When Bartholomae says that students must “invent the university,” he means that the students must learn to speak the language of the certain branch they are writing for. They must learn the many ways of defining the community and the many voices within the fields.
Bartholomae suggests that we should be appreciative of our privilege to be among a powerful and established discourse and that we have that special grant of the right to speak. He also suggests that since we have this privilege we should use it to our full advantage by conveying our new and original ideas.
The first example is about a football player who decided to change the color of his socks because he thought they looked better. His teammates liked the idea and decided to change theirs too. The writer believes that what matters is that the idea came from his own imagination, even though his idea was stoeln by the copying of his teammates. Bartholomae classifies this example as not very elegant, but notes his own idea is unique.
The second example is about a girl who wrote and played her own music, but knew that her music wasn’t as good as the music she listened too. Even though she knew her music wasn’t as good she kept trying to be creative and used the music she listened to as inspiration to write better music.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think it's interesting that you point out that the writer of the football story might be worried about his idea being stolen by his teammates. It's only in his piece that having an idea equals ownership.
ReplyDeleteThe music example emphasizes that her ideas are really a collaboration between her own ideas and what she was hearing on the radio. Presumably, she would not be mad if someone was inspired by her own music, since she never fully felt her ideas were totally her own anyway.