Idea Transcript
Beyond the Postmodern Impasse of Agency: The Resounding Relevance of John Dewey's Tacit Tradition DONALD C. JONES The effect of the pragmatist move ... is not to disconfirm the subject but to reconfiIm it. Giles Gunn
The issue of agency bedevils contemporary composition theorists and practitioners. As Lester Faigley, Patricia Bizzell, James Berlin, and other postmodernists have critiqued foundational theories of writing, a dangerous dichotomy between thought and language has developed. If thought does not precede its expression as foundationalists contend, then does language determine thought? The postmodern emphasis on language's influence upon thought has led to a profound doubt whether an individual has any control over the influential medium oflanguage at all. Rebecca Howard, in a recent College English review essay, demonstrates the either!or thinking created by the postmodern critique: "It has become commonplace for rhetoricians to engage in the question of agency.... Can writers control their writing processes or are their writing processes-and indeed the writers themselves-constructed by their cultural settings?" (349). In Fragments o/Rationality, Faigley reluctantly assumes the latter-writers are constructed by their culture, yet he confronts the disturbing implications of postmodern anti-foundationalism. When a subject is situated "among many competing discourses that precede [it]," Faigley cautions, "the notion of 'participation' becomes problematic in its implication that the subject can control its location and moves within a discourse" (226-27). The autonomous writer of foundational ism becomes a situated object, something "subjected" to the influences of the dominant discourses. These influences reduce the subject to "an effect rather than a cause of discourse" so subjectivity becomes a debilitating pun, and agency, an illusion (9). Faigley, therefore, refers to the postmodern problem of agency as an "impasse," for it leads to a theoretical dead end (20).1 Postmodernism, Faigley admits, "has not produced ... a broad theory of agency" that permits alternative affirmations as well as deconstructive critiques (39). Postmodern composition theorists, for example, have not been able to
82 JAC sustain their own critique of foundationalism. As David Russell notes, collaborative and critical theories ultimately lapse into foundational theories of writing. Kenneth Bruffee's collaborative theory tries to overcome a writer's location in discrete discourse groups through participation in a larger, encompassing community. Yet by theorizing such a universal community, Bruffee reverts to the foundationalism he opposes (Russell 192). Critical composition theorists, such as Kyle Fiore and Nan Elasser, strive to liberate the individual from the dominant discourse. This emancipation, however, suggests a transcendence of language, or at least its constraints, that violates the anti-foundationalism they espouse (Russell 190-91) . By assuming a participation in a universal discourse or a transcendence of language's influence, these theorists imply that an individual can become an autonomous agent-a concept they and others like Bizzell and Berlin have critiqued thoroughly. Contemporary composition theorists must confront this impasse, the dead end created when agency cannot be explained fully in theory. As Faigley acknowledges, he is unable to account for the agency some of his students demonstrate in practice. After analyzing several students' texts, he admits, these writers "are more aware of how agency can be constructed from multiple subject positions than are many theorists" (Fragments 224). Not only does the apparent agency of some writers defy explanation, but also some postmodern pedagogies actually undermine the potential agency of student writers. I believe the classroom practices proposed by Berlin and Faigley do not foster agency because they either deny the student writers' thoughts or accept their every word. In the discussion to follow, I will examine these postmodern pedagogies, and I then will show that the current impasse of agency can be resolved by turning to a tacit tradition that is already being articulated. More than a decade ago, Janet Emig identified John Dewey as one of contemporary composition's seminal influences, but we have not yet heard the full relevance of this philosophical tradition. 2 We still need to heed this pragmatist because he conceives oflanguage and knowledge with equal complexity: language influences an individual's knowledge and a critical knower can influence discursive practices. Through these complex conceptions, Dewey can help us realize a pragmatic theory of agency, one that creates a new theoretical context for the best aspects of two supposedly competing pedagogies: writing process and postmodern composition instruction. This redirection of contemporary composition is hampered by the fact that Dewey makes very few direct references to writing, and those that do exist are only illustrations of his broader philosophy. Yet these few references should make us lean forward and listen very carefully because they whisper the significance of pragmatic philosophy for contemporary composition. For example, Dewey asserts: Even a composition conceived in the head and, therefore, physically private, is public in its significant content, since it is conceived with reference to execution in a product that is perceptible and hence belongs to the common world. (Art 51)
The Postmodern Impasse 0/Agency 83 As we try to conceive of a composition course in which neither the knowledge of the individual writer nor the social practice of language is ignored, this complex conception of composing has resounding relevance because it precludes the theoretical extremes of foundationalists' autonomous individualism and postmodernists' agentless subjectivity.
