‘Knowledge of literature’ for the Undergraduate and the Wikipedian

Daniel Allington (University of Stirling) [BIO]

Email: daniel.allington@stir.ac.uk

 

ABSTRACT:

This paper contrasts undergraduate literature modules at the University of Stirling with a small selection of articles from WikiProject Novels, the WikiPedia guide to prose fiction. With regard to the former, handbooks and assessment procedures are discussed in conjunction with transcripts of teacher-student and student-student classroom interactions; with regard to the latter, the focus is not only on the current form of the articles but also on their history and on the discussion pages that accompany them. Although ‘knowledge of literature’ would appear to be the raison d’être of both these sites, the ‘knowledge’ in question is very different: on the literature modules, it is something rather abstract, perhaps best characterised as the ability to produce an expert verbal performance in the form of a commentary on a text, while in the WikiProject articles, it is rather more concrete, something akin to information and presumed to be realisable in the form of a definitive ‘encyclopaedic’ text. However, in order to understand those articles, it is important to recognise that the text of each is fundamentally non-definitive, and results from a series of verbal performances recognised by the Wikipedia community as more or less expert. Further points of comparison include the disagreements that arise and the ways in which they are resolved, and the precise role played by authority. A question is raised as to the extent to which Wikipedia undermines or reproduces the cultural hierarchies embodied by the university course.