Atwell-Vasey, Wendy. (1998). Nourishing Words: Bridging Private Reading and Public Teaching. Reviewed by Denise Egéa-Kuehne

Atwell-Vasey, Wendy. (1998). Nourishing Words: Bridging Private Reading and Public Teaching. Albany: State University of New York Press Pp. xi + 246. $59.95         ISBN 0-7914-3631-4 (Cloth) $19.95         ISBN 0-7914-3632-2 (Paper) Reviewed by Denise Egéa-Kuehne Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge August 5, 1999 . . . a hush falls over the school classroom. . . . Used to finding words whenever and wherever they wanted or needed them in daily life, people crossing the bridge to school, experience the wind being knocked out of them and often find themselves silent, or wanly imitative. (p. 2)          With these words, Atwell-Vasey describes a problem which is prevalent in our schools. Moreover, she sees a gap between teachers' perception and use of language and literature in "private life," and in school. Actually, students or teachers do not really "find themselves silent," as anyone who has been in a classroom is well aware of. In fact, too much talking may be the problem. But this is not the kind of conversation or words Atwell-Vasey is concerned about.           In her introduction, she poses several questions and specifically announces what the focus of her book is: This book is about how language arts teaching, or English education . . . can be realigned to acknowledge that linguistic structure comes from within ourselves, and between ourselves, and not from outside ourselves. (p. 4) She addresses this book to teachers, as well as "anyone else who has spent a good deal of time in schools" (p. 16). She suggests that it may be of interest to readers in "English education, teacher education, reader response, and literary theory . . . gender studies and cultural studies, psycholinguistics" (p. 16). She also sees it as being a valuable addition to "graduate education classes in research, foundations, and curriculum theory" (p. 16).           I found this book to be of interest on three levels: the research design of the study on which it is based and its rationale, the broad theoretical overview framing the whole project, and the teachers' autobiographical accounts, widely used in the text, and reproduced in their entirety in an appendix. The Research           Atwell-Vasey reports on a study of three teachers' reading experiences and teaching practices. She designed it to explore the question she poses in her introduction: "If the flow and vitality of words are so prized in daily life, why are they constrained so harshly at school so that there results a kind of deafening silence?" (p. 2). With the intention of using feminist object relations theory both as a framework for her research and as "an interpretive lens" (p. 9), she engages several approaches in her research methodology. She combines narrative and ethnography, relying on the three teachers' autobiographical accounts of their personal experiences with reading and teaching, on her observation of what they do in their classrooms (teaching practices, syllabi, reading assignments, and examinations), and on the professional discourse prevalent in the field of English education.           Atwell-Vasley insists on several occasions that autobiography is the best approach for this kind of study. She acknowledges having learned this method from William Pinar and Madeleine Grumet (1978). She has relied on autobiographical narrative in her own teaching, whether working with undergraduate or graduate students, exploring personal experiences associated with course topics (e.g., education, but also forming communities, work and family, leadership, welfare and homelessness). She declares: "Methodologically, there are strong benefits to this autobiographical practice" (p. 13). Students' participation is engaged through the "efforts, investments, responsibility and freedom" elicited by their autobiographical contributions. Atwell-Vasey explains how their own narratives enable them to interact directly with theory and research, establishing "a dialogue" between their personal accounts and "what they read, view, and discuss in class" (p. 13). Later on in their programs of study, they can use these narratives to reinterpret theory as well as play theory against their own experiences to enrich them. However, in her research, she sees autobiographical narratives "more like raw data than explanatory evidence" (p. 14).           In this particular study, Atwell-Vasey involved three teachers of varying experience, teaching English in three different school settings. Jane teaches an eleventh-grade English Literature class in a large suburban school system. Philip works with a ninth grade English class, in an urban all- male preparatory magnet school, part of a large city public system. April is in her third year of teaching one eighth grade English class in a private school for girls. Atwell-Vasey asked them "to write [over the course of several months] multiple narratives of both their personal and school reading experiences" (p. 12). She was interested in their reading, as well as their learning how to read, literature. She asked the three teachers to reflect on the process of their autobiographical writing. She also looked at samples of their curricula which they deemed illustrative of their respective approaches to teaching literature.           These writings revealed that "teachers [represent] themselves in multiple and competing situations" (p.14). What is unique and "exciting about these pieces" according to Atwell- Vasey, is that they are so different from short stories, case studies, or other "published accounts of school problems by teachers" (p. 15). Unlike those, in autobiographical writings, "an individual and real person's divided subjectivity, unfinished thoughts, and contradictions are sought, tolerated, valued, and used to find space for change" (p. 15).           In addition, she sees this method of inquiry as a means to make her work more enticing and accessible to teachers. Her declared intention is to "construct a bridge . . . so that the teachers will see themselves in the larger cultural issues of our day [original emphasis]" (p.16). She hopes her readers--teachers and other people interested in or involved with education--will thus be encouraged to establish parallels between their own experiences and those described by her in this book. She also hopes that they bring to this text a very open mind, a "mind set of comparison, leaving spaces for reflection and conversation," especially when "dealing with [its] psychoanalytic theory" (p. 12).           