English 5522 - Literary Theory and Criticism
Can We Create a Hybrid Discourse?
In Tompkins' favor, I read through her essay in its entirety without making a single annotative mark. This is rare. This is a good thing. What it tells me is that I was engrossed. No, stronger. Mesmerized. Yes, me. A male in Western culture.
Okay, enough of that sentimental crap. See what she's done to me?
Tompkins dealt with some interesting ideas in terms of the way criticism has been expressed. I had not ever thought much about the two voices that everyone of us have. But as Tompkins points out, we utilize the higher voice because we've been conditioned to be ashamed of the lower one. She says, "[T]o hell with it" (2131). For that, I say to Tompkins, "Bravo! Well said!"
If this is an issue with epistemology, that is, that "emotion should be excluded from the process of attaining knowledge," then surely it has certain implications in other branches of philosophy. Should we not begin (yes, males included) to use our lower voice more, even when we are writing scholarly work? Or does this less formal voice lessen our credibility?
My initial thoughts as I try to answer that question is that maybe rather than using colloquial speech in order to conjure up emotion, we should rather write academic prose with emotion added! Tompkins doesn't seem to think this can be done. She says that for her, this practice would be "like wearing men's jeans" (2131). But I'm not convinced that both she and I shouldn't work out our struggles and attempt to meet somewhere in the middle. If women are uncomfortable writing academic prose because it lacks emotion and men are "culturally conditioned to repress emotion because it isn't academic, then maybe we both have something to work toward. The fusion between the sexes might bring about a hybrid literature that is greater than anything we've seen thus far.
Tompkins cites LeGuin, who distinguishes between the two voices: father tongue and mother tongue. The father tongue lectures. The mother tongue converses. Why can't we have a dynamic discourse that employs both tongues? We can call it 'offspring'. Here is the double meaning: Father and mother make offspring; One thought springs off another (similar to Tompkins essay style).
A concern with simply changing to a more casual tongue is that understanding might be lost in time. Shakespeare's raunchy humor is commonly missed because it is not written in high speech. Will this be the plight of our words in the year 2500 AD?
I was right along with Tompkins until she got carried away at the end. Yes, it was too emotional. Maybe we need a checks and balances system so our hybrid speech doesn't get out of hand. I mean, see went psycho at the end. Maybe she should have taken that potty break she was talking about.
Nonetheless, she had some valuable things to say. Things that I will take to heart. It is pathetic that she couldn't find any male writers on her bookshelf that suited her. But then, sometimes science and theory need no sentimental anecdote to sell the point.