Theory Meets Praxis: From Derrida to the Beginning German Classroom via the Internet

Abstract

This essay will argue that contemporary cul tural developments associated with the emergence of new technologies, particularly computer-medi ated communication, provide new opportunities to German Studies curricula from the be ginning level onward.1 Students' employment of computer-based technologies for the purpose of learning German at the beginning level, in courses with online and distance-learning platforms,2 can and should be an opportunity to engage in reflec tions about cultural developments of which these technologies are a driving force. A theoretical framework for such reflections, I will argue, is pro vided by poststructuralist theories, particularly in the writings of Jacques Derrida, which have pre dicted significant aspects of current cultural devel opments and provide conceptual tools with which to comprehend or theorize them. In their lan guage work in the beginning German class, using new media of communication, students have a unique, hands-on opportunity to experience the shifting complexity and mediated-ness of com munication as they become familiar with multiple linguistic competencies between speaking and writing. Alongside other efforts to integrate lan guage and content throughout the curriculum,3 the use of the Internet as a leaming tool provides a manner of introducing theoretical content at the beginning level of the German Studies curriculum and thus of bridging a curricular gap that has been perceived between the beginning German class room,4 where the emphasis has tended to fall on traditionally-conceived language skills (particu larly speaking proficiency) and on relatively simple cultural information that is quite different from the theoretically-informed cultural knowledge that stu dents will be expected to acquire at more advanced levels of German Studies curricula.5 The theoretical content that is consistent with the employment of new technologies of communi cation in the beginning German classroom is that which has been shaping advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in many German Studies curricula, whether taught in German or English translation. This theory has numerous individual manifestations in different fields of inquiry-an thropology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, social science, cultural history-but a common charac