Conley Hausle

Doctor Marc Ouellette

English 327W

19 October 2018

Assignment One: Subjectivity in Writing

One of the most important things a child learns in school is how to write. Writing is a

skill that follows a child throughout his or her life. Thus, it is crucial for students to be able to do

it well. When children are younger, they are generally assigned a topic. They are told to write

about something, and they do so. This is one kind of subjectivity in writing. Another kind of

subjectivity, perhaps less noticeable, but no less present, occurs when students are older. This

kind of subjectivity occurs when students are allowed to select and pursue their own topics.

However, as a result of either life experiences or limitations placed by the teacher, their writing

is still subject to the influence of outside forces. This can be seen in many ways, from the topics

they pick to write about to the stances they take in their writing. Everything they write is

influenced by something outside of their control, and perhaps even above their notice. The

question becomes, do these students really have a choice in what they write, or is everything

simply influenced by the things around, giving them little to no real choice?

In their piece “Me,” Andrew Bennet and Nicholas Royle discuss subjectivity in great

detail. In one part of the paper they make the point that:

We are subjects in the sense of being ‘subject to’ others ‘by control or

dependence’…right from birth and even before: not only are we radically

dependent on the father who sires us and the mother who bears us, but also on the
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environment…into which we are born, as well as on the multiple forms of

authority and government which condition our upbringing (Bennet and Royle).”

This form of subjectivity is often visible in works that are more political in nature. A teacher can

usually tell the political views of a child’s parents based on how he or she writes about

politicians and political views. Children, especially younger children, are unlikely to have strong

political views, as they are generally not going to be strongly involved in political affairs they

cannot vote in or influence. This is further expressed by the views of Max Horkheimer and

Theodor Adorno. In their piece “The culture industry: Enlightenment as mass deception" they

state that:

The ruler no longer says: “You must think as I do or die. He says: You are

free not to think as I do; your life, your property, everything shall remain yours,

but from this day on you are a stranger among us.” Not to conform means to be

rendered powerless, economically and therefore spiritually – to be ‘self-employed

(2006).

This is oftentimes evident in the way children change their views once they leave home. When

one is at home, it is often safer to agree with whatever one’s parents and family believe, even if it

is not a point of view that said child holds. Oftentimes, once children have moved out and are

living by themselves, they are able to better express their own views without familial

repercussions. Thus, the opinions that they often express in the elementary, middle, and high

school years are a product of their environment, and unlikely to be opinions they have developed

themselves. This is imperative for a teacher to understand, and to grade according to the quality

of the writing and how much the writing meets the required assignment, instead of grading it

based on the teacher’s personal views.

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For another example of how all writing is subject to outside influence, one need look no

further than Naomi Klein’s work No Logo, specifically the chapter “Alt. Everything: The Youth

Market and the Marketing of Cool.” In this piece she makes the comment that:

The myth of the Woodstock is a sovereign youth-culture state was part of

a vast project of generational self definition-a concept that would’ve been wholly

foreign to those in attendance at Woodstock ‘94, for whom generational identity

had largely been a prepackaged good and for whom the search for self had always

been shaped by marketing hype, whether or not they believed it or defined

themselves against it. This is a side effect of brand expansion that is far more

difficult to track and quantify than the branding of culture and city spaces. This

loss of space happens inside the individual; it is a colonization not a physical

space but of mental space (Klein, 63).

Klein’s statement can easily be applied to children and their writing. Specifically, one should

focus on her statement about their self-image being shaped by marketing (Klein, 63). Children’s

views of many things such as body image, perceptions of what is popular or unpopular, and how

they should speak and act are influenced by things like marketing and television. This can

become very evident in their writing. One can see where they have taken things they see on

television shows and in ads and made them part of their personality. It is evident in how they

word their sentences and how they approach certain things. This kind of influence upon their

writing, while less insidious then the kind of influence perpetuated by one’s family, can still

make it very difficult to tell what a student truly thinks. After all, they may express opinions hey

do not actually hold, particularly in writing that will be read aloud or displayed for other students

to see, in a bid to fit in or “be cool.”

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Another flaw in the system that subjects students to a predetermined point of view is the

way education is set up. In his essay “From Culture to Hegemony” Dick Hebdige writes that:

The categorization of knowledge into arts and sciences is reproduced into

the faculty system which houses different disciplines in different buildings, and

most colleges maintain the traditional divisions by devoting a separate floor to

each subject. Moreover, the hierarchal relationship between teacher and taught is

inscribed in the very layout of the lecture theatere where the seating

arrangements-bench is rising in tears before a race lectern-dictate the flow of

information serve to naturalize professorial authority. Thus, a whole range of

decisions about what is and what is not possible within education have been

made, however unconsciously, before the content of individual courses is even

decided (1993).