The Problematic Practices of Agency and Authority in the Postmodern Classroom To provide an alternative to foundational theories of the writer as a selfexpressive thinker, Faigley and Berlin have proposed composition courses that emphasize the influence oflanguage upon a writer's thought. Yet this emphasis has created some troubling assumptions about what composition students can and should do with language. Some instructors, like Faigley, revel in the fact that their students are inscribed by language, and they celebrate this inscription without sufficiently questioning it. Other instructors, such as Berlin, revile the influence of the dominant discourses upon their students, and they oppose the hegemonic culture with revolutionary alternatives. These postmodern practices, however, undermine the agency of the students and the authority of the instructor. To oppose the foundational concepts oflanguage as neutral and of individuals as autonomous, Faigley advocates the "the achieved utopia of the networked classroom," but the actual results are far from ideal (Fragments 163). As explained in Fragments o/Rationality, Faigley replaces the conventional class discussion with a networked computer forum to produce a collective text. The fragmentary, simultaneous comments of these electronic mail exchanges, he contends, disrupt "the conventions of turn-taking and topical coherence" that he incorrectly associates with all oral discussions (168). By claiming that every conventional classroom discussion consists of a linear pattern of teacher to student and student to teacher, Faigley then can ascribe the success of some of these exchanges to their medium, the electronic forum (180). He, however, ignores the productive, decentered dialogues that the best conventional classroom conversations can foster in order to advance his electronic alternative. The transcript of the first exchange concerning gender roles shows that some students do "negotiate ... [different] meanings with other students" and "try on and exchange identities ... even from one message to the next" (185, 191, and see 170-78). Yet the computer network cannot be entirely responsible for these successes if it does not preclude other failures. In what Faigley initially terms his "worst" computer conversation, his students resist any meaningful discussion, then resort to intolerant invective and inflexible opinions in order to avoid critical thought and constructive engagement (192-7). One student, self-identified as "armpit," comments, "isn't this so fun. let's not talk about the reading!!!" and another denounces a classmate as "a FEMALE cha[u]vinist pig" (193, 195). Although Faigley frankly admits the failure of these students and others to
84JAC negotiate their different discursive practices, his zeal for these computer conversations makes him lapse into a relativism which undermines his students' agency (189). These students do not develop any control over language and agency because they do not reflect upon their impulsive utterances. Unfortunately, they are being written by language as Roland Barthes theorized: "it is language which speaks, not the author" (50). Their instructor denies his own agency as well by abrogating his authority. Rather than address his students' unproductive, objectionable discussion or take some credit for the much better exchange by another class, Faigley demurs, "I cannot defend these labels [for the 'worst' and 'best' discussions] because in both classes students claimed and used classroom space for their own purposes" (197). Similar to Jacques Derrida's theory of language as endless signification, Faigley's zeal for the flashing display of electronic messages displaces the agency of any individual. In "Signature Event Context," Derridaopposes the foundational concept of "presence" by insisting on the "radical absence" of readers and writers: all writing must ... be capable of functioning in the radical absence of every empirically determined receiver in general .... What holds for the receiver also holds, for the same reasons, for the sender or producer. To write is to produce a mark ... which [a writer's] disappearance will not, in principle, hinder in its functioning, offering ... itself to be read and rewritten. (180)
Derrida's claim that writing functions through a writer's "absence" does not just mean the delayed presence of the reader or the previous presence of the author in relation to the text. This absence is so "radical" that a writer's" disappearance" does not affect writing's "functioning." This insistence that writing functions independently of any and all writers and readers erases the individual agent completely-a theoretical claim Derrida has found difficult to accept when his own writings have been criticized.3 Derrida also has stated, "To deconstruct the subject does not mean to deny its existence .... [deconstruction] does not. .. destroy the subject; it simply tries to resituate it" (qtd. in Szkudlarek 56). This resituation, however, does destroy the subject as agent because, as Paul Smith objects, he does not "provide any notion of how human agents mediate the actual 'process' [of signification] .... Derrida's promise of resistance cannot be fulfilled, simply because he cannot imagine 'who' might effect the resistance" (Smith 53). Similar to Derrida's conception of writing, Faigley cannot conceive of an instructor resisting his students' unproductive, "worst" discourse. In practice, Faigleytolerates the unexamined opinions of students like those identified by the self-selected pseudonyms of" A. Hitler" and "armpit" (172, 193). He ignores the decisive influence of a teaching assistant, JoAnn Campbell, during the" best" conversation; her provocative questions, rather than an uncritical acceptance, stimulate several of the most productive exchanges (169, 178). Despite Faigley's claims to the contrary, a postmodern utopia has not been achieved. 4
The Postmodern Impasse ofAgency 85 Rather than abrogate a composition instructor's authority, Berlin initially aggrandizes it as he tries to foster the agency of student writers. In Berlin's admittedly experimental course, his postmodern assumptions require an instructor to dominate the students, and their passivity prevents their development of any agency as writers. As explained in "Postructuralism, Cultural Studies, and the Composition Classroom," Berlin "refigures English studies along the lines of cultural studies" by engaging his students in collaborative learning sequences (26). Using the principles of deconstruction, Berlin teaches his students to identify the ever shifting binary oppositions within texts and to reconsider the implicit privileging, for example, the masculine over the feminine (see 26-32). After identifying these implicit values, Berlin expects his students to "challenge the dominant ideological formations" and to "resist and negotiate these hegemonic [cultural] codes" (26, 27). Although Berlin explicitly states, "students do not always submit to these [cultural] codes," his revolutionary rhetoric of "challenge" and "resistance" grants his students' prior beliefs little credence (30). This rhetoric of resistance against discursive oppression requires students to reject their past experiences and ideas as products of the hegemonic culture. A tale of personal ambition, for example, becomes symptomatic of capitalistic individualism. Yet if students do dismiss their pasts as artifacts of cultural inscription, they face the same epistemological crisis in practice that Michel Foucault creates in theory. In his studies of disciplinary control, Foucault asserts, the very complexity of the modern society'S invasive powers includes, rather than precludes, individual agency. The power of the dominant discourses, Foucault states, "includes an important element: freedom. Power is exercised only over free subjects" ("Subject" 221). Confronted by the multiple, inconsistent demands of the dominant ideology, the subject has the autonomy to determine an appropriate response. Yet Foucault creates an epistemological crisis when he conceives of discourse as a pernicious practice in order to critique the presumed neutrality offoundationallanguage. In "The Discourse on Language," he states, "we must conceive discourse as a violence that we do to things, or, at all events, as a practice we impose on them" (229). Foucault softens his rhetoric against language in "The Subject and Power," yet he persists in describing discursive practices as external impositions thatthesubject "is placed in" and "turn him- or herself into a subject" (209,208). When Foucault links discourse to power, he seems to grant the subject the agency, or freedom, to choose to act against as well as with the dominant ideology. This agency involves a positive concept of freedom, meaning the freedom to act, yet Foucault's rhetoric of discursive oppression implies a contradictory concept of freedom, the negative freedom from external constraints (Szkudlarek 42). By insisting on the oppressiveness, if not the violence, of discourse, Foucault implies that a subject should seek a negative freedom from its constraints more than a positive freedom to act within-and possibly against some but not all of-the dominant practices. This negative, outright rejection
