Murray and Manifestos

Added later (9/29):

I just stumbled upon this passage from the article where Berkenkotter and Murray collaborate:

It worries me a little bit that the title is too imperative. When I first wrote, most of my articles were like this; they pound on the table, do this, do that. I want this to be a little more reflective. (166)

I include this here because it hints at the way that Murray was aware of his manifesto-like (or, his words, "imperative") tone in some of his early work.

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In an earlier post, I attempted to sum up my thoughts on this project so far.

I thought I would revisit this a bit. This morning, stumbled upon an interesting quote from Ballenger that lead me somewhere. Of Don's seminal essay, "Teach Writing as a Process, Not Product," Ballenger writes: "This brief essay provided the writing process movement its manifesto" (299). It's hard not to agree. If we just look to, for example, the anthology Cross-Talk, Murray's piece is one of the first in that essay, enshrining it in our collective consciousness.

Ballenger is onto something that I was sort of onto a bit a week or so ago, which is the imperative, anti-authoritarian nature of Murray's writing. Manifestos are good if you are part of the movement. But if you're not, they are seen as the rantings of the dispossessed. A movement needs its manifesto, I suppose. Or does it? I love this passage, from Prendergast's article, in which she draws on the work of Janet Lyons, who has written a book-length study of the genre. Lyons defines the manifesto as "a fist striking through the scrims of civic order" (14). The civic order that Murray's fist was striking through, of course was that of the current-traditional way of teaching writing.

If we come back to this question of how Murray persuades, it occurs to me, now, that he persuades (at least me) in two ways:

1. His manifesto-like prose persuades. Prendergast and Lyons write, "The manifesto leaves no room for debate or conciliation in its tight rhetorical structure. It strikes a combative tone and keeps striking. 'It conveys resolute oppositionality and indulges no tolerance for the fainthearted'" (9, qtd. in Prendergast on p. 24). With Murray, and perhaps with Macrorie and maybe others, there is the opposition to "the system" and who is the system? How does Murray define it? All those school marms and prissy professors. I guess current-traditionalism, too, but I think it goes beyond current-traditionalism. Murray was anti-institutional in some ways, anti-authoritarian. So, opposition to both the larger system that fails to understand students or doesn't care enough about teaching or whatever and opposition to those teachers of writers who think they know how to teach writing (current-traditionalists) but who have no idea (according to Murray). But opposition of another kind, too. The opposition I feel in the face of my literature colleagues. A kind of more local opposition, the opposition of the minority or the relegated, the "sad ladies under the stairs"--oppposition to the disciplinary status of composition and the teaching of writing.

Lyons writes that by locating its authority in an unspecified "we," the manifesto is able to "invok[e] a broader community and invit[e] participation in it." The power of the manifesto, Prendergast explains comes from the "potentially infinite constituency" it creates (26).

So, in addition to giving you something to oppose, Murray gives you something to join. He gives you a constituency. For the disempowered (graduate students, the untenured, part-timers, adjuncts, all of those sad "ladies under the stairs"), Murray's invitation is a persuasive one.

2. His invocation of self-discipline, hard work, and the promise of revelation/truth. all that puritan kind of stuff. Is self-help the word? I don't have a source on this yet, I need to look into it. The Puritan work ethic. Is he tapping that? Who has written about the tradition of encouraging self-discipline, etc. in America? What is the name of that genre? I need a literature to go to, like the Lyons book on manifestoes.

Murray as snake-oil salesman...

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As I read a bit this morning, I felt myself getting pulled towards trying to understand the trajectory of Murray's career, his having been labeled an expressivist, his place in the field. But I think that this project is less about Murray's legacy or significance than it is about, well, the original question with which I was grappling, which is how he persuades, what drew me to him and him to me. I need to stick to that question and I'm already off and running with these two threads on manifestoes and self-help/discipline. I think the point that I was trying to make, above, is that this doesn't seem like a historical project (or does it). It is an analytical project first, maybe also a historical project. I don't think of myself as solely a historian as I move into this project. But I do find myself asking historical questions...

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Of course, the major anxiety I am feeling here about writing about Murray is how to write about him without abandoning him or ex-communicating him. So many I know knew him and knew him far better than I. And many feel a degree of protectiveness for him. This is a tricky task I seem to be giving myself here...