Sure, I admit that I struggled with toeing the line between political debate and literary application, which may have deterred me from speaking my mind (this being an English class). Maybe I felt unmoored and unsure of where to even begin to tackle the enormous issue. Though I've made no conclusions, I think it may be because I thought of it as an ISSUE rather than a THEORY.
The following is not a criticism of Dr. MB's curriculum, but perhaps more of a critique of the literary curriculum at large:
I feel like we do a disservice to these various identity theories by limiting them to a day's worth of discussion. Merely acquainting ourselves with the "tip of the iceberg" isn't enough for such universal theoretical lenses; identity theories pervade nearly every culture around the world, and deserve to be applied to literature as thoroughly as close reading or deconstruction. Qualifying them as academic theories makes them less scary than if they were social issues.
I know there is only so much time to learn in one semester, but I guess what I'm trying to say is by limiting time spent on these social/identity-based theories we risk relegating them to a) uncomfortable topics or b) that weird place in-between discomfort and willingness to discuss (read: political issues) rather than different ways to analyze literature.
This is me trying to figure out what the hell I'm trying to say:
Maybe I'm better at Q&Q than Paragraphs
Source:https://i.redd.it/j51a17rxq7801.gif
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