From Pathography to Pluralism
In, Hear My Voice: A multicultural anthology of literature from the United States, editor King (1994) anthologizes multicultural stories and then asks students reflective, open-ended questions about literary elements for which they must think critically. King claims that individual voices have been suppressed in the United States for generations. “Movies, mass media, and school texts have omitted or compressed beyond recognition the rich histories and contemporary cultures of Native Americans, African Americans, Asian American, many European Americans and Latinos” (xiv). The author reminds her readers that each individual has a story that may be older than even they themselves know. “Your own story is unique. It includes who you are and how you got to be the person you are. It tells about the people who raised you and influenced you. Your story begins before your birth; your family’s history is also a part of it” (pp. xiii, xiv).
Hogan (2004) claims that voice development is part of our lives regardless of authorship or culture, and that we make meaning of our experiences through the use of literary schemas.
Thus schemas, prototypes, and exempla guide our perception and our thought, bring parts of the world into structure and emphasis, discarding or downplaying others. They also guide our literary construction of sensation and of cognition. Of course, the ordinary structures and instances that gather our daily lives into coherence figures into literature. But perhaps more importantly, literary schemas provide broad principles for new literary compositions, and literary exempla guide the detailed choice of plot, character and diction in new works. Indeed, such literary elements pervade ordinary life as well—for we understand our friends and foes in part through literary characters, our experiences and aspirations in part through literary plots (32).
And while “There are many canonical works which, though written by members of dominant groups, set out to portray the lives, feelings and society of ‘subalterns,’” it is in what Hogan calls “Writing Back” that the marginalized take back their voice. He uses Kipling as an example, suggesting that Tagore was “writing back” when he wrote Gora and undermined the racism and contradicted the Indianness of the Irish sahib in Kim (33). Hogan, like Bakhtin and Lacan, makes the connection between formation of our internal lexicon, meaning making and the development of our writer’s voice. He contends that an “idiolectical” lexicon exists in every human mind, which stores “a mental structure of words, meanings, morphological forms and principles, ‘encyclopedia information,’ personal recollections, and so forth” (p. 35). It is when the marginalized endeavor to “Write Back,” against the established stories, words and principles that have oppressed them that they render the original voice moot. “[W]hat matters for a new author is not the precursor text per se—a notion that almost becomes meaningless in this context—but the new author’s lexical internalization of the new work” (p.35). Such “Writing Back” allows the marginalized to create their own voice—a new voice or tradition for themselves. “A literary tradition is what allows a writer to create a new literary utterance, and to do so in such a way that a readership will be able to understand and respond to it” (p. 199).
Himes’ (1974) contribution to Kitzhaber and Malarkey is his essay, Dilemma of the Negro (sic) Novelist in the United States. In it, he discusses marginalized writers in relationship to their environment and to their audience.
We have a greater motive, a nobler aim; we are impelled by a higher cause. We write not only to express our experiences, our intellectual processes, but to interpret the meaning contained in them. We search for the meaning of life in the realities of our experiences, in the realities of our dreams, our hopes, our memories (p. 31).
Himes contends that when a writer’s experiences are so full of brutality, restriction and degradation, his soul is “pulverized.” However, the marginalized writer must find meaning regardless of such experiences. “Then begins his slow, tortured progress toward truth” (p. 32).
In his essay, Discourse, Tradition, and Power in a Literary Transition, Asante-Darko (1998) explored the ideology, orality, and language choices responsible for Africa’s catharsis from a predominantly oral (pre-colonial) culture, to that of a written culture (postcolonial), offering possible inroads to the way African writers use their voice development to this day.
It must be underlined that the writer’s work of correcting and influencing the lives of individuals and the wider community through the use of literary aesthetics, could not be done ex-nihilo. It had to be derived from the interpretation of the collective experience. However, the representation and interpretation of the collective experience are influenced by the personal as well as communal perceptions within one and the same society. These factors were compounded by the different levels of ambition, courage, and capabilities to erode all possibilities of a uniform perception (among different writers) as regards matters of truth and their interpretation even within the hitherto enclosed belief systems of pre-colonial Africa (pp. 2, 3).
