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jrlewis's picture

what is missing from the metaphor...

I think we might have left something out of our tripartite metaphors.  We didn't position our professors anywhere in the chart.  The way I see it; there are 2 ways to reconcile our metaphors.  Either, the professors have no special authority over the text and should be grouped with the students as fellow readers.  Or, the professors deserve a privileged position in the system because they have devoted their careers to finding meaning in texts.  Their purpose in this process is to help students engage with the text.  This parallels the role of a therapist in helping patient’s engage with their unconscious in a less wrong way.  The most important ambition is to increase meaningful communication between the patient and their unconscious.  Or the student and text, which could lead to deeper and richer interpretation of a text.  The text, like the unconscious, provides us with observations to generate a story about or an interpretation.  This sounds a lot like the work we have been doing in class this semester.  So I offer you a revised metaphor…

the reader the text + the writer
the teacher
 conscious  unconscious  therapist
 rider  horse  trainer

 

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