Composition: History & Theory: 1960 - 1969
Expressionist Rhetoric
Description
James Berlin, in “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Classroom” (1988), notes that the extreme expressionists of the 1960s and 70s resisted institutional authoritarianism through “composition as a happening,” an attempting to revise students’ political consciousness and challenge “official versions of reality” through writing about “making collages and sculptures, listening to the same piece of music in different settings, and engaging in random and irrational acts in the classroom” (485). He notes that this approach is often seen as rebellious since it relies on the individual to take the prime initiative and authority her writing by taking risks and trying out new ideas. Since expressivists see truth as something located within the individual subject, it was the job of a writing teacher to help students discover their own unique authentic nature through the creative act of writing—the end product being the self-discovered, self-expressed product. Berlin finds fault in this school of thinking for two distinct reasons. First, Berlin argues that expressivists often ran a depoliticized classroom that ignored the social, economic, and political circumstances of its students and institution. Second, Berlin seems dismayed by expressive rhetoric’s suggestion that we, as humans, have the same common core (a collective or shared experience).
Date of Upload
3/14/09