I’m too tired tonight to do any justice at all to this story, but I would like to note it and perhaps return to it another time.

Today in the 11:00 section of my Introduction to Literary Studies class the discussion was particularly rich and intense. At one point I was asking one student a series of questions about some of her own cognitive states as she was grappling with the indirection of parts of the discussion.  As I was trying to weave her own answers into the responses other students were offering to related questions, suddenly yet another student, two rows back, made a quick joke about “author-function,” recalling our discussion of Foucault. In that instant, I could see that the student two rows back had made a huge cognitive leap. It was quite a thrill to witness. The joke was an aside, not a formal contribution to the argument, but it was catalytic and breathtaking. In that moment, the student had realized that for critics of identity, our sense of self is the same as an “author-function.” Foucault had said as much earlier, but it was in the midst of a dense explication of his point. Judith Butler had argued something similar. Said resisted Foucault’s argument at the point of identity and agency. Long story short: the student’s quick joke made several connections in several directions all at once, and launched the class into an even higher plane than it had been before. It was, for me, a moment of high cognitive drama to watch her find that idea. And the class discussion that followed fed on that moment wonderfully.

I’d like to analyze the moment and the events leading up to it in more detail. For now, I suppose what sticks with me is how right until the moment of “Bingo!” things felt to me tentative, uncertain. I had a feeling of “better get back on track.” I put the feeling aside for a little longer than I was entirely comfortable with. That’s not always a successful strategy. Sometimes stirring the pot keeps it from boiling. Today, though, we got to an understanding of certain kinds of arguments about identity that I don’t think we’d have gotten to if I’d been more systematic. Hard to say.

I do know that at one point I said, “There’s thinking going on in this class!”  For so there was, and it was very exciting to be in it.