Composition: History & Theory: 1990 - 1999
Rhetoric Review, Volume 12, No. 1: 1993
Description
CONTENTS
Composing as an ‘Essentialist’?: New Directions for Feminist Composition Theories (Devoney Looser): Looser argues that theories about “women’s way of knowing” and “women’s way of writing” should be thrown out of composition studies. While she acknowledges that many theorists believe feminism cannot exist without a presupposed definition, Looser asserts that defining “woman” leads to essentialist and flawed assumptions. She writes: “Should or must a coalition of identity, experience, or politics be in force to have a feminist composition theory? A feminism? It seems to me that the insistence on feminist unity at all costs is a theoretical and practical mistake” (66). From here, Looser, defines Feminist Composition Theory and gives a brief background of its evolution in rhetoric. According to Looser, the movement from product to process was seen as aligning with the women’s movement. “Many feminist revisions of traditional composition studies,” she writes, “have stressed the use of personal narrative, the search for an authentic voice, the conceptions of writing as a collaborative process, and the importance of personal experience in lieu of ‘objective’ knowledge” (54). According to Looser, there are two camps of feminist composition theory: 1) Expressivist: Woman’s voice is most central to classroom. The teacher’s role is to help students find their voices. 2) Empirical: Research to figure out if men and women compose differently, acquire language differently, or have different final products. Looser asserts that contemporary feminist theories composition pedagogies assume an essentialist definition of “woman.” The essentialist view of composition is that women’s writing is nonlinear and emphasizes feeling, emotions, and relationships. Looser points out that contemporary theories conflict with poststructuralist theories because they bring into question the definition of “woman” and whether an “authentic woman experience is possible.” Looser then goes on to explore some of the problems involved with the essentialist view. Asking women to write about their experiences, Looser explains, makes the assumption that women are in touch with the personal. Looser argues that the personal is both masculine and feminine. Experience does not give a solid foundation for other kinds of expository writing. It promotes universalization of experience—despite race, sexuality, class, etc. To many theorists, feminist writing should bring about a particular product, but there is no clear process that differentiates from other writing processes.“ To conclude, Looser writes: “Feminist critiques of essentialisms and humanisms must be dealt with in future work in feminist composition studies. It is not so much that so-called “essentialist” work must be stopped than that it must be questioned for its historical and cultural assumptions and its assumptions about the category “women.” Only then will we be able to talk about feminist composition theory that not only operates “in a different voice” but with voices that more productively accommodate questions of difference” (66).
The War between Reading and Writing—And How To End It (Peter Elbow): “We tend to assume that reading and writing fit naturally together: love and marriage, horse and carriage” (5). Elbow argues that in the reading-writing binary, reading is seen as superior. However, this balance is unnecessary and unfortunate. Elbow suggests several benefits to valuing writing over reading in the writing classroom.
Conflict between Reading and Writing
- The imbalance is most noticeable in the way authors have been valued historically.
- Recently New Critics and Deconstructionists have argued for importance of the reader.
- Authors “own” their texts (7).
- “Just as children think their parents should always have them in mind, many modern readers think that writers should always have them in mind” (8).
- Writers often attest to knowing things they can’t communicate, while readers often think that knowledge must be communicable.
How Reading is Privileged over Writing
- Reading is more central to English courses.
- “An investigation of English classes in secondary schools has found that students spend less than 3 percent of their class and homework time devoted to writing a paragraph or more” (10).
- The writing that is assigned often serves reading
- People who teach writing are TAs, adjuncts, part-time, non-tenure track.
- The definition of acquiring knowledge is taking in (reading), not putting forth (writing)
- Hypothesis: “If we assign much writing, we find ourselves positively awash in what is admittedly discouraging or depressing our students’ thinking and feeling—with all its naïveté, its appearance of reflecting nothing but brainwashing by the shallowest pop culture” (11).
How To Privilege Writing (according to Elbow)
- Assign more writing
- Do more peer review
- Use writing and a springboard into reading
- Encourage “rough draft readings”
Conclusion
If instructors begin to value writing as much as reading, students will begin to see reading as a cognitive process. Restructuring the learning model to focus on writing makes students become more active—instead of being filled with information in readings, students are the producers of information
ADDITIONAL TITLES: “Gender and Writing Instruction in Early America: Lessons from Didactic Fiction, Janet Carey Eldred, Peter Mortensen; “Teaching the Histories of Rhetoric as a Social Praxis, ” Thomas Miller; “Interdisciplinary or ‘An Elaborate Edifice Built on Sand’? Rethinking Rhetoric’s Place,” Elizabeth Ervin; Diversity Revisited, or Composition’s Alien History, Daniel Bender; “Generative Semantics: Secret Handshakes, Anarchy Notes, and the Implosion of Ethos, R. Allen Harris; “A Return to ‘Converting the Natives,’ or Antifoundationalist Faith in the Composition Class” Judson Curry
Date of Upload
3/15/09