Imitate Me; Don't Imitate Me: Mimeticism in David Bartholomae's "Inventing the University.".

Abstract

The issue of the instructor's role in the composition classroom is nowhere more critical than with those who make exposure to academic discourse the centerpiece of the writing teacher's pedagogical mission. According to their paradigm, teachers are invested with the responsibility of introducing students to a set of codes and conventions that will permit novice writers to enter into a new, and purportedly empowering, discourse commu nity. These ideas are certainly well known, and no one has done more to explain and promote them than David Bartholomae. Particularly in his widely cited and much admired essay, Inventing the University, Bartholo mae has defined the essential ground upon which rests the justification for making the acquisition of academic discourse the primary ingredient of any first-year writing class. And because of the persuasiveness of his arguments, many of us working today in composition would agree with Patricia Bizzell's assertion that initiation into academic discourse is the college writing course's goal (College 197). If I would then single out Inventing the University for a careful and ultimately critical reading of its portrait of the composition teacher, it is done in recognition of the respect the essay has garnered and the influence it has exerted over the field. Furthermore, I believe Bartholomae's essay can serve as something of a paradigmatic text, for its images of the writing instructor are echoed in the work of a number of other composition theorists, including many who claim no special allegiance to the academic discourse camp. My hope is that a close reading of this essay will reveal some important miscon ceptions and weaknesses not only in Bartholomae's argument but through out much of the discipline. I also hope to suggest how an approach informed by the literary and anthropological theories of Ren6 Girard might contribute to a new understanding of the political and social stakes involved in the debate over academic discourse and to a reimagining of our roles as instruc tors in the composition classroom.

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