So, those who—through self-appointed positions of expertise—interpret art and current events, express their views as societal representatives on issues of theme, language, audience, ideology and style, often determine the power relationships. Regardless of race, origin or genre of marginalization then, those imbedded in one, or a limited communication sensibility, will be oppressed by those with multiple and more widely accepted aptitudes for communication.
In The Literary Voice of Pain and Suffering, Yi (2005) contends that literature, as a discipline, can help alleviate pain and suffering—especially in cases of depression—due to its connection and 
allegiance to both the written and spoken word. “The immediate ‘painkilling placebo effect’ of words and their healing powers… …forms a link to literature whereby the isolated nature of the pain and suffering… …is given voice and expression” (p.1) Yi goes on to say that the importance of this voice cannot be understated. It a source of empowerment, and provides a link to a wider community. It could be said that the powerless are also voiceless, and that “Many who suffer silently and in confusion might be helped if we learned how to tap the resources of literature in restoring significance to an individual human voice” (p. 1). Power, in essence, then, is an arbitrary morality, created as a tool of control, whereas literature possesses the power to “reinvent suffering by extending and contracting” its borders, “orchestrating the language that validates and invalidates pain recognition of the individual voice and its agency is paramount to any reformulation of morality” (p. 2). Yi also likens Nietzsche’s paradigm of transfiguration “through sickness and creativity to literature’s role in the creation of a moral community of suffering,” in that, if “we are to be liberated,”… …“from the harmful and unjust effects of an arbitrary morality, literature’s construction of a discourse based on a ‘moral community’ of suffering takes on a profound aspect” (p. 10).
By orchestrating language, especially language ripe with emotionally charged words and experientially authentic imagery, the ingrained, traditional power structures that lead to exclusion and marginalization can be successfully challenged. The causal connections harbored in such traditions and memories lead to errors that culminate in this arbitrary morality, and literature—specifically personal and disclosive biographies—can systematically diffuse some of those assumptions.
If literature’s task is to create a discourse capable of encompassing the many perspectives and expressions of pain as well as the varying discourses that engage in its definition and treatment, it may be contained in the form of pathography. A pathography is an intensely personal account of pain and suffering, serving as a testament to the overcoming of (the) silence … and …taking its cue from Nietzsche’s maxim of the eternal recurrence, strive to nullify the oppressiveness of ‘duration in vain,’ without end or aim, [which] is the most paralyzing idea (p. 3).
The confused and powerless, who certainly experience the paralysis of “duration in vain without end or aim,” often suffer in a silent, wordless world without resources. Yi argues that by introducing personal accounts and literature into the lives of the oppressed, a transformation takes place in the regaining of their own voice. “Many who today suffer silently and in confusion might be helped if we learned to tap the resources of literature in restoring significance to an individual human voice” (p. 1). With significant pathography there is power, where there are resources there is power, and where there is individual or community voice, there is power.
Teaching Pathography
In Politics, Power and Personal Biography, Torres (1998) collected the voices of educational leaders like Gintis, Bowles, Apple, Giroux and Freire, to explore the dynamics of voice, power and education. To conceptualize these relationships, Torres expands on Wartenberg’s argument.
‘Power manifests itself as a complex social presence that exists in an intricate network of overlapping and contradictory relations.’ To consider power relationally helps to identify different power resources, and likewise to identify the relationship between power and education. Education as an institution, and as a dimension of material and symbolic life, can also be seen relationally (p. 7).
If these relations are wrought with what Apple (1998) calls “selective traditions,” then they exist as a dangerous and dividing influence on equity, especially in education. Apple suggests that these inequities will never be addressed as long as our society—as a transformed democracy which lends priorities to systems that excel in consumptive practices rather than those that excel in inclusive, pluralistic practices—does not “take seriously the collective struggles of for transforming material conditions that create ways in which we are in identifiable groups: African Americans, poor people, Latinos and Latinas, etc.” Without transforming the material conditions of our marginalized groups, education will continue to be affected, because consumers will always have an opportunity try the new and improved school and can make mechanical judgments about what constitutes a “good” school and what constitutes a “bad” school. Apple contends that this will lead to a loose educational market and a greater number of apartheid schools, especially under a national curriculum and especially when it comes to testing. “Kids with the gift of cultural capital from their parents, from elite and middle-class groups will do well on it, as usual; but this will be covered by the rhetoric of choice, standards, and accountability” (p. 44). Reduce or eliminate the selective traditions, the contradictory relations, mechanical judgments, dividing influences, and the “educational market” can be used as a tool to help transform the material conditions of the marginalized.
