vantage point of the social margin -- a place that produces not only abject outsiderhood but also acute ways of self-defining, knowing, and acting. Textual Orientations is essential reading for college composition instructors, those engaged in gay and lesbian studies, and gender specialists.
294 pages, Paperback
First published February 20, 1995
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June 11, 2018
Teachers of college-level composition classes often strive to encourage multiculturalism and diversity while promulgating the exploration of the self. Some writing classes take on themes such as “Gender, Race, and Class” or incorporate community service into the syllabus. However, many of these classes, set to a heterosexual default, do not include sexual orientation as a possible means of self-discovery. Because of homophobia or discomfort on the part of the writing teacher and/or students in writing classes, sexual orientation is often overlooked or outright ignored by heterosexuals, and often ignored or played down by gay, lesbian or bisexual students who are uncomfortable with outing themselves or fear negative reactions.
Harriet Malinowitz addresses the marginalization of gay, lesbian and bisexual students in her book Textual Orientations: Lesbian and Gay Students and the Making of Discourse Communities. The book grew out of Malinowitz’s doctoral dissertation and two writing classes specifically themed around queer discourse. She states in the Preface that her intent in writing her dissertation and conducting the two classes was to focus “on the processes by which lesbian or gay writers generate and authorize knowledge, and the conditions which affect their composing processes in collaborative classrooms.” She also raises the questions of how all writers deal with a homophobic society and its effect on the exclusion of the gay community and on heterosexuals.
Organization
The first half of the book takes a philosophical look at writing theory and how accepted composition practices include or exclude gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. This part of the book, in two parts, ranges from political and historical contexts of queer exclusion and the need for not only discourse within the gay community but in mainstream society as well. Malinowitz does stress activism and believes that writing, a political act no matter the topic, can open up new avenues of discourse toward eliminating homophobia from our society.
Part three gives an overview of the two queer-themed classes that Malinowitz taught in 1992, one at a public college with a diverse student body (gender, age, race, class, religion, and sexual orientation) and the other at a private college with a predominantly white, upper and middle class student body. Both universities are in New York City though she does not name them specifically. This section discusses Malinowitz’s syllabus, texts for the course, her methods, and her goals for having an identity-themed writing class.
Part four includes four profiles of students in Malinowitz’s class. She conducted interviews with about 14 of her students (40 altogether from both classes) as part of her research and includes some of the insights from the interviews as well as biographical information, some of the students’ writing, and her observations of their development as a result of taking the class. Malinowitz selected four students for her profiles that represented a diverse cross-section of all her students and of our society as well.
Malinowitz’s gives her conclusions in part five with specific ways to subvert homophobia in the classroom and her thoughts for inclusion of queer literature and queer-themed topics in mainstream writing classes.
The language Malinowitz employs, especially in the first half of the book, is very much centered in academic discourse which does make for slow going at times (especially for someone like me trying to absorb everything so I’ll have something pertinent to say in class discussions). The second half of the book with the student profiles and her methodology reads somewhat easier, though still the language one would expect from a PhD candidate.
Discussion
I read this book in the context of a composition theory class in which the instructor purposely placed it later in the semester because Malinowitz takes on many of the mainstream theorists we had already read about and exposes the flaws in their arguments and the ways that they exclude queers and queer theory. Reading this book also seemed particularly well-timed after our class discussions had gone back and forth on the topic of multiculturalism and exactly what audience we were supposed to be aiming multiculturalism toward.
Malinowitz approaches composition classes by applying liberatory pedagogy. Although liberatory pedagogy as expressed by Paulo Friere seems mostly aimed at ending economic class oppression, the techniques lend themselves well to feminist pedagogy and, as Malinowitz argues, to queer pedagogy as well. These techniques include collaborative learning, peer review and feedback, critical revision, and freewriting. Malinowitz also discusses how social constructionist and liberatory pedagogies fall short in addressing sexual orientation issues and how this marginalizes the very groups which, by definition, these pedagogies are aimed at.
I learned a lot in this book about how we don’t make space for queer voices in the composition classroom (though I’ve never had any doubts that we need to make space for everyone) and I learned a lot about how lesbian, gay and bisexual students may feel and act in mainstream writing courses. Malinowitz does not address Rorty’s theory of the need for “abnormal” discourse to assist us in recognizing the limits of “normal” discourse and pushing the boundaries of the communities defined by it. Although I don’t like the labels “abnormal” and “normal” in this context, I think Malinowitz could easily have co-opted the concept of having difference shake up mainstream thought which helps us to identify intolerance and eliminate it.
In the area of “I hadn’t never thought of that before reading this book in grad school,” I learned that coming out isn’t a one-time act. Gays, lesbian, and bisexuals have to come out again and again, with the same fears and stress, simply because society seems to assume that everyone/everything is heterosexual in nature by default. Queers must continually readjust that default setting whenever they meet someone new or enter a new community, etc. That says a lot to me about the ubiquitousness of homophobia.
Nitpick
Malinowitz does not address trans identity as part of queer identity, which I think is a huge oversight. Such an exploration may well be beyond the scope that Malinowitz intended, but, looking back, I find its absence disheartening.
