ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author aims to illustrate his point as concretely as possible by doing a Bakhtinian reading of a student paper. The student paper argues for a quite different understanding of taboo and its violation. Often for students, assumptions emerge unconsciously as they write about what they take to be the "subject" of the reading, their assumptions functioning as obstacles to their critical understanding. It is thus all the more important to locate how student texts—such as the following one—enact resistances to reading, for without recognizing those resistances they cannot be overcome. Students are in a position to negotiate those claims as they work towards developing a consciously critical point of view on what they read through what they write. The point of distinguishing among the most prominent modes of discourse in the paper is not to ask the student to make a choice among them, to write a morally indignant, liberally understanding, or rigorously Freudian essay.
