Forwarded message: > From [log in to unmask] Tue Dec 5 11:59 PST 1995 > Date: Tue, 5 Dec 1995 11:59:27 -0800 > From: [log in to unmask] (Ruth Derksen Siemens) > Subject: Palimpsest Comments I forwarded a CASLL comment re: palimpsest to a graduate student who has been using that metaphor to discuss Mennonite women's readings of proverbs they quilted. So, with her permission, I am forwarding her response back to CASLL (assuming I have the technical competence to do so. > Yes, I agree that students come to universities as palimpsests, but > perhaps this is our view - not theirs. Having assisted two daughters in > surviving the secondary school system, I am well aware that most adolescents > in B.C. have been immersed in systems of authority which require a stable, > unitary ideology of language. Many students come from schools which both > establish these fixed forms and then use them to sanction their existence. > Most students are well taught in the concepts of a monolithic, authoritarian > ideal writing style (without "run-on-sentences"), and resist any suggestion > of contingency. They resist any emphasis on multiplicity and adhere strongly > to the privileging of one "Version" of writing. > > I have tried to shift the emphasis from product to process. To use > your example, all buried layers of an ancient city have validity - all are > socially constructed at different times with various methods and ideals. > Rather than try to erase previous states of knowledge which were influential > at the time and which still claim adherents, I attempt to percieve them as > another in a series of contingent versions which constitute the history of > the student's knowledge and perhaps the student herself. (Whew! a > run-on-sentence) > > On another note, I've formulated some wonderful examples of how the > proverbs on the quilt function in this contingent, palimpsestic manner. I > plan to email them to you in the next twenty-four hours, wait for comments > and then add them to another "version" of the paper. > > Ruth > > > >