Composition: History & Theory: 1970 - 1979
Expressionism: A Critique
Description
James Berlin, in “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Classroom” (1988), criticizes the moderate expressionists who eventually led the movement during this time period because they critiqued institutions in less politically-charged ways than their counterparts in the 1960s. According to Berlin, expressionistic rhetoric locates truth inside human beings: “only the individual, acting apart and alone from others […] can determine the existent, good, and possible” (486). Using the work of Murray and Elbow, Berlin notes that the fragmentary nature of expressionism and its emphasis on the individual and her resistance to dominant “economic, political, and social arrangements” deprived expressionists of real political power (487).
Date of Upload
3/14/09