Synthesis: Objections to My Tribe

This post is informed by a few earlier posts, here, here, here.

1. Transfer or Writing is Not Writing Is Not Writing (i.e. "How are we supposed to use this in our other classes?”). A question about transfer—Murray seems to assume that there are certain fundamentals that transfer across genres and I had come to believe this not to be the case anymore. What Murray advocates may be right for a certain kind of journalistic non-fiction writing, but probably doesn’t go much further than that.

An introduction to WAC and WAC scholarship which helped me to begin to appreciate how different different types of disciplinary writing are and to see that just focusing on process was not going to be enough (faculty in other disciplines will likely not focus on process and without that focus, students will revert to old processes, particularly if assignments are painful or feel meaningless). But also, the feeling that there was/is declarative knowledge that I can teach, from writing studies, in addition to the procedural knowledge that process privileges.

2.  Socio-epistemic rhetoric and the way it resonated for me during a politically loaded moment (Bush Administration/Iraq War/War on Terror, etc.)

3. Sources of Evidence (his own process; published testimony of publishing [creative] writers).

4. On Drawing Implications Too Quickly (The movement from theory to practice—Murray would frequently write an article where he reflects on his own writing practice or some aspect of it and then suggest implications. This increasingly made me uncomfortable.)

5. A rejection of the notion of "process." There are as many processes out there as there are genres of writing.

6. Lack of attention to rhetorical concerns, particularly exigence and audience.

---

And the reason I couldn't believe these things any more it because I wasn't the same person anymore...

1. I was becoming an academic and so could no longer realistically embrace the mantle of rebel or outsider--and nor did I want to...

2. Here's the important point--my sensibility had shifted. Whereas my undergraduate education had instilled in me an essayistic sensibility which shaped how I viewed writing--as a creative endeavor, largely--my graduate education was instilling in me a rhetorical sensibility, where making and defending arguments and considering their effects in and on the world was of paramount importance.


Also, there is the point that I had changed, I was no longer an outsider--it's not just the ideas that I found myself reconsidering, but also the fact that I had changed...I was now an academic. We were a tribe of outsiders, "a UNH writing teacher" was an outsider, we prided ourselves on this fact, but I no longer wished to be an outsider or was frankly capable of carrying myself off as one...

A re-orientation of self—I think Murray and the UNH model is rooted, in many ways, an anti-academic writing epistemology. Academic writing is often even perceived as the enemy of good writing. But it is possible, as I’ve seen and done myself, to write in an academic or professional way and to have that kind of writing be accessible and interesting. In sum, I no longer believed that academic writing is/was the enemy (perhaps because I’m come to produce it myself, to see the value in it, and to feel compelled to engage in it, as a scholar).

In sum, I have become more like an academic and less like a writer. Yes, that’s true. Or, perhaps more fairly, I’ve tried to become more like someone who both values, produces, and sees the need for both academic and writerly writing and feels the need to reject neither.