86 JAC
of the dominant discourses, however, would induce a postmodern form of paralysis. For if an individual tries to escape discursive oppression, then all the prior experiences and assumptions with that discourse would have to be denied. Yet anti-foundationalists assert that a knower does not perceive reality directly; an individual instead creates knowledge within a discursive context of other accepted beliefs. As the constraints of the dominant discourse are rejected, a subject is deprived the necessary context with which to consider new, alternative assertions. As Berlin's students demonstrate, a Foucauldian subject is more likely to resist this postmodern paralysis than the dominant ideology. 5 Rather than submit to this total critique of their prior beliefs, Berlin's students challenge not the dominant discourses but instead their composition instructor. His aggrandized authority as a cultural critic ultimately is undermined. According to Bizzell, Berlin's course fails to achieve its stated goals because the students reaffirm the dominant culture. When Berlin asks students to deconstruct dominant ideologies on relations between the sexes . . . . [they] hold finnly to the ideologies they are supposed to question. [Both female and male students] defend prostitution as a woman's right to make money any way she sees fit. (Bizzell, "Beyond" 670)
Like Bizzell, I believe the bitter medicine of this postmodern pedagogy is too much for Berlin's students to swallow. Resistance against presumably oppressive discursive practices requires most students to doubt too much of their previous knowledge. They are unwilling to submit to this pervasive skepticism because postmodern instructors offer few specific alternatives to their present beliefs or even a way to develop such options ("Beyond" 671). Forced to choose between skeptical detachment and unexamined commitment to questionable beliefs, most students chose the latter: the perpetuation of the dominant discourses. Like the postmodern theories of Derrida and Foucault, the classroom practices proposed by Faigley and Berlin are powerful critiques of foundationalism, but they do not provide an adequate account of agency and its achievement. Consequently, I believe that we need to distinguish between postmodern antifoundationalists such as Foucault and Faigley and pragmatist nonfoundationalists like Dewey and Richard Rorty. Deweyan pragmatism and contemporary neo-pragmatism make the assertion of contingent beliefs possible without promising the final closure of absolute certainty. The pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey provides an alternative method of inquiry with which student writers can learn to question, revise, and affirm assertions.
The Non-Foundational Alternative of Pragmatism and Its Pedagogical Implications To create a philosophical alternative to foundationalism, Dewey had to "surrender not merely the old solutions, but the old problems" of foundational ism as well ("Need" 20-21). Seeking only anew solution to a foundational concern like
The Postmodern Impasse ofAgency 87 agency risks recasting the old problem in a new form. Then the foundational problem of overlooking language's influence upon an individual's thought could become one of overstating the influence oflanguage. Dewey, however, relinquishes the "old problems" entirely by reconsidering the very premises of foundationalism-and I will argue-of postmodern anti-foundationalism. Dewey reconsiders the premises of "old" foundational problems by tracing them to their classical origins. The ancient Greeks, he explains in The Questfor Certainty, sought absolute truths because they had little control over the frustrating vicissitudes of daily life. To feel more secure, the Greeks worshipped mythical gods, like Zeus, then more abstract entities, such as the Platonic forms. By assuming these ideals existed in an ultimate reality, the Greeks could avoid the frustrations of daily life and seek invariant answers by contemplating this realm. If this reality is believed to precede and transcend daily appearances and activities, then contemplation of its ideals, it was hoped, would provide absolute certainty (14-17). 6 To assume the existence of this ultimate reality, classical thinkers had to confuse the known with the real. The Greeks actually believed in the reality of the Platonic forms Truth, Beauty, and Goodness by generalizing their knowledge of particular examples. The knowledge of a true statement, a beautiful face, and a good deed enabled classical thinkers to posit the existence of absolute Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Yet the Greeks reversed the order of their reasoning in order to assume that these transitory appearances were produced by the abstract ideals. This foundational philosophy rests on this confusion, or rather conflation, of the knowledge of good deeds with the reality of Goodness. In Experience and Nature, Dewey identifies this conflation of the known and the presumably real as the "philosophic fallacy" (27). This epistemological fallacy converts knowledge developed from particular experiences into an absolute reality believed to cause these experiences. When reality is conceived as a realm of prior absolutes, the mind, as Rorty explains, is conceived according to an ocular analogy. Just as the body's eye perceives physical appearances, so too does the mind see these antecedent universals (38). Knowledge then is considered to be a representation, or mirror, of reality and language is deemed a neutral medium for its communication. Language represents knowledge just as knowledge mirrors reality. The foundational concept of individual agency, therefore, involves only the power of the mind's eye to perceive reality; it is a purely cognitive process that language does not influence. Knowledge or thought, Dewey explains, is misconceived by foundationalists as "complete prior to language. Language thus 'expresses' thought as a pipe conducts water" (Experience 141). When foundationalists commit the philosophical fallacy, they distinguish between mind and body, thought and language as though each element of these pairs was an an absolute entity. The epistemological problem then becomes to explain the relationships between these ideals. For example, how does the sensory information perceived by the body relate to the abstract reasoning conducted by the mind? In the Enlightenment tradition, this classical quandary
88 JAC was reformulated by foundationalists such as Galileo andNewton. When these Enlightenment Age scientists conflated the mathematically known with the real, they created a similar, problematic relationship between the quantitative and the qualitative, for they could not explain the relationship between sensory experience of colors or shapes and the presumed reality of quantifiable knowledge. Rather than seek a new solution to these epistemological quandaries, Dewey refers to the problematic relationships between thought and language, mind and body, and subjective and objective as false dualisms. They are the "old problems" of foundationalism that must be surrendered rather than continued. Along with his fellow pragmatists William James and Charles Sanders Peirce, Dewey rejects these problems by regarding them as "blocks to inquiry; blind alleys; ... [irresolvable] puzzles" (Experience 9). He instead reconsiders their premises: the foundational concepts of experience, knowledge, and language. Dewey reconceives these philosophical terms and the relationships between them. Language and knowledge, for example, are reconceived as dynamically interrelated concepts. His non-foundational concept of language cannot be comprehended completely until his concepts of knowledge and, I must add, experience are also understood. Dewey'S reconception ofthese fundamental philosophical premises constitutes his philosophical brilliance and the dazzling difficulty of his thought. 7 Yet if one attends to the premises of Dewey's mature thought, they lead to profound philosophical and social transformations. The non-foundational alternative of Deweyan pragmatism heralds antifoundationalism's subsequent emphasis on language without ignoring the epistemological importance of experience.
