Thread by @namwalien

On @CollegeBoard @AP_Trevor using the "Look at me" passage from my book, Stranger Faces, for the AP Lang exam.

The College Board did not ask me or my publishers for permission to use my work. That does not, in my view, fall under "fair use," as it was not being used to teach. 1/

I have the right to determine how my work is used; I'll be pursuing this directly with @CollegeBoard.

I've been a college professor for 17 years. I disagree with standardized tests. I spent a year getting the UC Berkeley English department to stop using the GRE Subject test. 2/

I disagree with this kind of test in particular because it goes against all I value about writing. It reduces interpretation to point scoring. It does violence to reading. And it distorts the writing--in this case, the title was made into the opening line and put in all caps. 3/

The writing was also forced on readers for whom it was not intended. I didn't write this book for high school students. This is not to denigrate anyone's intelligence, but to insist that writers rely on readers having some familiarity with certain ideas to make an argument. 4/

I have written books with high school and college students in mind. I have no objection to them reading either of my novels, even with all the sex and violence. My next book, On Morrison, grew out of a college lecture course I taught; of course I hope students will read it! 5/

My academic books, such as Stranger Faces, however, are different. For example, directly after the passage @CollegeBoard used without my permission, I introduce the work of the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, which is difficult for even professional scholars to understand. 6/

Genre-wise, Stranger Faces aims to be in the company of Barbara Johnson's Persons & Things, or Roland Barthes's Mythologies. I use poststructuralist theories of arbitrary signification and différance, and psychoanalytic theories of fetishism and disavowal to make my argument. 7/

And that argument is fundamentally misrepresented by the passage that was selected. Right after I explain the presumptions about the face latent in the words "look at me," I make a rhetorical turn that changes the entire meaning and purpose of that opening passage. I say: 8/

This means that all the exam takers who didn't agree with or like the passage were on to something. It's a straw man--which I wrote in a particular style to emphasize its seeming obviousness--that I promptly go on to take apart. I turn instead to what I call "stranger faces." 9/

My chapter is titled "Look at Me" because it analyzes that old "Captain Phillips" meme and a scene of facial reconstruction surgery in Jennifer Egan's 2001 novel, Look at Me. The opening "Look at me" isn't the start of a personal essay, and it shouldn't have been in all caps. 10/

This is the problem with cutting writing out of its context--meaning and rhetorical effects get distorted. This is also the problem with giving writing to readers before they've encountered other texts that would help them recognize an argument's rhetorical moves. 11/

This isn't a matter of literacy or intelligence; it is a matter of experience, of not having had enough time yet to read all the Freud, Derrida, Kant, Marx etc I refer to. It's also a matter of choice. You shouldn't have to read something that isn't FOR you, so to speak. 12/

I believe reading ought to be an act of free will. I believe art and its reception ought to be free of instrumentality. I'm actually fine with and used to readers disliking my work or finding it pretentious. But I do object to their engagement with it being imposed... 13/

...especially by a corporation that claims to be non-profit but is evidently rolling in money, and that believes it doesn't need to ask permission from writers to use their work for its price-gouging, high-stakes, and pedagogically dubious exams. 14/
tuftsdaily.com/article/2024/0…

Basta. Thank you to all the students who have engaged with me about this situation, even those who were critical--it turns out we agree that the picture of the ideal face that the passage describes is corny! I hope you keep reading and that you pursue a genuine education. 15/15.