Emotion in Comp/Rhet

Bibliography

• Anderson, Charles M.;Marian M. MacCurdy (Eds.) Writing and healing: Toward an informed practice (at URI)
• Berman, Jeffrey. Risky Writing: Self-Disclosure and Self-Transformation in the Classroom (at RIC)
• Borrowman, Shane. Trauma and the Teaching of Writing (at URI)
• Jacobs, Dale & Laura R. Micciche. A Way To Move: Rhetorics of Emotion and Composition Studies (URI)
• Micciche, Laura R. Writing through trauma: The emotional dimensions of teaching writing.
• Micciche, Laura R. Doing Emotion: Rhetoric, Writing, Teaching (must request via ILL)
• Payne, Michelle. Bodily Discourses: When Students Write about Abuse and Eating Disorders

Stenberg ("Teaching and (Re)Learning the Rhetoric of Emotion"):

Can these passages be used to set up or frame my project of reading don's autobiography???

Just as writing and rhetoric teachers help students develop strategies to read with rhetorical contexts and strategies in mind, we might also work with students to develop a vocabulary for a rhetoric of emotion. This would involve helping students to rethink normative conceptions of emotion, in and outside of the academy, so as to establish that emotional responses are part and parcel of our intellectual work; grappling with new ideas will necessarily both employ and evoke emotion. (360)

The issue, then, is not whether emotion is a part of rhetorical inquiry — it undoubtedly is — but what we do with emotions. Since affective investment, according to Lawrence Grossberg, “enables ideological relations to be internalized and, consequently, naturalized” (qtd. in Crowley 2006: 86), to relegate emotional response outside the classroom is to naturalize it, to assume its distinction from knowledge making. But to make it visible and emphasize its connections to personal histories, cultural norms, and values, and institutional expectations is to open a new avenue for critical, reflective work. (361)

To this end, Boler advocates for a “pedagogy of discomfort,” which views the feelings of unease that arise when what Dewey calls our “habitudes”—deeply ingrained beliefs and values—are called into question, as resources for inquiry. Central to this pedagogy is self-reflexive inquiry into how our emotional investments determine what we choose to see and not see, listen and not listen to, accept or reject. This work requires, then, deliberate attention to how we have developed particular emotional investments over our life histories and how these investments subsequently color the lenses through which we view the world. (361)

As I imagine it, a pedagogy of discomfort would, in fact, make such questions a regular part of students’ engagement with course texts and one another’s contributions. But it would also go further to make emotional inquiry a regular component of rhetorical analysis—along with considerations of historical moment, context, audience, purpose, ethos, and so on — to investigate how the writer/speaker used emotion as a site of knowledge production. (362)

...it is useful to remember that all responses to texts and all textual production are, in fact, shaped by emotional investments and histories. By helping our students to understand emotion as an integral part of reading and composing, we offer them richer resources for cultural participation and for knowledge making. (366)

Whether we acknowledge it or not, emotion is necessarily part of reading, composing, and knowledge production; that is, emotion plays a key role in pedagogical and rhetorical work.

To make emotion’s role explicit in pedagogical settings means attending to how cultural and social contexts and expectations shape both expressions of emotion and our subsequent readings of them. It allows us to pay closer attention to how emotion is evoked rhetorically in texts of popular culture and in the texts of our classrooms. It allows us to think about how emotional responses are shaped by individual and social histories, rather than to perceive them as private and off-limits. It allows us to imagine emotion — our emotional responses and our reflections on them — as resources for new knowledge. And as a result, “outlaw emotions” such as anger, discomfort, pleasure, and delight all become invitations for further investigation and new forms of response. (367)

Micciche ("Emotion, Ethics and Rhetorical Action," (2005))

The place of emotion in rhetorical studies has been overshadowed by persistent desires to view rational deliberation and argumentation as the central functions of rhetoric. (164)

...dominant conceptions of rhetoric in composition studies have largely undervalued emotion's place in rhetorical theory and practice. (165)

She notes that none of the textbooks she reviewed position pathos as central to writing or rhetoric, amounting to a decidedly reductive application of Aristotle's appeals. Moon's study of popular textbooks provides a useful gauge for assessing the field's engagement with emotion as a whole, for textbooks represent efforts to transform theory into practice, putting into practice dominant, assimilated ideas about writing and rhetoric that animate current scholarship. (165-66)

Although it's true that emotion has been under-explored as a rhetorical and theoretical concept in composition, emotion has not been wholly excluded from the field's discourse ...they do illustrate an ongoing interest in emotion as a concept relevant to teaching writing and studying language (166).

...to attend to emotion as a way of knowing that influences teaching and learning. (166)

As perhaps the most obvious example of composition's emotioned discourse about itself, we might consider representations of the field's disciplinary identity. Though the status of the field as a field is no longer in question, credibility issues still haunt the way we think about ourselves. (166)

In addition to the "caring space" of composition classrooms, composition's distinctive identity also emerges from the field's historically marginalized location within English studies. (167)

Emotion is crucial to how people form judgments about what constitutes appropriate action or inaction in a given situation--precisely the realm of ethics. The idea here is that emotions, like reasons, move people to judge, decide, and act in certain ways, and that, consequently, emotion is central to rhetorical action. (169)

To put this another way, efforts to produce critical thinkers, cultural workers, or enfranchised citizens, all of which are by now commonplace goals regularly articulated in composition scholarship, are most certainly efforts to construct an emotional culture in the classroom. (178)--while important goals, these were not Murray's primary or only goals and as the field shifted his goals perhaps went out of vogue, if they ever were en vogue in the first place....

Berman, Risky Writing

"Introduction"

Risky writing threatens nothing less than the writer's identity an self-respect. Shame is the key emotion in risky writing: the writer experiences shame even when he or she has done nothing wrong. This fear of being shamed encourages silence, which not only makes self-disclosure impossible but also freezes the shame permanently. Risky writing releases negative, unruly feelings, including fear and anger, which may literally sicken the writer (9)

Anne Hunsaker Hawkins's observation about authors of books describing personal experiences of illness applies equally well to many authors engaged in risky writing: "The need to tell others so often becomes the wish to help others" (25). Arthur Frank makes a similar comment about the ways in which "wounded storytellers" can heal their readers. "As wounded, people may be cared for, but as storytellers, they care for others. The ill, and all those who suffer, can also be healers. Their injuries become the source of the potency of their stories. Through their stories, the ill create empathic bonds between themselves and their listeners" (xii)." (11)

"Chapter 1: Risky Writing"

Shame is central to risky writing, and teachers who encourage their students to write about personal subjects must be able to understand and respond to this darkest of emotions. (21)

"The very word shame is derived from an Undo-European root (scam or seem) which means 'to hide,' and from which also derive our words skin and hide, the latter in both its meanings: the hide which covers us naturally, and that within which we seek cover" (8). Shame usually involves the "unspeakable," which, as William Cohen observes, "condenses two meanings: something incapable of being articulated as well as something prohibited from articulation" (3; emphasis in original). [...] Even as one part of the self years to disclose shameful feelings, another part of the self remains paralyzed, precisely because of the third meaning of shame, discretion, which shrinks from disclosure of anything perceived to be undignified or unseemly. (21-22)

"The phenomenological experience of the person having shame, notes psychiatrist Michael Lewis, "is that of a wish to hide, disappear, or die. Shame is a highly negative and painful state that also results in the disruption of ongoing behavior, confusion in thought, and an inability to speak. The physical action accompanying shame includes a shrinking of the body, as though to disappear from the eye of the self or the other" (75) (22)

Self-disclosure and shame thus exist in a reciprocal relationship: the more one self-discloses, the greater the threat of shame. [...] "To disclose means to show, to make known, or to reveal" (19). Exposing one's most private feelings, desires, and fears to other people always involves the threat of rejection, misunderstanding, or ridicule. Self-disclosure, then, by its very nature is risky, particularly for those whose identities or selves may be precarious to begin with. (22)

The opposition to personal writing, however, has a longer and more complex history. Since its introduction into American composition classrooms in the late nineteenth century, notes Richard Murphy, the personal writing assignment has been subject to criticism. The controversies over personal writing have long reflected larger educational, social, and political differences. Robert Connors indicates in his brief history on personal writing in composition courses that proponents dominated the 1960s, when the progressive education movement was popular. Beginning in the mid-1970s, however, opponents of personal writing began a strong neoclassical countermovement under the banner of a "back-to-basics" approach. (23)

Political leftists have also been highly critical of personal writing, which is often called "expressionistic" writing. (24)

Critique of Berlin (24) and Bartholomae (27-28)

Must risky writing inevitably result in revictimization of the writer, traumatization of the classmates, and demonization of the teacher? As we have seen with Diane's essay, aesthetics and therapeutics can coexist. Is there a way to create a classroom situation in which writers are free to disclose dangerous subjects without wounding themselves or others? Given the fact, as Perillo notes, that writing and literature teachers are not trained to be therapists, can they find ways to encourage their students to write about suffering and survival while simultaneously helping them improve the quality of their poetry and prose? (27)--What way did MURRAY try to do this?

At its best, autobiographical writing offers the most vigorous inquiry into the origins, ambiguities, and mysteries of identity. (29--Murray was quite aware of this, take a look at more of this short passage on postmodernism and identity

Teachers who encourage students to write about shameful secrets must adopt specific pedagogical strategies, lest the classroom become a dangerous place. An empathic classroom is essential for risky writing. (29)

Empathy and empathic classroom:

High-empathy teachers, as opposed to teachers rated low in classroom expressions of empathy, "use significantly more praise and encouragement, use less criticism, more frequently accept student expressions of feeling, elicit more student-initiated talk, have fewer instances of silence or confusion, and smile more at their students" (Goldstein and Michaels 150). (31)

"In the empathic responder mode, the attitude that you adopt is the most important thing. You must strive to put yourself in a receptive frame of mind. Your attitude must be: Nobody can help seeing things the way they see them, and nobody can help feeing the way they feel." (qtd. in Goldstein and Michaels 215). (33)

Since risky subjects involve shame, secrecy, and stigmatization, I believe it is best to adopt an empathic approach. [...] Neither critique nor contestation is conducive to self-disclosure; indeed, both impede self-disclosure since the admission of vulnerability weakens one in an argument or battle. (32)

My primary aim is to help students write about their life experiences and reflect upon their significance, without the fear of being contradicted. (34)

If critique is too risky for personal writing, what is the teacher's appropriate response? I believe the writing teacher has three roles: to inspire his or her students to do their best work, to help them improve their writing skills, and to raise questions for further writing. (36)

...the self-disclosing classroom. (49)

...talking or writing about trauma dramatically improves one's physical and mental health. (51)

Moreover, high self-disclosers experience greater health benefits than low-self-discolosers. "People who wrote about their deepest thoughts and feelings surrounding traumatic experiences evidenced heightened immune function compared with those who wrote about superficial topics" (37). Pennebaker conjectures that writing about trauma reduces the biological stress associated with inhibition, encourages an understanding of the traumatic event, and enlarges one's perspective. "By talking or writing about previously inhibited experiences, individuals translate the event into language. Once it is language-based, people can better understand the experience and ultimately put it behind them" (10). Pennebaker regards such writing as "preventive maintenance" (197). (51)

In Writing as a Way of Healing (1999), Louise DeSalvo describes many of the benefits of writing about illness: "Through writing, we can maintain control over our lives; create a work of art that will live on after our death; express our feelings (especially anger, grief, rage, jealousy of those who are well); keep disabling fear at bay; fight the idea that our illness has robbed our life of its meaning; resolved unresolved issues in our lives; share with others what we have learned about illness and, perhaps, what we've learned about treatment" (202). (54-55)

Colleagues from other universities have remarked, in response to hearing sections of this book presented at psychoanalytic conferences, that they would never permit their student to engage in personal writing. Like most academics, they believe that self-disclosure has no place in a university course. Some feel that the personal is subsumed by the theoretical, which they feel should be the only proper focus of any academic course; others assert that their students are already too self-absorbed and need to know more about the world; still others concede that even if personal knowledge is important, they lack the clinical training to encourage their students to write safely about their lives. (57)

"In gist, the transformative tale relates how an initial state of internal instability is shocked into a kind of self-reflection that learns a new knowledge or skill by unlearning and revising old knowledge or skill" (131. Transformative tales tend to focus on risky topics that have been repressed for a long time and evoke intense resistance when expressed. Although transformative tales often involve pain or shame, they also affirm insight, agency, and change, the possibility of overcoming past traumas or mistakes and forging a new life. These stories recall the ancient Socratic injunction: Know thyself. Phrased in terms of contemporary cognitive theory, transformative stories reveal how the construction of a new interpretation  enables the writer to remake the self. The writer's search for the right words to describe a risky story thus involves nothing less than the search for wholeness. (69)

A self-disclosure is an offering or a gift that allows insight into the writers' life. (70)

Writing and Healing from Trauma: An Interview with James Pennebaker

the father of the “writing-and-healing” movement

In the years since the publication of Opening Up, many other researchers and scholars have explored the effects of this kind of writing —called, variously, trauma writing, healing writing, disclosure writing, expressive writing, and personal writing.

This kind of writing does seem to work best for people who find themselves thinking about, obsessing about, worrying about, dreaming about emotional upheavals that have occurred in the past. In other words, these are issues that are not resolved by the person. If you’ve had some kind of traumatic experience and you don’t think about it, I don’t really think writing’s going to be helpful for you. So that’s the first issue: it’s got to be something that you’re still living with.

There’s a big difference between pouring out your emotions about a trauma and constructing a story or narrative about it. In other words, very often someone will come in to one of the experiments on writing, and the first day that they write about a trauma, they will write about it beautifully. They’ll give it context; there’ll be a beginning, middle, and end. It’ll be a very good story. In my opinion, those people do not benefit from writing. They already have a story. The people who benefit the most are the ones who on the first day of writing often have almost a stream of consciousness or almost a random series of events, and over the course of the writing, they start putting it together, constructing a story out of it.

Your analysis of the writing style of those who ended up benefiting most from writing about trauma revealed that they used a lot of cognitive and cause-and-effect type words, like “realize,” “understand,” “because,” “therefore,” and so on.

Writing and Healing: Towards Informed Practice

"Preface"

Donald Hall had the courage to express the truth of his grief to the community, a truth that found da response in me. That response immediately entered my professional as well as my personal life. We expect poets to do this. We do not expect our students to do this. The history of our profession and the positions of those among with the greatest power and prestige have, in fact, encouraged us in our writing, in our speaking, and in our teaching, to cut our students and ourselves off from the healing resources of poets, peonies, weeds, and grief. The purpose of this book is to recover that loss (xvi)

"Introduction"

The general inclination of our profession has long been to marginalize such disturbing texts in favor of safer, more controlled discourses of the academy. To do so necessarily marginalizes, isolates, and alienates the writers who create those texts, valorizing our own illusions of academic sanctuary over their invitations to engage in the complex material, cultural, and socio-personal worlds of actual and virtual experiences that dominate the lives of late-twentieth-century human beings. We and those who have contributed to this book have chosen a different stance. We believe texts about traumatic experiences constitute legitimate sites at which the work of writing can be done both in and out of the academy. We believe this work, difficult, scary, and messy, is important and worth doing. We believe that the benefits are substantial. Writing and Healing: Toward and Informed Practice is our attempt to help writing teachers who feel as we do understand the dynamics and consequences of their students' efforts and learn to respond to those efforts in appropriate ways. (3)

Trauma survivors are usually very careful to protect others from what they know. They keep silences because they fear that others will be broken by what survivors have to tell them. (4)

Healing depends upon gaining control over that which has engulfed us. We cannot go back and change the past. The adult who was sexually abused as a child of five is permanently altered by that experience. But she can recognize the truth of her past and confirm it with all the knowledge, anger, and understanding of the adult she has become. (5)

Healing arises from just such confusion and psychic pain, never from peace. It is when we are overloaded with past and present trauma that we are motivated to take on the difficult work of healing. When past and present selves collide, often precipitated by a single incident or crisis that calls up past traumas, business as usual cannot continue, and the survivor is motivated to delve into the past to see what was left behind in an attempt to make sense of the present. The sense of something missing, of loss and grief, characterizes all trauma survivors. (6)

Traumatic events, because they do not occur within the parameters of "normal" reality, do not fit into the structure and flow of time. Instead, they are imprisoned within the psyche as discrete moments, frozen, isolated from normal memories. Because they are not connected to the normal, linear flow of time bound memory these moments emerge into consciousness at any point, bringing the force of the traumatic event with them. (6)

While there are numerous techniques by which persons can engage this process, many survivors find writing to be a powerful and appropriate site for work of this sort to take place. As Laub puts it, survivors need "to tell their story in order to survive. There is, in each survivor, an imperative need to tell and thus to come to know one's story, unimpeded by ghosts from the past agains which one has to protect oneself. One has to know ones buried truth in order to be able to live one's life" (78). By writing about traumatic experiences, we discover and rediscover them, move them out of the ephemeral flow and space of talk onto the more permanent surface of the page, where they can be considered, reconsidered, left, and taken up again. Through the dual possibilities of permanence and revision, the chief healing effect of writing is thus to recover and to exert a measure of control over that which we can never control--the past. (7)

The crucial assertion we want to emphasize here and throughout this collection is that healing is never a return to some former state of perfection nor the discovery or restoration of some mythic autonomous self. Healing, as we understand it, is precisely the opposite. It is change from a singular self, frozen in time by a moment of unspeakable experience, to a more fluid, more narratively able, more socially integrated self. Students seek out the writing classroom for this kind of work because the very process of writing and rewriting invites them to tell their stories, to listen to what their stories tell them, to hear and to be heard by others engaged in similar work, and it supports the healing those stories make possible. (7)

When we choose to allow and to occupy this space, we demonstrate the that academy is not a place of alienation, an "other" to "the real world," or an ivory tower. We transform it into a locus of connection where the hard, personal, and social work of understanding the lived realities of experience can happen. Out of this transformation, we believe may come human agents capable of generating real and lasting social action. (8)

We are, however, arguing what we know to be true--stories about painful, traumatic events in the lives of students do appear in our classrooms, they have always appeared, and they will continue to appear, not because we want or don't want the to, but because writing is quite simply the medium in which, for many people, the deepest most effective, and most profound healing can take place. (8)

Options for how to respond to personal writing (p. 9)

our students' public and private worlds are inextricably connected. (13)

When teachers exclude lived experience in favor of more abstract or distanced concepts, concerns, and representations of reality, they rob students of genuine opportunities to engage in the very individual and collective work such teachers expect them to do. (13)

I conceive of the work of the classroom as an ongoing project where I learn how to hear what my students are saying. Learning to do this helps me to find a way to speak that they can hear. It also makes it possible for them to learn ho two hear what I, as a representative of the academy, am saying and how to speak, read, and write in ways that I can hear. This sis the only approach I know of for making the classroom a possible resource for hope... (Richard Miller, qtd in Anderson and MacCurdy p. 15).