What Hebdige is saying here, and what educators need to keep in mind when teaching their

students how to write, is that the way the system of education is set up, decisions about what

students will write and how they will write have already been made, often without the students’

knowledge, or even without the knowledge of the teachers. In other words, everything in

education is already set up, and students may not have as much of a choice in picking their topics

or interests as one may be led to believe. For example, return to the point about educators

making sure to grade students on the quality of their work, and not their point of view. Some

students will, out of fear of educators doing precisely this, take on a point they do not agree with,

merely to get a good grade. They may even do this subconsciously, shying away from a topic

they themselves may be passionate about simply because they know their instructor does not care

for the topic or is vehemently opposed to the student’s point of view on said topic.
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Another aspect of writing that teachers need to keep in mind is that the reader is just as

subject to their culture and experiences as the writer is. This concept is best stated by Walter

Benjamin, who wrote that:

The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in

the fabric of tradition. This tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely

changeable. An ancient statue of Venus, for example, stood in a different

traditional context with the Greeks, who made it an object of veneration, than

with the clerics of the Middle Ages, who viewed it as an ominous idol (2010).

This goes back to the fact that the instructor and the student may see things very differently, and

that the instructor needs to consider this in grading. Context is absolutely everything. For

example, a white female teacher may not completely understand a paper about life experiences

written by an African-American male student. While they will shar some experiences, on the

whole it is likely that some of their life experiences will be different, if not outright

contradictory. Thus, it is important for both reader and writer to understand that sometimes they

simply are not on the same wavelength, and that is fine. What is not fine is if a student’s grades

suffer as a direct result of this miscommunication. This is why it is vital that teachers do their

best to be able to understand all of their students. After all, if they don’t understand their

students’ backgrounds, they may not understand some of the points a student makes, which could

lead to poor grades via no fault of the students’ work.

Furthermore, this is actually something that teachers need to take into account when

writing and/or selecting the materials they use for their classes. Teachers need to consider not

only their personal subjectivity, but that of their students as well. This is especially crucial in

making sure that the materials they present are not biased, be it unintentional or otherwise,
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towards or against a particular group of students. This point is driven further home by Marshall

McLuhan, who states that:

…to listen to radio or to read the primed page is to accept these extensions

of ourselves into our personal system and to undergo the "closure" or

displacement of perception that follows automatically. It is this continuous

embrace of our own technology in daily use that puts us in the Narcissus role of

subliminal awareness and numbness in relation to these images of ourselves

(2013).

In other words, people become so numb to their own experiences that they fail to realize that

others do not have the same experiences. This, as stated before, can be an issue not only from the

perspective of the student, but from the perspective of the teacher as well. Moreover, it can affect

the student’s writing for years to come.

A final point for this piece comes from the work of Jean Baudrillard, who writes that “…

the whole system becomes weightless, it is no longer itself anything but a giant simulacrum, that

is to say never exchanged for the real, but exchanged for itself, in an uninterrupted circuit

without reference of circumference (1990).” This is a good example of the way people somewhat

lose themselves in their own reality, sometimes forsaking true reality. This is crucial in the

classroom. A teacher cannot do this. If they do their work will suffer, and their students’ work

will suffer. Writing is something that requires some imagination, but also some sort of grounding

in reality. Thus, allowing oneself to become lost in subjectivity can destroy what would

otherwise be good writing.

In conclusion, it is vital that teachers realize just how subjective writing truly is. People

are subject to so many outside influences, whether they realize it or not, this is visible in few
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things in the way it is visible in writing. Students are shaped by so many things that they don’t

even realize, and these influences are bound to come across in their writing. At the end of the

day, all that matters is that their teachers take care to acknowledge all that their students are

subjected to when grading their writing, and all will be well.

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References

Baudrillard, Jean. "Precession of Simulacra." Simulations, Semiotext(e, 1990.)

Benjamin, Walter. The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Prism Key Press, 2010.
Bennett, Andrew and Royle, Nicholas. “Me”. Accessed 17 October 2018
Hebdige, Dick. "From culture to hegemony." The cultural studies reader (1993): 357-367.
Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. "The culture industry: Enlightenment as mass deception."
Media and cultural studies: Keyworks (2006): 41-72.
Klein, Naomi. "Alt. Everything: the youth market and the marketing of cool." No Logo, Picador, 2002,
pp. 63-86. Accessed 17 Oct. 2018
McLuhan, Marshall. "Narcissus to Narcosis." Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, The MIT
P, 2013.