The Primacy ofExperience Unlike foundationalism which misconceives knowledge and antifoundationalism which misconstrues the influence of language, Deweyan pragmatism begins with experience "as the starting point of philosophic thought" (Experience 11). Dewey considers experience to be the "inclusive integrity" in which an individual interacts or, better yet, transacts with the material and social environment (Experience 11). Late in his career, Dewey substituted the term "transaction" for his previous use of the word "interaction" in order to emphasize that the individual and the environment are mutually affected by each other. These transactional experiences, Dewey insists, are first undergone rather than known. In contrast to idealistic and realisticfoundational thinkers such as Plato and Locke, Dewey does not dismiss experiences as mere appearances, nor does he mistake these transactions for immediate knowledge. He distinguishes experience from knowledge by asserting its primacy. According to William James' famous phrase, experience is a continuous "stream of consciousness," a ceaseless flux of mental and physical transactions (Principles 1: 238). From this experiential stream, an individual can develop knowledge from experience, according to Dewey, by becoming an active participant in an experimental method of inquiry. This method begins when an
The Postmodern Impasse ofAgency 89 individual tries to resolve the "felt difficulty" of a physical need, an emotional desire, or intellectual curiosity (How 107). From the creative tension of a felt difficulty, an active knower can engage in exploratory activity to define the problem. The problem is defined by relating some apparently significant qualities from the stream of experience. As the problem is defined, a knower tries to form a hypothesis which can be tested through deliberate experimentation. Through such testing, knowledge not only develops from experience, but also returns to experience for verification. The actual practice of this method of inquiry, of course, is never as orderly as this neat description of its components: felt difficulty, problem definition, hypothesis formation, deliberate experimentation, and provisional verification. Nor is this method, Dewey admits, as easy for an individual to practice as it is for a theorist to describe. 8 Yet, this critical control over one's thoughts can be learned. For a composition pedagogy based on Deweyan pragmatism, student writers would learn to be agents of their ideas without imagining themselves to be the sole authors of their own thoughts. The starting point of a pragmatist writing course would be the primacy of experience. Like Donald Murray, a Deweyan instructor would begin with a student's already "extensive contact with life and language" (Learning 152). Student writers would be encouraged to identify and examine felt difficulties through Dewey's experimental method of inquiry. This method for developing knowledge from experience resembles Murray's theory that writing involves the "logical, understandable process" of collecting, focusing, ordering, developing, and revising (Write 4). Like Murray, a Deweyan instructor would teach students to approach ordinary experiences, such as a grandmother's death, with an "open susceptibility" (A Writer 2). While collecting a "necessary abundance" of information, a student writer should learn to look for the creative tensions that can lead to deliberate "experiments in meaning" (Write 63, Expecting 23). As the problem is defined, a student writer also should make connections to create a tentative idea that Murray variously refers to as a lead, a line, and a focus. With this hypothesis, a writer symbolically manipulates an experience in order "to learn, to explore, [and] to discover" (Write 3). Like Murray, a Deweyan instructor would believe that "students become writers at the moment when they first write what they do not expect" and teach student writers that "writing is not thinking reported, it is thinking" (Expecting 3,110). This emphasis on surprise and discovery does not mean that students are conceived as the autonomous authors of their own knowledge. For a Deweyan instructor, this emphasis only means that students must be active participants in this method of inquiry because learning should "take place under such conditions that from the standpoint of the learner there is genuine discovery" (Dewey, Democracy 354). To write to learn as Murray advocates, a student would be encouraged by an instructor, as Dewey urges, "to leave the outcome to the adequacy of means ... instead of insisting upon ... a conclusion in advance" (Art 138-39). A Deweyan instructor, however, would broaden this emphasis on the means of composing
90 JAC beyond Murray's attention to the writing process because the influence of prior knowledge and discursive practices has to be acknowledged.
The Constructive Function ofKnowledge According to Dewey, all knowledge is developed upon a background of prior beliefs; he asserts, "we bring to the simplest observation a complex apparatus ... of accepted meanings and techniques" (Experience 180). Or as Peirce states, "every cognition is determined logically by previous cognitions" (5: 157). This reliance on prior knowledge does not mean there is nothing new under the sun. When an individual develops a new assertion through the experimental method of inquiry, this idea can alter the contextual background upon which a knower considers both prior and subsequent knowledge. This alteration can beso subtle so as to appear to be a simple addition or so extreme as to cause a Kuhnian paradigm shift. An extreme contextual shift, such as from geocentrism to heliocentrism, epitomizes what Dewey terms the "real though limited" constructive function of knowledge ("Development" 13). A revolutionary belief like Galileo's assertion that the sun is the center of the cosmos constructs a substantially different context for experience. Thus, the constructive function is real because new knowledge can yield future experiences "which could not have been produced otherwise" ("Development" 13). Yet the constructive function is limited because a new belief cannot alter what is experienced completely and permanently. Although Dewey refutes all claims of foundational knowledge, he does not deny the existence of an environment with which we interact experientially. There is something out there, but by distinguishing experience from knowledge, he insists no direct knowledge of the inferred reality is possible. Pragmatic knowledge can only describe our mediated experiences, and by not claiming that knowledge reveals the real, Dewey does not commit the philosophic fallacy. Murray suggests the constructive function of knowledge when he conceives of writing as discovery. Yet as he attends to the writing process, Murray does not acknowledge the influence of "accepted meanings" that are brought to "simplest observation" as Dewey does (Experience 180). In order to acknowledge this influence, a Deweyan instructor would take Murray's classic assignment, the personal narrative, for a social turn without reaching the postmodern impasse. This assignment still would develop from the primacy of the writer's experience. The student would narrate a significant life experience, yet a Deweyan instructor would ask the student to reflect not just on the significance of the experience itself but also on the cultural assumptions implicit within the narration which influence her reflections. To encourage a student to reflect on these cultural influences, a Deweyan instructor would ask questions not usually posed in process-oriented draft comments and writing conferences. For example, when I was teaching a processoriented first-year writing course, one student named Brian wrote about trying to maintain a friendship with an openly gay student named Todd. Brian, who