Overall
This book is a good resource for any writing teacher, high school or college level, though I don’t think it would go amiss for teachers of other subjects to read Textual Orientations as well. This book is a great tool for exploring the “gaps” in education produced by a mainstream society that does not fully acknowledge the queer community and how to bridge those gaps in our discourse.
Harriet Malinowitz addresses the marginalization of gay, lesbian and bisexual students in her book Textual Orientations: Lesbian and Gay Students and the Making of Discourse Communities. The book grew out of Malinowitz’s doctoral dissertation and two writing classes specifically themed around queer discourse. She states in the Preface that her intent in writing her dissertation and conducting the two classes was to focus “on the processes by which lesbian or gay writers generate and authorize knowledge, and the conditions which affect their composing processes in collaborative classrooms.” She also raises the questions of how all writers deal with a homophobic society and its effect on the exclusion of the gay community and on heterosexuals.
Organization
The first half of the book takes a philosophical look at writing theory and how accepted composition practices include or exclude gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. This part of the book, in two parts, ranges from political and historical contexts of queer exclusion and the need for not only discourse within the gay community but in mainstream society as well. Malinowitz does stress activism and believes that writing, a political act no matter the topic, can open up new avenues of discourse toward eliminating homophobia from our society.
Part three gives an overview of the two queer-themed classes that Malinowitz taught in 1992, one at a public college with a diverse student body (gender, age, race, class, religion, and sexual orientation) and the other at a private college with a predominantly white, upper and middle class student body. Both universities are in New York City though she does not name them specifically. This section discusses Malinowitz’s syllabus, texts for the course, her methods, and her goals for having an identity-themed writing class.
Part four includes four profiles of students in Malinowitz’s class. She conducted interviews with about 14 of her students (40 altogether from both classes) as part of her research and includes some of the insights from the interviews as well as biographical information, some of the students’ writing, and her observations of their development as a result of taking the class. Malinowitz selected four students for her profiles that represented a diverse cross-section of all her students and of our society as well.
Malinowitz’s gives her conclusions in part five with specific ways to subvert homophobia in the classroom and her thoughts for inclusion of queer literature and queer-themed topics in mainstream writing classes.
The language Malinowitz employs, especially in the first half of the book, is very much centered in academic discourse which does make for slow going at times (especially for someone like me trying to absorb everything so I’ll have something pertinent to say in class discussions). The second half of the book with the student profiles and her methodology reads somewhat easier, though still the language one would expect from a PhD candidate.
Discussion
I read this book in the context of a composition theory class in which the instructor purposely placed it later in the semester because Malinowitz takes on many of the mainstream theorists we had already read about and exposes the flaws in their arguments and the ways that they exclude queers and queer theory. Reading this book also seemed particularly well-timed after our class discussions had gone back and forth on the topic of multiculturalism and exactly what audience we were supposed to be aiming multiculturalism toward.
Malinowitz approaches composition classes by applying liberatory pedagogy. Although liberatory pedagogy as expressed by Paulo Friere seems mostly aimed at ending economic class oppression, the techniques lend themselves well to feminist pedagogy and, as Malinowitz argues, to queer pedagogy as well. These techniques include collaborative learning, peer review and feedback, critical revision, and freewriting. Malinowitz also discusses how social constructionist and liberatory pedagogies fall short in addressing sexual orientation issues and how this marginalizes the very groups which, by definition, these pedagogies are aimed at.
I learned a lot in this book about how we don’t make space for queer voices in the composition classroom (though I’ve never had any doubts that we need to make space for everyone) and I learned a lot about how lesbian, gay and bisexual students may feel and act in mainstream writing courses. Malinowitz does not address Rorty’s theory of the need for “abnormal” discourse to assist us in recognizing the limits of “normal” discourse and pushing the boundaries of the communities defined by it. Although I don’t like the labels “abnormal” and “normal” in this context, I think Malinowitz could easily have co-opted the concept of having difference shake up mainstream thought which helps us to identify intolerance and eliminate it.
In the area of “I hadn’t never thought of that before reading this book in grad school,” I learned that coming out isn’t a one-time act. Gays, lesbian, and bisexuals have to come out again and again, with the same fears and stress, simply because society seems to assume that everyone/everything is heterosexual in nature by default. Queers must continually readjust that default setting whenever they meet someone new or enter a new community, etc. That says a lot to me about the ubiquitousness of homophobia.
Nitpick
Malinowitz does not address trans identity as part of queer identity, which I think is a huge oversight. Such an exploration may well be beyond the scope that Malinowitz intended, but, looking back, I find its absence disheartening.
Overall
This book is a good resource for any writing teacher, high school or college level, though I don’t think it would go amiss for teachers of other subjects to read Textual Orientations as well. This book is a great tool for exploring the “gaps” in education produced by a mainstream society that does not fully acknowledge the queer community and how to bridge those gaps in our discourse.
May 15, 2017
Interesting read, holds up on the ideals of Queer pedagogical writing. However it is somewhat dated! A lot of time has passed between now and 1995.
February 19, 2018
I started calling Malinowitz simply “Ma” because that’s how I felt about her and the queer literacy pedagogy she birthed & synthesized decades ago that I try to carry out today.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews