Genre And The Invention Of The Writer: Reconsidering the Place of Invention in Composition

by Anis Bawarshi, Bawarshi

In a focused and compelling discussion, Anis Bawarshi looks to genre theory for what it can contribute to a refined understanding of invention. In describing what he calls "the genre function," he explores what is at stake for the study and teaching of writing to imagine invention as a way that writers locate themselves, via genres, within various positions and activities. He argues, in fact, that invention is a process in which writers are acted upon by genres as much as they act themselves. Such an approach naturally requires the composition scholar to re-place invention from the writer to the sites of action, the genres, in which the writer participates. This move calls for a thoroughly rhetorical view of invention, roughly in the tradition of Richard Young, Janice Lauer, and those who have followed them.

Instead of mastering notions of "good" writing, Bawarshi feels that students gain more from learning how to adapt socially and rhetorically as they move from one "genred" site of action to the next.

Genres: Teaching

180 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2003

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bawarshi expands rhetorical invention to the social dimensions discovered in genre and argues that genre is most important to invention. Indeed, to theorize invention as located only within the writer is to ignore the powerful generative qualities of the genre function. His theory of the genre function is given some well-chosen examples from a variety of fields, from the Patient Medical Health Forms required on in-take at most hospitals, to the very first State of the Union speech given by George Washington (having no precedent, Washington based his speech on the King's Speech, invoking genre characteristics that might not have been applicable to the new, democratic situation in which Washington found himself). Whether one agrees with the Writing about Writing movement in Composition today, or the contemporary interest in genre as a teaching area, Bawashi's work is important to know about.

[ARK · Rating 2 out of 5]

gag me with a spoon, mr. bawarshi.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I fangirl Anis Bawarshi. I can't believe I never read this book before! Great background for a lot of my disciplinary and genre work.

Here's my notes:

Genres are both created by writers and creates them. We tend to frame invention as “pre-social” and internal (4)
Def invention “the site in which writers act within and are acted up on by the social and rhetorical conditions that we call genres” (7)
Def genre “dynamic discursive formations in which ideology is naturalized and realized in specific social actions, relations and subjetivities” (7-8) “typefied rhetorical strategies communicants use to recognize, organize and act in all kinds of situations, literary and non-literary” (17)’
Genre function-- “all discourses’ and all writers’ modes of existence, circulation and functioning within a society “ (22)
Genres “hfunction as sites of action that locate readers in position of interpretation” (28)
Exigence is learned behavior (41)
Motive is “largely unconscious, intention is conscious, goal-driven and spacially and temporally bound” (90)
Activity systems “participants in one activity system,for instance, use some genres to communicate with participants in other activity systems” (116)
Tension between punitive requirements and “create a sense of community” (112) in syllabus

[Risa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genre And The Invention Of The Writer by Anis Bawarshi (2003)

[Anthony Barra · Rating 5 out of 5]

a personal favorite

[Lauren Wild · Rating 1 out of 5]

An important premise drowned by poor execution. Would not recommend to any writer or insructor, let alone a first year.