The Postmodern Impasse ofAgency 91 was a talented performer, described practicing dance steps and songs with Todd for an upcoming college musical. Although these practices were productive and enjoyable, Brian did not want to be considered by others as being too friendly with this homosexual student. As a self-described artsy heterosexual, Brian worried about being labeled a "fag" by an intolerant peer. During our actual conference, I probably asked Brian such typical process-oriented questions as "Was there a specific incident that made you worry about being associated too closely with Todd?" and "Are you trying to answer an intolerant student, to explain your concerns to Todd, or to examine your own concerns?" To be more of a Deweyan instructor, I should have asked Brian to consider the cultural assumptions perpetuated by language, to reflect on the discursive practices that influence his own stated ambivalence towards homosexuality. A possible question to help reveal such assumptions, a Murrayan "revealing specific," might have made him mention a dislike for homosexual graffiti in public bathrooms that solicits impersonal sexual encounters (Write 61). I then could have asked him to consider the dominant terms for a participant in such encounters. A heterosexual male who engages in loveless sexual encounters is generally referred to as a "stud," and a heterosexual female who does so is commonly known as a "slut." A homosexual male, regardless of whether his sexuality is expressed in a loving relationship or not, is a "fag." An analysis of these terms may have led Brian to question whether he believes that participating in a loving relationship is more important than choosing someone of the opposite sex. Of course, he also might have avoided these cultural questions altogether and instead written about the presence of gay men in the theater as Brian actually did. A Deweyan instructor would not require Brian to resist the hegemonic culture as Berlin advocates, nor would he force a student to submit to a "principled critical intervention" as another postmodern theorist Alan France proposes (550). When a student does not examine her opinion, for example, about the purpose of imprisonment, France proposes an instructor should call into question a student's beliefthat prisons should punish the convicted by citing the conditions that lead to crime and the need for rehabilitation to prevent recidivism (550). The crucial difference between this postmodern teacher and a Deweyan instructor is not their willingness to intervene; it is the reason for their intervention. France intercedes in the student's learning process for the sake of an immediate product; his preferred answer to a debatable issue is valued more than the student's learning process. Because Dewey's educational goal is "intellectual and moral growth," he would not disrupt the continuing development of a student's learning process by mandating a desired outcome on a debatable issue (Democracy 362). If Brian did not resist homophobia explicitly and instead described his interactions with actors who are homosexuals, he would not necessarily be trying to compose as an autonomous author as many of Murray's critics contend. He would be participating in relationships of discursive collaboration which a Deweyan instructor would want him to recognize. In contrast to a writing process theorist and practitioner like Murray,
92 JAC a Deweyan instructor would want to make explicit language's influence upon thought which is implicit in Murray's pedagogy.
Ihe Influence ofLanguage According to Dewey, language influences thought through discursive collaborations that occur even when another person is not immediately present. Accepted beliefs, James explains, have been "built into the very structure of language" ("Pragmatism" 85). Because of these built-in beliefs, experience, for Dewey, "is already overlaid and saturated with the products of ... past generations .... It is filled with interpretations [and] classifications ... which have been incorporated into what seems to be fresh [thought)" (Experience 34). InArt as Experience, Dewey uses the example of an artist to illustrate this collaboration. Every creative process involves both productive activity and evaluative reception. Before the next brushstroke or line can be added, an artist must undergo, must experience, the consequences of the developing work. These evaluative pauses are often so short and subconscious that many creators deny having any audience awareness at all. Yet as they undergo their work in progress, these artists "becom[e] the receiving audience" by drawing upon the concepts and the criteria built into language (Art 106). Even the most avant-garde artist depends on her audience's conventional expectations even as she tries to disrupt and redefine them. Because an artist or a writer incorporates the built-in beliefs of their creative mediums, Dewey asserts, "the ways in which we believe and expect have a tremendous effect upon what we believe and expect" (Experience 15). To teach students to be cognizant of the "tremendous effect" of language upon thought, a Deweyan instructor would ask students to engage in and reflect upon peer response. As theorized by Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff, these response periods are an opportunity for explicit collaboration rather than judgmental evaluation or editorial correction. They manifest "the collaborative and social dimension of writing" (Sharing 1). An analytical response, for example, helps a writer reconsider the reasoning of a persuasive essay. A responder is asked to answer the following questions: Main Claim:What is the main claim/central assertion of the essay? and Supports: What supporting ideas does the main claim rest upon? How are they organized? What support could be added? What persuasive counter idea(s) has the writer overlooked? Assumptions: What assumptions does the essay seem to take for granted, treat as unquestionably true? Audience: To whom does the essay ·speak"? Who is the implied audience? What kind of readers would accept and reject the essay's reasoning? What is the writer's tone towards the implied reader? (Sharing 27-8, paraphrased)
Yet Elbow and Belanoff's peer response can be taken for an even greater social turn if discourse communities, large and small, are considered. Like Murray, Elbow and Be1anoff assume most student writers are influenced by a large,
The Postmodern Impasse 0/Agency 93 shared discourse community. When students deliberately immerse themselves in language through freewriting and peer responding, they believe students generally will be led by a common current. Rather than considering language to be such a broad, mild Gulf Stream, postmodernists like David Bartholomae conceive of discourses as the smaller currents of distinct, treacherous riptides. A Deweyan instructor would use peer response to encourage student writers and their responders to realize their immersion in these large and small discursive currents. Writers are able to compose without consciously considering audience, and responders are able to embody that audience because they are immersed in broad, common currents of language. Yet when a writer and a responder disagree, they may risk being pulled under if they fail to realize the danger of crossing discursive riptides. A Deweyan instructor would encourage students to consider whether a contentious counterstatement in analytical responding, for example, represents more than "just someone else's opinion." As Brian composed his actual essay on gay men in the theater, he noticed these discursive riptides and he was wary of crossing them. Brian did let several other students read his draft during peer response. When his classmates offered supporting and counter statements with such phrases as "sexual preference" and "unnatural act," I wish I had focused more on language's "condens[ation of] meanings that record social outcomes and presage social outlooks" as Dewey does (Democracy 46). For as Brian realized, the discursive riptides of tolerance and homophobia pulled him in very different directions. In order to examine his own opinion and to persuade others as he originally intended, Brian had to consider language's powerful influence. Like Foucault, Dewey acknowledges "the extent to which [the] ways [of believing] are unwittingly fixed by social custom and tradition," yet he does not consider this discursive influence to be always pernicious (Experience 34). For Dewey, discourse consists of influential ways of believing that individuals collaboratively use to make experiences meaningful. As Thomas Kent explains using the neopragmatist theory of Donald Davidson, language should be conceived as a semiotic activity. Based on Davidson's theory oftriangulation between a rhetor, a receiver, and an environment, provisional meaning is possible. This discursive activity enables individuals to alter as well as to adapt to their material and social environment (Kent 430-31). Dewey likewise considers language to be "the tools of tools ... the cherishing mother of significance" (Experience 154). Because discourse can be used to convert experiential events into considered meanings, Dewey does not consider discourse to be an oppressive cultural constraint or an endless, solipsistic system. The "tool" oflanguage can enable writers to achieve greater nonfoundational agency. To foster this achievement, aDeweyan instructor would want Brian and his classmates to be conscious participants in the semiotic activity of language. This conscious participation would require these students to realize their discursive collaboration with others and the potential for their transactional relationship with language itself.
