ABSTRACT
Literacy takes part of its meaning from its association with the critical transmutation of experience…and much of its power from the struggle to liberate oneself from the institutions and immediate realities of one’s culture. (Phelps, 1988, p. 122)
This chapter highlights small group literature discussions in which Julia participated to show the particular kind of dialogue she invited her students to take up-one that often invited students to become aware of, if not liberated from, “the institutions and immediate realities of one’s culture.”1 For several reasons, less attention is paid in this chapter to the sociocultural conditions that shape interpretation: First, these conditions have been thoroughly described in previous chapters, and here I assume a base of knowledge about the research participants; second, as the literature events that follow reveal, performances during teacher-led discussions focused more on interpretation than the negotiation of social roles. This is not to suggest that the two are disconnected. As the previous chapter made clear, and as the events depicted in this chapter reinforce, I see interpretation itself as constituted in social codes, conditions, and identities. However, when Julia led a group, she held the locus of power, so that although students occasionally contested her authority, they spent less time contesting each other’s. Particular students still had more interpretive and social power than others, but conflict and negotiation tended to go underground as students performed the interpretation of text.
