Romancing Rhetorics (Gradin)

Purpose of Book

In this book I make a two-pronged argument based on the tacit tradition that I bring forth: (1) that the recent denigration of the expressive theories of composition is often based on misconceptions of expressivist theory and practice as well as incomplete knowledge of the tradition from which they arise; and (2) that social-expressivist rhetorics that arise from the intellectual tradition I examine here are already at work in the field, but that they need to be more fully articulated and enacted (xiv).

This aids in my desire to remind readers of the positive aspects of expressivist theories and pedagogies, to place them within a tradition, to disinfect the term "romantic" from some of the associations that have hampered a more positive view of current expressivist rhetorics, and to widen the term "romantic" for those who conceive of it too narrowly. (14)

Speaking Directly to Berlin, et al

This study collapses the walls that scholars like Lester Fairly and James Berlin have built between expressivism and social-epistemicism. I ague here for the ignored version of expressivism--a social expressivism--that the current taxonomy keeps invisible. (xiv)

My approach is directly shaped in response to the current taxonomy operating in the field whose creators are predisposed to define expressivism in negative ways and social-epistemic theories in exonerated terms. (xvii)

...the "expressivism" currently talked about in composition circles rarely exists as it has been conceived. (xvi)

My book does not stop at suggesting that there are points of intersection between social-epistemicism and expressivism. My project reclaims what anti-expressivists have left out in their versions and narratives of expressivism. (xviii)

What I will ultimately argue is that expressionist rhetorics are often simplified and reduced to appear far more ineffectual and anti-social than they actually are. This implication has been easily accomplished and the current rigid taxonomies so uncritically accepted for at least two reasons: (1) expressivist rhetorics have not been satisfactorily placed within an intellectual tradition, and (2) a strict categorization or taxonomy of rhetorical theories allows social-epistemic proponents to deny the ways in which expressivism enriches social theories and pedagogies--the ways in which expressivism is already "social." (xix)

Berlin is almost single-handedly responsible for the concrete divisions we perceive between expressivist rhetorics, social-epistemic rhetorics, and cognitive rhetorics (2).

..."Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class," the article that cements the way the discipline looks at current rhetorics (4).

...this tendency to create a straw man (11)

Summarizing The Arguments Made By Berlin and Others

...the harshest and most invested criticisms are coming from proponents of social-epistemic rhetorics. They advance many of the same criticisms just discussed, but additionally, they find romantic approaches to the teaching of writing deficient because they seem to focus on the individual as opposed to the relationships among the writer, th community, and the social political, and economic conditions of existence. A romantic rhetoric results in isolated, fragmented, politically ineffectual students and citizens. (10)

Berlin strikes a nerve when he suggests that expressivists' focus on the individual ignores the ideological circumstances in which students write. I firmly believe, like Berlin, that individuals are socially constructed. Our students, and thus their writings, are products of historical, economic, and other cultural forces. I am dedicated to helping students gain the tools by which to read and to change the world in which they live. I no more want to create "ineffectual citizens" than does Berlin. His charge that expressivism's privileging of the individual ignores the ways in which the "self is always a creation of a particular historical and cultural moment," and thus it somehow suppresses cultural democracy, is crucial. Any expressivist pedagogy that intentionally or unintentionally does so is in need of the scrutiny that Berlin has set in motion. There is no reason, however, why a social-expressivism could not bring analysis of one's self as it is shaped by culture, and analysis of how one's "private vision" is actually situated within culture, to a pivotal position in the classroom. (10-11)--This is the passage to use to frame the discussion of my interaction with PamBarksdale!!!

Conceding Where Berlin May Be Correct

As usual, Berlin's criticisms of expressivism are insightful. He cuts right to the bone when he declares that expressivist rhetorics can indeed be anti-theoretical. The more Time I spend in the public school classrooms and with inexperienced teaching assistants, the more I realize how easily this can happen in practice. For many teachers the focus on self-expression and personal empowerment is very alluring. To find yours students, previously downtrodden and firmly believing they cannot write, suddenly proud, producing, and believing that they can actually have something to say is quite heady. Sometimes student and teachers get stuck in this place, seeming to forget that the rhetorical situation is complex. While this doesn't have to be the case, it is not as unlikely as I once believed. (10)

Berlin also strikes a nerve when he suggests that expressionists focus on the individual ignores the ideological circumstances in which students write.

The Danger of Binary Thinking (i.e. patriarchy)

The desire to uphold strict categorizations is sometimes explained as a guard against dangerous pedagogy. As Neal (1993) points out, "James Berlin, for example, cautions against mixing pedagogical theories and warns that we may confuse, even damage students when we use a bit of one in naive combination with a snippet of another" (42). While it may be wise for teachers not to work out of naivete, this argument strikes me as overblown. I do believe teachers should be reflective about their practices and have some understanding as to why they do what they do. [...] Nonetheless, the fear of combining theories and practices may well arise for more insidious reasons--the grip that patriarchal power has over composition studies. (11)

Binary or dichotomous thinking grounds itself in difference and inequality, not difference and equality, thus perpetuating these various hierarchies. In composition studies this binary structure is embedded in our need to select an "other" in order to maintain a power position for any particular category. Once we have categorized in this way it is easy to set up dichotomies in innumerable ways--neo-classical vs expressivist, process vs. non-process, current-traditional vs. all others and so on. The loudest voices in composition currently see all approaches other than social-epistemic as the "other." (12)

This aids in my desire to remind readers of the positive aspects of expressivist theories and pedagogies, to place them within a tradition, to disinfect the term "romantic" from some of the associations that have hampered a more positive view of current expressivist rhetorics, and to widen the term "romantic" for those who conceive of it too narrowly. The danger lies in the predilection to categorize or dichotomize in order to maintain power over another. (14)

What is Expressivism and What is Social Expressivism?

Expressivism values the autobiographical, the intimate and subjective voice, and the organic development of a topic. (13)--perfectly captures expressivism and also my assignment in FYW100P.

Social expressivism blurs the categorical lines between social theories and theories of individualism. Social expressivism stresses the need for teachers to focus on writing for discovery, writing to discover self and voice, and development of power and authority of one's own writing. But it also focuses on those things that social epistimicism is being praised for: positioning the self within the world and writing for change. (xv)

A social expressivism, however, with roots already embedded in the tradition from which expressivism arises, already embedded in the tradition from which expressivism arises, suggests that all subjects negotiate within the system; they act and are acted upon by their environment. In order to be effective citizens and effective rhetorical beings, students must first learn how to carry out the negotiation between self and world. (xv)

Expressivism and Education Writ Large

...it is important to understand that the milieu from which expressivism arises is broader than just a concern for the teaching of writing. For current expressionists such as Elbow and Murray, good writing is not separable from a strong education that celebrates the imagination and grown of holistic selves as well as the growth of good writers. Writing is not an action that takes place severed from the complex interaction and dynamics taking place within the student as a whole, nor is it severed from the cultural milieu and historical moment. (xvii)

On Murray and/or UNH

Donald Murray, for example, taught writing courses at the University of New Hampshire where the only required readings were the texts generated by the students in the course. Other readings were dropped in response to the traditional Freshman English course, which was not specifically a writing course, but was taught as another literature course which required the typical literary analysis. Murray (1986) explains in his anthology of readings for composition classes that the typical approach to the teaching of writing did not, at the time he switched to using student texts, allow students to make any connection between the problems they faced in their own drafts and the finished products they were reading: "When I first taught Freshman English I had to follow a syllabus that forced the students to read prose models that the students--and I--could not relate to the problems they face din their own writing" (xiii). Also, Murray was attempting to raise the status of student writing. He continues to believe that student writing is highly undervalued when continually placed in juxtaposition to "Literature." Murray argues that student writing is well worth serious consideration and readerly analysis. Although Murray's intent was admirable--to connect reading with the actual writing process and to put more value on student writing--he might well have accentuated the already prevalent believe that anything "romantic" lacks "rigor" (7-8)

It is important to note that just as Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats did not label themselves romantics, Elbow, Murray, and Berthoff do not label themselves as expressionists. It is others who define them in this way and I am guilty here by continuing to talk of them as expressionists or social-expressivists. [...] Donald Murray remains silent on categorical assignments and continues to talk and write about what works for him as writer and teacher of writing. (14)

Expressivism and the Process Movement

What we have come to recognize as the "process movement" in composition arose with expressivism in the 1960s. Expressivism, the first of the "process" rhetorics, took hold in reaction to pedagogies that relied on mechanical correctness and rote memorization. It is a direct reaction to the current-traditional model in composition which denied this notion of writing as process. (12)

Her Argument

In part I am arguing for composition scholars to embrace a complex mixture of our many rhetorics in both theory and practice. I am not recommending that we do so naively. To blend theory and practice requires that we examine closely what we are doing. To allow for the ways in which expressivism and social-epistemicism connect requires that we stop the knee-jerk reactions against expressivism in order that we might rediscover and reimplent what is valuable about it. To do so may also put a crimp in our tendencies to tidily place things in strict categorical terms; it may make agonistic intellectual debate less effectual and dialogue and theory sharing more effectual. In effect, new categories, more plural in nature, may emerge. We may end up examining what I coin social-expressiveism for the rhetoric I favor, or expressivist social-epistemicism, or feminist social-epistemicism, or social-cognitivism, and so on. (15)

I do not make my arguments, then, from a position that accepts the firm lines of difference among categories. While I am trapped by the language and category and dichotomy in my defense and history of expressivism, I urge readers to unbind yourselves from the categories and allow for a rich, pluralistic mixture of our rhetorics that more accurately reflects our actual theories and practices. This is what I must do to position myself within the theories and pedagogies of contemporary composition studies. I fall between the cracks of categorization. [...] I am neither a self-contained expressivist nor a self-contained social-epistemic. Like most, if not all, of us who spend week after week in the composition classroom, my practice is a complex blend of theories that our current taxonomies discourse completely or deny. It is time to move and speak beyond these categories.