94JAC
Non-Foundational Agency Dewey believes individuals can achieve agency by critically examining language's influential ways of believing because he places individuals and language in a transactional relationship, meaning a mutually influential interaction. Dewey does not reason from his knowledge of language as though this one aspect of experience precedes all others. He does not analyze discourse as a fixed cultural system then try to inhabit this antecedent structure with subjects whose agency becomes problematic. When postmodernists reason from their knowledge of language as though discursive practices constitute a prior reality, they risk repeating the philosophic fallacy committed by the foundationalists they oppose. Dewey, in contrast to anti-foundationalists, conceives oflanguage with the same complexity which he considers experience. He readily acknowledges the influence of language when he asserts, "experience is dependent upon an extension of language" (Experience 143) . Yet, after asserting the dependence of experience upon language, he immediately stipulates in his next phrase, "[language] which is a social product and operation" (Experience 143; emphasis added). By considering discourse as asocial product and operation-meaning a product and a process-Dewey creates a non-foundational theory of agency. Dewey conceives of language as a process as well as a product because, like society, it "not only continues to exist by transmission, by communication, it may be fairly said to exist in transmission, in communication" (Democracy 5). Language as a social product, which postmodernists analyze, only exists in the process of its transmission between individual members of a society. During their transmission of language, individuals can reflexively reconsider its influence. They can become agents and practice the positive freedom to act by reconstructing accepted beliefs and ways of believing. This reconstruction is possible because experience and knowledge influence language as much as language influences them. As each person acquires language, they form a "personallinquistic-experiential reservoir" according to the pragmatist literary theorist Louise Rosenblatt ("Transactional" 381). Through this personal internalization of language, individuals can create variations of meanings for a specific term, such as subjectivity. Postmodernists, for example, have varied the meaning of subjectivity from the foundational concept of a personal viewpoint upon experience to the anti-foundational concept of prior discursive positions by asserting that an individual has little control over her perspective. In addition to such variations of meaning, postmodernists also have substituted one term for another. They have replaced the foundational term "individual" with "subject" to indicate their opposition to any concept of autonomous agency (Berlin "Poststructuralism" 18). As demonstrated by the postmodernists' own use of varied meanings and multiple terms, the dominant discourse is never so stable and uniform so as to render the individual a subject completely subordinate to discursive practices. The instability and heteroglossia of language create the discursive space for individual agency.
The Postmodem Impasse 0/Agency 95 Through language, Dewey asserts, all "events are subject to reconsideration and revision" because "their meanings may be infinitely combined and rearranged in [the] imagination" of individuals (Experience 138). These imaginative recombinations can lead to the reconstruction of prior beliefs because these conceptual alternatives can be considered and compared. According to the pragmatic theory of verification, an assertion is verified by its consequences. As Peirce states, meaning is determined by the effect a belief has on one's actions: "the purport of any concept is its conceived bearing upon our conduct" (5: 312). For James and Dewey, knowledge becomes true when a belief permits an individual to achieve a desired outcome. According to this standard of verification, knowledge always retains a tentativeness. Beliefs, Dewey states, can be validated so they "may have a practical or moral certainty," but knowledge "never lose[s] a hypothetic[ al] quality" (Experience 129). Futureverification can only be assumed, not assured. The pragmatic theory of verification differs from the foundational criterion of correspondence to an ultimate reality and from the postmodern criterion of coherence within a solipsistic language system. 9 For Dewey, language never becomes a postmodern prison-house, and knowledge never attains absolute certainty. This contingency of belief means that the known cannot be conflated with the real, but the consequences of one assertion can be compared with that of another. Dewey likens this critical inquiry to intellectual disrobing. We cannot permanently divest ourselves of the intellectual habits we take on and wear when we assimilate the culture of our own time and place. But intellectual furthering of culture demands that we take them off, that we inspect them critically to see what they are made of and what wearing them does to us. (Experience 35)
One's entire contextual background of beliefs cannot be overthrown all at once, but separate beliefs may be foregrounded for examination. For example, Brian and his classmates could examine the effect of "wearing" the discourses of homophobia and tolerance. Based on the consequences of each way of believing, these students could decide whether they value homophobic intolerance more than loving intimacy. For Brian and his classmates to realize more of their potential nonfoundational agency, they could consider the consequences of each ofthose two beliefs. When a conflict in values occurs, this felt difficulty can be treated as a questionable belief. To initiate the experimental method of inquiry, "the differences between the enjoyed and the enjoyable" must be considered to distinguish the "valuing" of the enjoyed from the "valuation" of the enjoyable. Valuing is "a statement of one's own feelings" and valuation initiates deliberate inquiry (Dewey, Quest 263). Brian would have to question why some heterosexual men enjoy, meaning value, accusing other males of being a/ago What behaviors elicit this accusation? Why can some of these behaviors, such as tears or touching, be construed very differently if they occur on a sports field or a
96JAC theatrical stage? Why does the patriarchal culture draw such an abrupt yet ambiguous distinction between male bonding and homosexual desire? Is sexual intimacy between two loving people more important than the patriarchal distinction between stud and fag? If loving intimacy between any two people is more important than homophobic intolerance against same sex intimacy, then does this assertion conflict with any other beliefs? Do any of these beliefs silence an assertion that valuing loving intimacy is more important than valuing homophobic intolerance? Several postmodern composition instructors have adapted postmodern theories of marginalization to create methods for listening to the silenced. Carol Snyder, for example, has adapted Foucault's geneological studies to enable her students to analyze classification systems. After encouraging her students to question their often foundational assumptions about the classifications of academic discourse, she provides the following kinds of questions to guide their analyses (212-214): 1) 2) 3) 4) 5)
What is the object of the classification system? What does the classification exclude or overlook? Who has devised and! or employed these classifications? When was this system devised and!or modfied? Where was this classification system devised and where has it been used?