Bowles (1998) agrees that any educational reform is pointless without properly responding to the needs of our kids. [I]f it does not address this problem of structurally-determined power and inequities of wealth in the economy” then such a reform will be limited in its impact. Carnoy (1998) takes the issue back to its roots. “[C]olonial schooling was organized to bring native peoples into a subordinate position” and was perpetuated in the United States to keep ‘“people in their place’ while legitimizing the notion of social mobility and [thereby] making it into a powerful mythology” (pp. 81, 82). Carnoy’s own frustration in getting educational assistance to the poorest countries like Mexico, Kenya and Latin America are reflected in his cathartic dedication to the continued documentation of these struggles. “I am constantly made aware that I have a responsibility to the future, and what happens in education will have a major impact on that future. Can’t stop now” (p. 87).
Freire’s work in Chile brought about a similar, personal transformation. He contends that the theme of his seminal book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed originated from writings and ideas collected on little pieces of paper from a small notebook he carried around in a bag.
That theme was born in me with the recollection of my own relation with the oppressed of Brazil and with the difference that I found in the cultural history of Chilean society. The more I became immersed in the world of the Chilean peasant, the more I listened to the peasants speak, the more the relation to the oppressor and oppressed, of oppressive consciousness and oppressed consciousness appeared before me…they constituted an object of curiosity for me. And there is this day that I came to believe that I had to write what came to me, even as an attempt to make a contribution to those who worked in this field (p. 90).
Freire’s transformation and his sentiments echo that of Torres, Apple, Bowles and Carnoy, especially as it relates to how oppression and marginalization directly impact our learning environments.
[I]n teaching the necessary content of the field of biology, or history, or language, I debate, clarify and illuminate the class struggle in society. It is included in all the content, because I accept the school as part of that struggle. The school cannot be absent from the struggle (p. 99).
For voice-immersed learning such as this to take place among educators and students alike, the hierarchy, and the arbitrary morality of power must give way to a more liberating education—a pluralistic education, unfettered by distinctions of class, race, gender, religion, or ethnicity. Created, from it roots, by an inclusive, unification of voices, from which policy, procedure and curriculum design springs.
This is where real change begins, I believe, for educational reform in America. The antiquated system designed to give us a constant flow of consumers, soldiers and yes, criminals, no longer has pertinence in the global market. Perhaps, we could consider it a long term, replacement strategy for our annual $146 billion prison industrial complex.
References
Apple, M.W. (1998). from Torres, C.A. (1998). Education Power, and Personal Biography. Routledge: New York
Asante-Darko, K. (1998). Discourse, Tradition, and Power in a Literary Transition. Mots Pluriels. No. 8, Octobre.
Bowles, S. (1998). from Torres, C.A. (1998). Education Power, and Personal Biography. Routledge: New York
Carnoy, M. (1998). from Torres, C.A. (1998). Education Power, and Personal Biography.
Routledge: New York
Freire, P. (1998) from Torres, C.A. (1998). Education Power, and Personal Biography. Routledge: New York
Himes, C. (1974). from J. Kitzhaber, A. & Malarkey, S. The Literary Voice and the Real World. Holt, Rinehart & Winston: New York.
Hogan, P.C. (2004). Empire and poetic voice: Cognitive and Cultural Studies of Literary Tradition and Colonialism. New York: SUNY Press.
King, L. Ed. (1994) Hear My Voice: A multicultural anthology of literature from the United States. Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesely.
Torres, C.A. (1998). Education Power, and Personal Biography. Routledge: New York Yagoda, B. (2004). The Sound on the Page. New York: Harper Collins.
Yi, M.J. (2005). The Literary Voice of Pain and Suffering. Anatomy and Poetics. Issue 6, Winter. Retrieved from http://www.doubledialogues.com/issue_six/myoung.html,
