Alexander & Rhodes –
“Flattening Effects”
MULTICULTURAL PEDAGOGY
JOHN LAPINE
Multicultural Pedagogy

Includes literature, writing and composition that includes racial, sexual,
gender, and ability minorities

Narratives often focus on the “shared experience,” “shared humanity,” in
an attempt to be relatable to the “Others” (people not belonging to that
particular minority group)

However, this is problematic – focusing on the “shared” or “relatable”
leads to erasure of the differences

True multicultural pedagogy should focus on shared as well as the
difference in experiences and in body
“The flattening effect”

Excluding differences makes multicultural narratives “legible, identifiable,
acceptable” to the normative readers

“The ‘other’ is tamed as a knowable entity” (431)

Negates critical understanding of minority groups

Move beyond “inclusion” and focus on differences
1.
Demonstrate “The flattening effect” in narratives, texts, literature,
composition assignments
2.
Call for a shift in multicultural pedagogy to focus on not just
commonalities, but also “unknowable” and “incommensurable”
3.
Offer examples of texts to use in a classroom to explore subjectivity and
justice
4.
Examples of writing exercises to accompany such texts
“The flattening effect in action”

Writing textbooks tend toward inclusivity, rather than a focus on the
differences/unknowable

Simply including diverse identities and stories is not enough - does not
capture the experience

Inclusivity ignores differences

Multiple differences are always at play – no one exists as one identity

Identity is complex and multiple
“The flattening effect in action”

Writing exercises in which students consider “the other” and their
experiences “bring us face to face with what we do and do not know
about one another” (436)


But asking students to write about “the other” presents difficulties in
understanding and depth


“Choose & identify a term that defines you. Consider its social construction, and
the effect media, ads, film, news, etc. has on that term’s definition”
Straight students writing from a queer perspective
Clichéd, linear, reductive, easy categories – “flattens” the experience of
queerness
“The flattening effect in action”

Arises from assumptions of understanding, tolerance & respect

Focuses on identity and identifying with “the other”

“humanizes” the “other” – but differences are human too!

Issues
1.
Ignores discrimination
2.
Ignores differences that make us unique
3.
Reduces “humanity” to a particular “knowable” set of traits
“The flattening affect”

Embodiment of differences

“Impossibility” of writing about sex – the body, desire, the mind, the
experience

“Flattening affect” – “Depends on fitting one’s emotional presentation to
what is considered neutral, nonjudgmental, serene, accepting”
“The flattening affect”

Inclusion of queer authors into composition anthologies

Non-inclusion of their queerness

“These authors’ sexuality and its significance to their writing is never
discussed” (442)

Embracing difference is necessary, but categorizing differences is
“flattening”

Differences “are often critical indicators of how people experience their
lives, their sense of identity, and their possibilities of citizenship in often
extremely divergent and disparate ways” (443)
“The flattening affect”

“Our attempts to know, to categorize, to other the other … violates the
uniqueness of the other, whose experience cannot be so colonized”
(Levinas 114)

“To assume a kind of knowledge or truth-claim about the other that
forecloses difference is ... to do violence” (Holland 167-68)

Encounter the other “in dialogue”

Reflect on self-narration to begin accepting the limits of knowability in
oneself and in others
Reducing “flattening” in the classroom

Teach a “pedagogy of the unknowable” (Ellsworth 318)

Have students write not about what they know, but about what they do
not know

Encourage uncertainty, discomposure

Coherence forecloses differences

Have students respond to difficult texts
Difficult texts

Anzaldua’s La Frontera/Borderlands

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Cherrie Moraga’s The Last Generation

Invite and confront

Teach the conflicts

Avoid “just like us” and “easily recognizable”
Reducing “flattening” in the classroom

Oppressors colonize the body, stigmatize desires, repress erotic energies
(Rofes)

“Tames queer bodies by aligning them with cultural norms”

“Melting pot” approach  “lethal ignorances”

Encourage irresolution

Celebrate questioning

“Represent and contend with difference, multiplicity, unknowability” (449)
Conclusions

“Care about each others differences” (449)

Recognize that minority experiences are “irreducible to tropes of shared
humanity” (450)

Respect each other because we do not know each other

Do not avoid challenging texts in favor of normalized, safe, tolerable texts

Move beyond acknowledging differences

Recognize dimensions of difference

Risk substantive discomfort
Discussion questions

Do you believe the “flattening effect/flattening affect” exist in the
classroom? Have you witnessed, experienced it yourself (either teaching or
as a student)?

Should we assign texts based on the fact that they present “challenging,”
“unresolved” or “unknowable differences?” Is that necessary to reduce
“the flattening effect” (if it exists)?