On Doris Sommer’s Proceed with Caution, when engaged by minority writing in the Americas.
Doris Sommer is a Professor of Romance Languages and Literature at Harvard University. She has written several books around the theme of bilingualism with in the social context of America and teaches classes that deal with this topic. Most of her classes are listed under Spanish. For her webpage, click here.
Proceed with Caution is a 270-page book of essay presenting arguments and issues with regards to writers such as Toni Morrison, Rigoberta Menchú, Jesusa Palancares, Richard Rodriguez. I don’t know these writers all too well (which is pretty ironic given the fact that they are being addressed here as minority…). She brings in literary theorists like Fish, Iser, Poulet, Spivak, and philosophers like Wittgenstein and Hegel, and discusses their thoughts along the context of minority writings.
Honestly, I’m moving very slowly on this because I don’t know much about the primary writers, I can only distantly recall the literary theorists from Tom’s Critical Theory class I AUDITTED, and, the language used in this book is pretty complex to me. Nonetheless, I did get through the first 30 pages or so and I’m enjoying it very much. It is difficult because it deals with sensitive issues and I think the book wants to be both revolutionary and diplomatic at the same time.
Here is the main argument of the first 30 pages: A Rhetoric of Particularism (and I’ll try to say this both revolutionarily and diplomatically):
She argues that minority writings reside at the “boundary between contact and conquest.” There exists this tension between engagement and surrender (which I think resonates inevitably with minority political status). Writers do want to get their views across but in such a manner that their views remain un-colonized by their “superior” readers. These writings resist the “epistemological desire that drives readers towards data” but insist that they be read with respect.
This is a quick sum-up. The book discusses this issue in great, highly intellectual and grounded in academic tradition kind of details. I feel I need to have my Critical Theory textbooks and my Dictionary of Philosophy with me to keep up with her. Maybe this is a good thing to do, actually.
I want to give a paragraph to what this book might speak to my own work because I think it does (and probably why this book got assigned to me. Thank you, Juliana. It’s great!). I think she got me completely with the fact that I too hope for engagement that doesn’t render me digestible completely by “them” (meaning readers who, as Sommer argues, “naturally feel entitled to know what they’re reading—often to know it with the conspiratorial intimacy of potential partner”). Because I’m different (and everyone deserves to be different). Making assumption is a bad bad thing to me. So I appreciate it that the book fights with making assumptions.
I was talking vaguely about PhD programs with Juliana (I mean I was vague, Juliana wasn’t). So, here is plan, I’m gonna first build myself a library of books around this topic of multi/bilingualism with English being one of the multiple/two. This book will definitely be one of them. And I’m gonna read and read and read. By the end, I probably will be able to be less vague about what I might try to pursue as PhD project. I’ll blog about it if you guys want to hear.
(Juliana—For example, a book like this would fall under the umbrella of English PhD, right? And so would Postcolonialism? What about Alastair Pennycook’s “The Cultural Politics of English As an International Language”? Would that be linguistics or English, or something else? & Where should I order these books from now that I am even more reluctant to use amazon.com? Thanks :) )
ps: Other books will include: Said's Oreintailism, Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks, Freire's Padagogy of the Oppressed. I mean I have skimmed all these. Now I want to study them.
pps: The list will keep getting bigger, I hope. So Suggestions are very welcome! Thanks!
Doris Sommer is a Professor of Romance Languages and Literature at Harvard University. She has written several books around the theme of bilingualism with in the social context of America and teaches classes that deal with this topic. Most of her classes are listed under Spanish. For her webpage, click here.
Proceed with Caution is a 270-page book of essay presenting arguments and issues with regards to writers such as Toni Morrison, Rigoberta Menchú, Jesusa Palancares, Richard Rodriguez. I don’t know these writers all too well (which is pretty ironic given the fact that they are being addressed here as minority…). She brings in literary theorists like Fish, Iser, Poulet, Spivak, and philosophers like Wittgenstein and Hegel, and discusses their thoughts along the context of minority writings.
Honestly, I’m moving very slowly on this because I don’t know much about the primary writers, I can only distantly recall the literary theorists from Tom’s Critical Theory class I AUDITTED, and, the language used in this book is pretty complex to me. Nonetheless, I did get through the first 30 pages or so and I’m enjoying it very much. It is difficult because it deals with sensitive issues and I think the book wants to be both revolutionary and diplomatic at the same time.
Here is the main argument of the first 30 pages: A Rhetoric of Particularism (and I’ll try to say this both revolutionarily and diplomatically):
She argues that minority writings reside at the “boundary between contact and conquest.” There exists this tension between engagement and surrender (which I think resonates inevitably with minority political status). Writers do want to get their views across but in such a manner that their views remain un-colonized by their “superior” readers. These writings resist the “epistemological desire that drives readers towards data” but insist that they be read with respect.
This is a quick sum-up. The book discusses this issue in great, highly intellectual and grounded in academic tradition kind of details. I feel I need to have my Critical Theory textbooks and my Dictionary of Philosophy with me to keep up with her. Maybe this is a good thing to do, actually.
I want to give a paragraph to what this book might speak to my own work because I think it does (and probably why this book got assigned to me. Thank you, Juliana. It’s great!). I think she got me completely with the fact that I too hope for engagement that doesn’t render me digestible completely by “them” (meaning readers who, as Sommer argues, “naturally feel entitled to know what they’re reading—often to know it with the conspiratorial intimacy of potential partner”). Because I’m different (and everyone deserves to be different). Making assumption is a bad bad thing to me. So I appreciate it that the book fights with making assumptions.
I was talking vaguely about PhD programs with Juliana (I mean I was vague, Juliana wasn’t). So, here is plan, I’m gonna first build myself a library of books around this topic of multi/bilingualism with English being one of the multiple/two. This book will definitely be one of them. And I’m gonna read and read and read. By the end, I probably will be able to be less vague about what I might try to pursue as PhD project. I’ll blog about it if you guys want to hear.
(Juliana—For example, a book like this would fall under the umbrella of English PhD, right? And so would Postcolonialism? What about Alastair Pennycook’s “The Cultural Politics of English As an International Language”? Would that be linguistics or English, or something else? & Where should I order these books from now that I am even more reluctant to use amazon.com? Thanks :) )
ps: Other books will include: Said's Oreintailism, Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks, Freire's Padagogy of the Oppressed. I mean I have skimmed all these. Now I want to study them.
pps: The list will keep getting bigger, I hope. So Suggestions are very welcome! Thanks!
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