Performative Discussion: Practicing Brechtian Praxis in the Classroom

Summary

I feel the lack of those critical arguments tied tighter than a syllogism, those pronouncements given with such assurance, those judgments that name everything but what matters. I know there is more than making a case, more than establishing criteria and authority, more than what is typically offered up. That more has to do with the heart, the body, the spirit.

—Ronald Pelias, A Methodology of the Heart

Introduction

The impulse for this essay came from a great sense of dissatisfaction—a feeling of lack—that I've felt as a teacher over the past few years; a dissatisfaction with the way I've been structuring and leading critical discussions of literary and performance theory. As an early-career college theater and literature teacher, I have so far struggled to develop classroom discussion strategies that challenge students to worry less about “getting it right” and to focus on the questions rather than the answers. After all, literary and performance theory, along with Brecht studies, privilege contributions of new knowledge and possibility, rather than the acquisition and reification of old ideas. I am dissatisfied with whatever the American public educational institution is doing that teaches students to constantly seek closure and “the answer.” Perhaps students are motivated toward closure because of an ingrained anticipation of assessment that demands that they perform in very definitive ways. Presently, in my classroom discussions, I aim to make students trust that I do not want closure or an answer, but that I value risktaking and questioning.

To “make a case” for or to “establish criteria and authority” about teaching Brecht is reductive at best and at worst undermines the potential discoveries that go beyond the pedagogical possibilities of teaching Brecht's theory. I want to be careful not to make any definitive claims about what works and what doesn't based on my observations or outcomes from the classroom because my experiences are so entirely wrapped up in the whos, whens, wheres, and whys of my particular classroom environments. I aim to show, however, that in order to structure classroom discussions that privilege procedural rather than propositional knowledge, the teacher can look to Brecht's own theoretical writings, particularly Messingkauf (Buying Brass).