On Construction and Heiner Mueller
East German Playwright Heiner Mueller (Jan. 1929-Dec 1995)
This past week, the week before classes, I spent my time running from one training session to another to share this webpage with Faculty, Staff and our Mentors, click this link to learn more about UNST MENTORS
On one occasion, after I had given my speil to a group of mentors, a thoughtful mentor came up to me and mentioned that an image/concept under the "JOURNEY" tab could be construed as oppressive. I had not only stated a college student is under construction, but I had an image of a person in a hardhat. He explained that this section of the webpage reads as if the student had no personality or self when they come to college. Another student who stood waiting to talk to me chimed in "yeah I see how it could be considered ageist, because as an older person you could be assuming young people are clueless and have no idea of who they are." The first young man continued, "it's not as if I had no personality or goals and that by coming to college I suddenly became someone. I will still be the same person I was when I came to college." My first knee jerk inclination was to say, "there is no way you are the same person after four years of college!" But I held my tongue and asked the young man to say more. I truly wanted to understand his perspective and not to be oppressive to him just because he was pointing out a different perspective.
Of course my age does make me ageist to an extent. For one thing, as I wrote in a previous post, I come from a book-based culture and my students come from a web-based one. For another, because I am older, like it or not I have more life experience. I have literally worked with thousands of students in my 20+ years in this profession. I have seen the development of students in college first hand.
Not surprisingly other responses, given my background in Critical Theory, came to mind. I was immediately reminded of Derrida et. al of the Post Structuralist/Post Modern tradition. There is always the indeterminancy of the text to contend with. Language is indeed slippery and can not be counted on to attach itself to any one meaning. It also matters what the reader brings to the text. A given reader may create any number of contradictory meanings even when there is no pesky translation issue (as with the Bible, few read Aramaic). We all read texts from our own experience and understanding. Thus my concept of "construction" was not this student/mentor's conception.
As I later mused on this interaction in my office another thing that suddenly brought itself to mind was the great East German playwright Heiner Mueller's early works. Der Bau (The Construction Site) and Zement (Cement) which was a stage adaptation of Feodor Gladkov's Socialist Realist Novel (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feodor_Gladkov). Because Mueller was writing about building a new society, construction sites and building images were rampant in his early work. One thing that has always stuck with me was his idea that unlike a building site where one starts with a blank slate and builds a new structure from the bottom up, you can't begin from the ground up and build a new home or building when building a new society. Rather, you have to live in the construction site as you are building the society. Therefore you are living in an unfinished, problematic, mess. But some messes can be very fruitful and productive. This tiny mess I got myself into with this student taught me something new about how students might perceive my ideas. I sometimes believe I have learned more from my students than I ever learned in earning a PhD!
