Contending With Words: Composition and Rhetoric in a Postmodern Age

by Patricia Harkin (Editor), John Schilb (Editor)

Composition and rhetoric in a post-modern age.

242 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Harkin and Schilb’s 1991 anthology consists of essays by “postmodern” teachers and scholars exploring postmodernism’s various implications and applications for rhetoric and composition classrooms. The editors frame the collection as an attempt to move beyond the “‘literacy crisis of the mid-seventies” as composition’s justification (1), and the collection proceeds as follows: First, Don Bialostosky draws on Bakhtinian dialogics in an “attempt to redialogize the practice and teaching of academic writing” (11). Next, William A. Covino draws on Kenneth Burke’s “true” and “false” magic and Freirean pedagogy, arguing that teachers operating using “true,” non-coercive rhetoric in their teaching practices may help teacher avoid “contribut[ing] to the world of [the National Enquirer’s falsely magical] Enquirery rather than inquiry” (36). Asking whether we can “be politically responsible in traditional institutions,” John Clifford sets out “to think hard about the plausibility of the charge that in educational institutions writing is ... a servant to the dominant ideology” (38-39). He draws on Althusser to argue “the most ambitious undertaking is not to storm the hegemonic barricades,” but to “do the intellectual work we know best: helping students to read and write and think in ways that both resist domination and exploitation and encourage self-consciousness about who they are and can be in the social world” (51). Patricia Bizzell argues for Marxism’s place in composition studies, especially given the former’s “ability to offer methodologically sophisticated and ethically informed modes of social [and linguistic] analysis” (56). Bruce Herzberg draws on Foucault as a means of forwarding a “commitment to critical consciousness” by “combining critical reflection with writing practice” and refocus composition’s view of language on discourse’s “relation to power” (81). Lynn Worsham around that composition’s adaptation of ecriture feminine inevitably domesticates the latter. She argues that “the process leading from resistance to incorporation and neutralization is inevitable” (98), but nevertheless works against “a ‘pedagogical imperative’ or the ‘will to pedagogy’” in order to “exercise prudence about the level at which ecriture feminine is introduced into ... composition” (96). Taking the older sophists as models, Susan Jarratt offers a feminist case for agonism in composition classrooms (106). Patricia Harkin argues for the theoretical value of “lore” as non-/postdisciplinary knowledge, claiming that the disrespected state of composition teachers makes “[o]ur problem ... nothing less than getting the academy to change its understanding of knowledge production” (135). Victor Vitanza makes a Deleuzean case for “deterritorializ[ing] students and turn[ing] them into drifters” (148), while John Schilb argues that cultural studies and postmodernism could both enrich composition. The volume ends with further provocations from Sharon Crowley, who argues that rewriting “composition theory for a postmodern age” requires a readiness to “dismiss the work of ... theorists who confine their thinking to traditional rhetoric and psychology” (193), and James Sosnoski, who imagines what a composition course constructed in light of the anthology’s arguments would look like.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sounds awfully foundationalist for a book of postmodern writings. Take Sosnoski’s wrap up quote, “Writing and reading should not be regarded as private matters, and thus socially irresponsible self-expression could not be condoned” (216), which reflects Bizzell, Jarrett and others in this volume. Whoa, there now…who decides what is “socially irresponsible?” Obviously not the students as a whole, because that would be to submit to a tyrany of majority voices, as Elbow recommends. The students themselves? But they are unaware of the hegemonies that surround them, even buying in to it themselves, as Covineo and Clifford and those who use Feire might suggest. Who then? The teacher. The wise, conscienous, socially liberated teacher. Which, of course, isn’t any old teacher, but those who have been trained and enlightened by these theorists. Which, looking at that last sentence, sounds awfully old-fashioned and hegemonic. I’m not saying that there aren’t a lot of useful correctives here, but it does come awfully close to “we understand, and you just don’t.”