Kofi #8

Like Ian, I was most struck by the dual narratives taking place in Lorraine's Story: Goedde is tutoring Lorraine, and Goedde is also telling us about tutoring Lorraine.

Personally I think it's irresponsible of Goedde to draw so many conclusions about Lorraine's experience without naming his own positionality. In other words, the piece lacked the self-awareness that I think is necessary to engage with the greater ideas that Lorraine was trying to explore in her personal essay (code-switching, racism, the failed promises of assimilation). As the reader, I'm never made aware of Goedde's race, and as a result I found myself missing an important analysis: that white people (and other people in majority groups) are more free to move between academic and creative language without having their intelligence questioned. A white man may be able to use simpler language in his discipline, but students of difference often have to conform to impenetrable academic jargon in order to be taken seriously as scholars.

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 30, 2018 at 11:35 AM

    Kofi, I super duper appreciate this post. On my own post, I criticized academic writing for attempting to erase the writer's positionality. But Geodde's piece does the same thing with creative writing. His silence in that regard felt very loud to me, especially considering the statements he was making about Lorraine. Your analysis of having to use academic language to avoid having intelligence questioned is also great.

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