Unguessed Gestures in Effective Institutions: Threats of Poetry to Urban Schooling

• In Event: Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: Ink on Paper: Figurations of the Subject English

Abstract

According to Deleuze’s “What is the Creative Act?” (1987), “A work of art has nothing to do with communication. A work of art does not contain the least bit of information. In contrast, there is a fundamental affinity between a work of art and an act of resistance.” (p. 321). Deleuze views art (including poetry) as an act of resistance in a control society based on an order of information and communication. Similarly, Agamben’s notion of “gesture” (2006) as an undirected, unproductive action that “neither makes nor acts, but takes charge,” (p. 51) suggests a movement that exists for the sake of movement. I see Deleuze’s “art” (poetry) and Agamben’s “gesture” as antithetical—even threatening— to the structure of urban (code for poor, minority [Popkewitz, 1998]) schools as progress-driven institutions of productive learning bound by aims, objectives, communication, information, and standardization. As Pinar (2012) shows, these structures keep racist structures intact: “Standardized testing reenacts racial subjugation as it commodifies black bodies as important only economically, ignoring black inquisitiveness and intellectual independence—” (p. 66).

What, then, is the role of the Teaching Artist, “an artist for whom teaching is a part of professional practice” (Rabkin and Hedberg, 2011, p. 7) who enters the urban English classroom from an outside organization to teach poetry? Within the context of the English classroom, the role of the Teaching Artist brought in to teach poetry feels fuzzy; unlike art, music, dance, and theater—subjects floundering to even stay alive in many New York City urban schools—the subject of English Language Arts already holds a highly valued place, signified by the proliferation of high-stakes tests attached to the subject, in the U.S. school system. Moreover, English teachers, whether or not they identify as poets, are expected to be able to teach poetry, even as Common Core Standards enforce the centrality of “informational” texts in the English classroom.

Through an examination of interviews I conducted with six Teaching Artists from Teachers & Writers Collaborative, I wrestle with the increasing incompatibility of the unknowing and undirected position—or unguessed gesture—of poetry and the knowing, directed position of the teacher of poetry in the urban classroom. I meditate on (measure) the personal reflections and teaching ideologies of these six Teaching Artists in relation to the construction of the “poet” and the construction of the “teacher” in the urban English classroom, especially as these context-specific constructions are shaped by movements of standardization, literacy programs, and high-stakes tests. In conversation with texts that challenge neoliberal discourses of progress and accountability (Taubman, 2009; Pinar, 2012) and in relation to Deleuze and Agamben’s provocations of art, I theorize poetry as a disruption to the progress-aimed movements of schools—a disruption that, through responsibility, makes accountability moot. Finally, using Tino Sehgal’s performance, “This Progress” (2010), I consider the powers of art/poetry as a kind of gesture (always progressive and never going anywhere) threatening to the kind of progress espoused by schools—a linear, productive “progress” projected predominantly onto minority bodies.

Author

• Maya R. Pindyck, Teachers College, Columbia University