According to Grumet, Atwell-Vasey managed to use her participants' autobiographies "without exploiting them because she . . . located them within a theoretical discourse that is rich and complex enough to embrace them without diminishing them" (p. x). This theoretical discourse is in fact multiple. From Theory to Practice           Atwell-Vasey gives a broad overview of the history and current theory of English teaching. Together with the presentation of an alternative theoretical approach to English teaching, it constitutes the first part of her book.           In that first section, Atwell-Vasey describes several theories. She opposes Kristeva's maternal theory to Freud's and Lacan's psychoanalytic theory. She stresses that the latter, embedded in a patriarchal context, ignores or distorts the role played by the mother and the many relations through which language comes to us. She sees Kristeva's maternal theory as closely linked to language learning theory, through "the need to nourish the speaking, reading, and writing student as a subject who was brought to reality and language by others through love" (p. 8). Atwell-Vasey points out that maternal theory challenges patriarchal assumptions, and their lack of consciousness of "the many aspects of the biophysiological and sociofamilial relations through which language comes to us" (p. 8). She believes that object relations theory, a branch of psychoanalysis, can help us recover our unconscious experiences through "naming, shaping, and researching these processes and limitations, and . . . locate the desires, losses, pleasures, and efforts that we constantly ask language to carry" (p. 8-9). In order to make the mother's role and influence more visible, she overlays those theories with feminist theory, calling on Habermas's emphasis on teaching as a self-formative process. She proposes a feminist object relations theory "with an emphasis on the maternal, as an alternative perspective for interpreting language arts and English teaching" (p. 9). Her declared intention is to use this psychoanalytic feminist object relations theory to represent the experiences narrated by the teachers involved in her study, "in Habermas's words, . . . schematically as a systematic generalization of what otherwise would remain pure history [original emphasis]" (Habermas, 1968, 259, quoted in Atwell-Vasey, p. 10). Through this interpretive framework, she hopes to accomplish a "translation," a transference of "the story's characters, who are children, parents, and significant others, . . . to the stories of teachers" (p. 11).           In Part II, Atwell-Vasey sets out to "[show] how English teaching practices could change" (p. 16). Relying on Kristeva's maternal theory, and her connection between language and desire, she points out that children do not learn by imitation only, but rather by "incorporation," through what Kristeva calls reduplication. She further explores the relation between the world and the body through Merleau-Ponty, who "unites sounds, structure and visuals with the body when he describes a word's effect on us" (p. 71). Teaching strategies taking this into account would include, for instance, Grumet's concept of "scoring," that is theater in education patterned after a musical score. Again, Atwell-Vasey quotes Merleau-Ponty, stressing that speech is not understood through a cognitive process only, but as a "reciprocity of my intentions and gestures with others" (p. 76). She makes a distinction between the "appealing teacher, who asks students to imagine the facts of a world or to imagine how our world could be different, and the charismatic teacher, who asks students to lose their own sense of the world in order to be dependent on and envious of his or her views" (p. 77). She believes that the responsive teacher is he or she who can offer pedagogical strategies enabling or requiring students to seek "immersion in the world of the text or of the lesson" (p. 77).           Combining maternal theory and object relations theory, Atwell-Vasey uses maternal object relations theory to discuss alterity. She looks for a model which would preserve one's identity while learning from what is strange or foreign. This intersubjectivity means that one can "negociate one's stance, positions, and perspectives with others, and . . . entertain theirs" (p. 81). She suggests that what she calls "a primary caretaker" (generally the mother) provides the child with a model for intersubjectivity through the following relations: assertion and holding; projection; introjection; and interpretation (p. 81- 82). It underscores knowledge as a process whereby it is constructed in relation to the other. Atwell-Vasey describes a parallel model of intrasubjectivity based on "divided subjectivity within the self," and its relation to the other within ourselves. In this context, students "can learn to nurture, tolerate, and enjoy their own divided opinions and responses and the diverse perceptions of others" (p. 83). Atwell-Vasey recalls that Kristeva suggests a balance between these differences, between self and others as well as within self, not merely "in restraint, but in enjoyment" (p. 87). For Kristeva, ethics is based on the love, mutuality and reciprocity which ensue. From these paradigms of intrasubjectivity and intersubjectivity, Atwell-Vasey draws pedagogical implications for the classroom and the curriculum, "especially in how we provide for interaction among readers and writers" (p. 91). Between Lacan, who sees language as "necessarily threatening" (e.g., evaluated structural grammar), and Kristeva, who emphasizes that "it must be attractive" (e.g., lived experience of language and literature), Atwell-Vasey believes that language teachers must make a choice. Acknowledging that, by tradition, the former approach is paternal, and the latter is maternal, she points out that Kristeva proposes a "third psychological influence," issued from her theoretical perspective and her psychoanalytic practice. Kristeva maintains that there is no need for the child to reject maternal relations in order to develop in language and agency. For her, the motivation and energy are to be found "in the deepening complexity of the former