Writing and the Problem of Will: The Creative Writing Workshop and the Stanley Milgram Paradigm

Abstract

The classroom exchange of student feedback, along with the writing exercise and close reading, remains a common staple of Creative Writing teaching. Nevertheless, its acceptance by students rests on a willingness to learn through trial and error, and openness to being guided by their peers and by their tutors along this path. Where these break down, the freedom and informality of the workshop can become the conditions that strengthen hostility and mistrust. At such moments this tutor uses research by Latané and Darley (1970) and Milgram (1974) as material for debate about responsibility, authority and individuality. Their experiments demonstrate that an instinct to conform with their peers, and an instinct to rely on authority figures, interferes with normal people's ability to act as individuals for the common good. In the shorter term, a study of these experiments can help students understand the need to work together under tutorial guidance. In the longer term, they can spur thought and debate on the nature of authority in the artistic calling.