Snyder hopes these questions lead her students "to see that the classifications that order their disciplines are meaningful human inventions with significant effects" and they are "open to question and explanation, and thus by writing about them might lead to useful discoveries" (215). By encouraging her students to discover these classifications' benefits, flaws, exclusions, and possible alternatives, she conceives of her students as non-foundational agents who are free to act within and against specific discursive structures. Unlike Foucault, Snyder does not imply that the discursive systems are external constraints from which one must seek an impossible escape. Based on Paulo Freire's critical literacy, Linda Shaw Finlay and Valerie Faith have taught their students to ask similar questions about their participation within specific discourses. Yet, unlike Freire, they do not circumscribe the outcome of a student's positive freedom. They do not predictthat the fruition of a student's inquiry will be the realization that the dominant, capitalist ideology is a distortion of the true reality revealed by Marxism (Bizzell, "Marxism" 64). As these adaptations surpass their theoretical origins, their success can be coordinated with that of several writing process practices because each conforms to Dewey's comprehensive nonfoundational philosophy. Like Foucault and Freire, Dewey was well aware that, instead of seeking wider, more democratic associations, a group may curtail "full interaction with other groups" in order to "protect what it has" (Democracy 99). And language can aid such premature closure as much as it can foster reconstructive collabo-
The Postmodern Impasse ofAgency 97 ration. Despite Dewey's awareness, the moral theologian Reinhold Niebuhr criticizes him for not considering such selfishness sufficiently: "Failure to recognize the stubborn resistance of group egoism to all moral and inclusive social objectives inevitably involves them [liberals like Dewey] in unrealistic and confused thought" (qtd. in West 154). Personal expediency too easily can become selfish hypocrisy. If Brian, for example, was present when some intolerant students ridiculed Todd, he would have to risk his own, sometimes tenuous, social acceptance if he were to defend his homosexual friend. He would have to weigh the value of his own immediate acceptance against the eventual consequences for himself, Todd, and the homophobic students. As contemporary composition instructors urge our students to become agents of social reform, I think we need to be very honest about the possible consequences of such agency and our own personal willingness to accept them. Dewey only partially recognizes the need for unpopular, disruptive demonstrations to force the privileged to confront a conflict in their values. In Democracy and Education, he acknowledges the necessity of "public agitation [and] propaganda" as well as "legislative and administrative action" to achieve social reform (383). Dewey was the first author of a philosophy textbook to use a labor strike as an example of an ethical dilemma. As a young professor in Chicago, he did not publicly support the Pullman strike, yet he later granted his considerable stature to the Trotsky Commission and many other political causes (see Westbrook 86-92, 480-2). Although it is important to question Dewey's own political involvement, one should not condemn his ideas because of his politics, for such condemnation would diminish his considerable accomplishments. Because Dewey reconceives the problematic premises of foundationalism that include the conception ofthe term "philosophy" itself, philosophy becomes the pragmatic study of "what the known demands of us"; it is a consideration "of what is possible" rather than what is eternally true or culturally inscribed (Democracy 381). Through the imaginative recombination of the known, this consideration of possibilities is not limited to existing practices. Advocates of homosexual tolerance, for example, have relied upon the American discourse of individual freedom to reconceive an "unnatural activity" as "sexual preference." They then have used public agitation to force others to confront the conflict of values between the cultural discourses of individual freedom and homophobic intolerance. Dewey does not provide any detailed proposals for social reform; he instead offers a comprehensive account of the process by which we can reform society deliberatively.lo He identifies the problematic premises that have diverted our energies to the reconciliation offalse dualisms. He describes a non-foundational philosophy which places "methods and means upon the [same] level of importance as has, in the past, been imputed exclusively to ends" or products so we can "think of [our]selves as agents, not as ends" (Quest 279,276).
98 JAC A Conclusion and a Beginning A Deweyan instructor can teach student writers to develop greater individual agency. As I have tried to suggest, this writing instruction will be based on the following pragmatic principles: the primacy of experience, the experimental method of inquiry, the influence of language upon thought, an individual's discursive collaboration with others, and an individual's transactional relationship with language itself. As suggested by my references to Murray and Elbow, this Deweyan composition course does not place postmodern theory in opposition to writing process practices as some social critics contend. Similar to Susan Jarratt, I believe It's not a question of throwing out the innovations of teachers like Elbow and Murray or of shutting down the values and personal experiences of students; rather it's a question of relocating those practices and interests in a different theoretical context.
(113)
I, however, have tried to show that we do not have to look too far for this different context because it is already implicit within Murray's and Elbow's pedagogies. Deweyan pragmatism retheorizes many of the sound practices of writing process and postmodern composition instructors. This alternative philosophy can help us coordinate the successes of these two approaches to composition. Dewey has drawn a course beyond the current impasse over agency, and we have only begun to realize the possibilities of this new direction.