maternal relationship" (p. 105). Then the third influence is the paternal "support of maternal function" (p. 105). The Autobiographical Narratives           In the last section of her text, Atwell-Vasey applies the theories and practices she discussed in the previous chapters to specific problems raised by her participating teachers in their autobiographical narratives. In all accounts and observations, Atwell-Vasey found evidence of a gap between the personal language and literature experiences described by the teachers, and their public use of sometimes the very same texts in the classroom. She also found a great difference between the language they used to report these experiences in their journals, and the language they used in their teaching. Basically, the teachers found it "difficult to carry the emotion and imagery generated in personal reminiscence or personal reading to the more social and public events of teaching" (p. 117). For each one of them, Atwell-Vasey has some pedagogical suggestions based on the theories and practices she reviewed in the preceding chapters (e.g., theater, reading and writing studios, community research projects). The depth of analysis of the three teachers' autobiographical narratives is uneven. For instance, it is surprising to find, following the analysis of Jane's writings, almost ten pages directly quoting reading journals from Jane's students, with no comments from either Jane or Atwell-Vasey. Although one might find some interest in these students' reflections, the purpose of this section is not obvious to Atwell-Vasey's reader. Furthermore, since the entire texts from the teachers' autobiographical writings are available in an appendix, it may not be necessary to have such extensive quotes as appear in Part III of the book. This would keep the emphasis on the reflective aspect of the work, that of both Atwell-Vasey and her teachers. Also, at the end of this last section analyzing the teachers' autobiographical accounts, a synthetic analysis across Philip's, Jane's and April's narratives would be both helpful and productive. Concluding Remarks           Writing a review of a book which brings into question the whole project of writing on reading is a challenge on its own. This review does not pretend to be all encompassing, but focuses on some points which I deemed most important. In any case, I would recommend reading this book to teachers, teacher educators, and students. It is a book that I will use, at least in large parts, in working with my own students and teachers. It brings together some theories which should be helpful in eliciting questions and debates, and in articulating a reflection on problems not only in reading and English education, but also in education in general. It also offers some very interesting pedagogical suggestions which can be most useful, again not only in English studies classrooms, but in any classroom. However, this text contains some weaknesses of which the reader should be aware. Besides some very practical aspects including a need for a more thorough editing, and attention to details such as naming one participant both April and Robin, some problems were identified with deeper issues. The theories which are reviewed and developed are not problematized, yet rest on assumptions which may not be acceptable for all. For example, one has to buy into Kristeva's brand of psychoanalytic approach in order for Atwell-Vasey's theoretical framework to be supported. One has to accept the theories she presents on children's development and relations to mother, father, language and the world. However, though strong and unchallenged for many years, psychoanalytical models to understand human development are problematic, and no longer the authority they used to be. The language learning theories, including Merleau-Ponty's, referred to by Atwell-Vasey, rest on another set of assumptions, and should not go unquestioned. In fact, because of the theories she introduces, and the way she weaves them together, and layers them (Kristeva's maternal theory opposed to Freud's and Lacan's psychoanalytic theory, language learning theory, object relations theory, feminist theory, feminist object relations theory, psychoanalytic feminist object relations theory), this book might be an effective tool to encourage critical reflection, challenging these theories, and the way she combines them. Nevertheless, the conclusions she reaches, and the "revised logic" she develops seem appropriate and helpful to inform teaching practices. The implications she draws from Kristeva's maternal theory contain some valuable suggestions. Briefly summed up, they suggest more responsibility and autonomy for teachers to provide: increased opportunities for their students to bring into learning their "drives, passion, and intention;" contexts to promote "attraction to language;" opportunities to challenge, question, and develop dialogue; and a "third term" where the teacher's own "worldly and literary interests and desires" become visible to the students (p. 108).           In her Foreword, Grumet stresses Atwell-Vasey's "conviction that teaching and reading are both acts of communion, grounded in love and relation" (p. x). Indeed, Atwell-Vasey's work is rich enough to prompt us to further questioning and reflection, and believable enough to convince us that "the challenge for us as teachers is to both show our students our involvement in and excitement for the world beyond the classroom, and to still remain close and responsive to students' needs" (p. 109). References Freud, S. (1961). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth Press. (Original published 1911) Habermas, J. (1968). Knowledge and Human Interests. Trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Kristeva, J. (1986). The Kristeva Reader. Ed. Toril Moi. New York: Columbia University Press. Kristeva, J. (1991). Strangers to Ourselves. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press. Lacan, J. (1968). The Language of the Self. Trans. Anthony Wilden. New York: Dell Publishing. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). The Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Wilson. New York: Humanities Press. Pinar, W. F. and Grumet, M. (1978). Toward a Poor Curriculum. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Press. About the Reviewer Denise Egéa-Kuehne Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge