More Yagelski ("Who's Afraid of Subjectivity?")

Along with Yagelski's other piece on Murray, this one really was interesting in providing another perspective on Murray's work and on "the writing process," in general.

FRAMING:

Yagelski begins with the assertion "the postmodern...has presented a peculiar challenge to teachers and scholars in rhetoric and composition, for it raises difficult questions about the idea of writing as process, an idea that has become our orthodoxy. (204)

The problem: "If the self or subject or individual does not exist as an agent, the process approach to teaching writing would seem to be a sham" (204).

His response:

"...my hunch is that 'process' remains viable because much of what it represents fits quite comfortably into a postmodern environment; that is, 'process pedagogies'--as distinct from what James Berlin has called 'expressionistic rhetoric'--are not entirely incompatible with our emerging postmodern notions of knowledge and discourse" (204).

...I'd like to explore the connections between process and postmodernism... in doing so, I'll suggest that the key to reconciling process with postmodern thinking lies in reconceptualizing the self. (204)

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...here I think is the key: the idea of composing as a process is a powerful way to understand what writers actually do. The beauty of 'the composing process' is in the way it makes simple this complicated activity of writing. It allows us to talk about, study, and teach writing in ways that make the complexity of ht fact manageable. (205).

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to distinguish between 'process' and 'expressionism.' (206)

Although the two terms are sometimes used synonymously, [expressivism] has come to refer to a theoretical perspective on writing, usually associated with [Peter] Elbow and a few others, that, according to some critics, is founded on certain (problematic) epistemological assumptions. At the same time, expressionism is also associated with specific pedagogical strategies (for example, student-teacher conferences and peer editing groups), and here the distinction between 'process' as a way of understanding writing and expressionism as a theoretical paradigm begins to blur. (206)

The problem is that 'process' has at least three overlapping meanings:

• For many, 'process' refers to the same student-centered pedagogical strategies usually associated with 'expressionism.'
• 'Process' is also used synonymously with 'expressionism' to refer to a theory of writing and/or teaching.
• And, third, 'process' is used as a description of how writers write.

This third definition is closest to my use of the term here: 'process' refers to a way of describing and understanding what writers do when they write; 'process-oriented' pedagogies grow out of that understanding. By contrast, I use expressionism to refer to a theoretical perspective on writing that focuses attention on the writer as meaning-maker and on writing as self-expression and self-discovery. (206)

What critiques of process and/or expressivism have in common "is an implicit questioning of the assumption that writing is primarily an individual, cognitive activity; they problematize the notion of 'individual' or 'subject' as often conceived in expressionist discussions, and they share the view that writing is profoundly social. Interestingly, however, these critiques of expressionism have less to say about the composing process per se than about the political implications of particular 'expressionist' approaches to teaching the process. These critiques, in fact, are critiques of epistemological stances associated with particular (popular) pedagogical strategies, of various versions of process as practice; they are not critiques of the idea that writing is a process (207-208).

My point here is the idea of writing as process remains essentially intact even as postmodern critics attack so-called expressionist pedagogies and theories. I think there are several reasons for this.

• First, the notion of writing as process fits in well with evolving postmodern ideas about language and meaning... to see writing as a recursive activity in which meaning is somehow made is to underscore the constructive and constructed nature of language and language use.
• In addition, the idea that writing is a process lends itself to countless adaptations in classrooms: freshmen composition, business writing, technical writing, creative writing; indeed, to structure classrooms around process is also to help students come to understand the constructive, interested nature of language and language practices.
• But the most important reason is that the idea of writing as process, with its assumption that writing is always in progress, remains the most compelling and useful way to describe what writers actually seem to do when they create texts. Process provides a workable framework that enables me to describe adequately what I do when I write this chapter and what my students seem to be doing when they write theirs. (208)

As I came to see my teaching as inevitably ideological, I began to wonder how I might reconcile the apparent power of process as an approach to teaching writing with my sense of the inherently social and political nature of writing and the ideological nature of teaching writing. (210)

Here, Yagelski is most explicit in taking on Murray:

In his text, Write to Learn (1987), Don Murray states, "We write alone to discover meaning" (3). He goes on to say that "one that meaning is discovered... then we want or need to share it with other people" (3). That statement seemed to describe how I had been writing for years, but my experience as a teacher and a great deal of research in the field convinced me that meaning did not reside within the individual, but rather, as Deborah Brandt (1990) and Martin Nystrand (1989), and many others have pointed out, within the interactions between individuals. Writers, that is, did not really "discover" meaning within themselves so much as they constructed meaning through their transactions with others within complex social and cultural and political contexts. (210)

Of course...Murray was drawing on the testimony of many, many creative writers and so it's not entirely surprising that he comes up with this idea that we write alone and then share it with others. I think that that is sort of how creative forms of writing exist...

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How, then, might we conceive of the individual student writer within a realm of social and cultural discourse? Is it possible to retain in our teaching what is most useful about the idea of writing as process at the same time that we account for the inherently social and political nature of writing? (210)

I would argue that some conception of the individual is necessary if we want to understand how writers write and how to help students learn to write effectively in various contexts. As Tom Newkirk once said to me, "The 'self' might be a construct, but it's a useful construct." I agree. The problem is how to define the 'self' in a way that enables us to talk about 'individual' student writers at the same time that we highlight the profoundly social nature of writing. (210)

What's missing here is the idea that individuals are configurations of a dizzying array of social and cultural interconnections and relations. I am Polish, American, male, white, middle class, a former Catholic, a father, an educator, a high school and college graduate, a teacher, a native of the East, a resident of the Midwest, a former resident of New England, and so on, living at a particular historical moment. In other words, the 'self' that defines 'me' is a social constituted self, and the social and cultural aspects of that self may have much more to do with how I write than some set of 'cognitive' skills. (211)

A redefinition of the self as socially constituted as opposed to cognitive provides a useful way to reconceive writing as process. A conception of a socially constituted self a the center of the writing process allows for a profound sense of the social nature of writing at the same time that it retains process as a framework for teaching and for understanding how students write. (211)

In reference to a story Murray has told of writing a poem, Yagelski writes:

Murray's discussion of his poem thus suggests that the writing and revising of his intensely personal poem is a decidedly social act, not only in that the contexts within which he writes inevitably shape his writing but also in that he himself is shaped by those contexts. His revising, an apparent result of the careful and idiosyncratic decisions he has made as a writer struggling to express personal ideas, is thus also a social act. But he does revise. That is, he, as a writer at his desk, engages in some set of literate activities that alter and shape the text he is developing. And of course he also plans and drafts, other sets of literate activities in which he engages as he completes his poem. Planning, drafting, and revising are useful terms to help us conceive of what Murray is doing as he writes the poem. Constructs that they are, they nevertheless enable us to identify, understand, and talk about what writers do. (213)

I thus construct a writing pedagogy that accounts for and intersects with the individual and idiosyncratic processes in which my students engage as writers at the same time that it grows out of postmodern conceptions of subjectivity that define those students as socially constituted authors participating in situated discourses. (215)

...much of what we have come to associate with "process" remains familiar and central to our teaching. I'd argue that that's because the idea of writing as process not only continues to be perhaps the most effective means by which to describe how writers write, but it also remains a valid way to understand what writers do even as postmodern notions of language and discourse challenge the way we understand writing itself. (215)