Group items tagged

a short essay by Peter Stallybrass that appeared in the PMLA in 2007. Stallybrass’s article has the provocative title “Against Thinking,” and in it, he argues that we think too much and don’t work enough.

Thinking is boring, repetitious, and “indolent” (1583). On the other hand, working is “easy, exciting,” and “a process of discovery” (1583). Working is challenging.

a key insight that students and scholars alike need to be reminded of: tortured and laborious thinking does not automatically translate into anything of importance

collaborative construction, I mean a collective effort to build something new, in which each student’s contribution works in dialogue with every other student’s contribution

They are making it for each other, and, in the best scenarios, for the outside world

Creative analysis is the practice of discovering knowledge through the act of creation—through the making of something new

I ask the students to do something they find severely discomfiting: creating something new for which no models exist.

If I were to say what unites these various forms of building in my classroom, I might use the term “deformance

A combination of “performance” and “deform,” deformance is an interpretative concept premised upon deliberately misreading a text

As my students build—both collaboratively and creatively—they are also reshaping, and that very reshaping is an interpretative process. It is not writing, or at least not only writing. And it is certainly not only thinking. It is work, it has an audience, and it is something my students never expected.