University o/New Hampshire Durham, New Hampshire Notes 1 I would like to acknowledge that I am deeply indebted to Thomas Newkirk and Patricia Sullivan for their generous encouragement and advice as I composed this essay. I also would like to thank the members of my reading circle as well as the two anonymous fA C reviewers for their helpful suggestions. 2 Janet Emig mentions pragmatic philosophy as a seminal influence in her one sentence assertion that "John Dewey is everywhere in our work" (150). Thomas Newkirk, Louise Wetherbee Phelps, Stephen Fishman and others have advanced contemporary composition by demonstrating Dewey'S relevance to several pressing issues, such as the relationship between process and product and the formation of community among individual writers. Yet these studies have not questioned the epistemological premises of these current issues enough to realize Dewey's greatest contribution to philosophy and his special relevance to contemporary composition. The problem of postmodern agency, however, requires a Deweyan examination of both the foundationalism of a-rhetorical modernists and the anti-foundationalism of postmodern rhetoricians. Thomas Kent and David Russell have begun this broader examination of Dewey'S relevance. Similar to Kent, I believe Deweyan pragmatism as well as neopragmatist externalism "allows us to retain our anti-foundationalism while avoiding the problems that stymie social constructionism" (430). 3 In his own responses to criticisms of his writings, Derrida demonstrates the unacceptable implications of his attempted resituation of the subject. As Reed Way Dasenbrock explains in "Taking It Personally," the author Derrida has responded to critics by objecting that he
The Postmodern Impasse ofAgency 99 has been misread, yet this objection implies a personal control over one's texts that is incompatible with Derrida's own deconstructive theory. 4 Faigley's abrogated authority and his students' attenuated agency stem in part from his conflation of the networked classroom's collective text and the multiple origins of one person's discourse. This collective text written by multiple students is not the same as the "overlapping and competing discourses" in which each student is situated (16). Thus, the technology of Faigley's electronic discussions can no more guarantee each student will confront and critique their fragmented and contradictory subjectivity than a stimulating conventional classroom conversation can prevent it. By lapsing into relativism, Faigley's networked classroom duplicates a weakness found within some writing process theories. Like Ken Macrorie in one of his first texts entitled Uptaught, Faigley encourages "the sensational rush over the considered response" as James Vopat presciently warned at the inception of the modem writing process movement (42). This common problem suggests that writing process and postmodern theories are not as mutually exclusive as Berlin and Faigley contend. S Like Derrida in his later writings, Foucault, in retrospect, states he has always been concerned with the subject rather than committed to its elimination. He claims, "The goal of my work ... has not been to analyze the phenomena of power .... [but] to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings have been made subjects" ("Subject" 208). After the strident structuralism of early writings like The Order of Things, Foucault conceives of subjectivity in increasing complexity. In "What is an Author?" he distinguishes a writer from an author by comparing their relationship with that of an author and a narrator. Foucault declares the death of only the author but never again mentions the previously distinguished "real writer" in this essay (274). When Foucault addresses the role of "the individual ... who wrote the text" as distinct from the author function in "The Discourse on Language,' he argues, "it would be ridiculous to deny the existence of individuals who write, and invent" (221, 222). Foucault finally concedes that discursive practices are productive in "The Subject and Power," yet he still does not acknowledge that they can be beneficial. The relationship between the individual and discourse remains problematic for Foucault because he treats discourse as an oppressive constraint upon individual freedom. 6 This privileging of theory over practice reinforced existing class distinctions within Greek society. The subordination of practice had even earlier origins in negative cultural and economic associations with physical labor, but classical thinkers provided the "intellectual formulation and justification" for privileged Greeks to perpetuate these biases (Quest 30). 7 No one has ever claimed it is easy to read Dewey's most mature philosophical thought. He writes with the sometimes convoluted syntax of a nineteenth century man as he tries to overcome the philosophical problems that have confounded twentieth century thinkers. In a witty criticism, Randolph Bourne observes, "No man ... with such universally important things to say ... was ever published in forms more ingeniously contrived to thwart [public] interest" (qtd. by Westbrook 152). Yet Dewey'S prose certainly is no more difficult to read than that of Derrida. Although Dewey is never as fluid a writer as James, he is capable of passages of equal eloquence; for example, he asserts, "the immediately given is always the dubious, it is always a matter for subsequent events to determine .... [If nature were] a closed mechanical or closed teleological structure ... the flickering candle of consciousness would go out" (Experience 283-84). 8 It is difficult to learn the art of critical thinking because, as Dewey acknowledges, people often are "impatient with doubt and suspense" and only the "disciplined mind takes delight in the problematic" (Quest 228). Since the ancient Greeks, most people have not been willing to tolerate intellectual uncertainty when their material security is also in doubt. Dewey, therefore, calls for a more equitable distribution of income. He also admits that schools foster the preference for passivity through their foundationalist "principles of authority and acquisition rather than ... discovery and invention" (Democracy 327-38). Educational reform requires such great philosophical and economic changes that a pedagogy based not on "telling and being told, but an active and constructive process, is a principle almost as generally violated in practice as [it is] conceded in theory" (Democracy 46)! After his initial hope that schools could lead social reform, Dewey recognized that educational reform was contingent on broader social
100 JAC reform so he became politically active to a much greater degree than contemporary critics like Cornel West admit. Rather than dismiss Dewey as a permissive progressive, we need to consider his educational writings as an integral part of his larger pragmatic philosophy. , Foundationalists conceive of verification as a correspondence to "a world [assumed to be] already constructed and detertnined" ("Development" 13). The location of this absolute reality has shifted many times such as from the classical fortns to the Christian God of medieval theologians and the mathematical quantities of Enlightenment Age scientists, but the known is still believed to correspond to the real. For postmodern anti-foundationalists such as de Saussure and Derrida, an assertion can never be verified beyond its assertion in a particular discourse because they conceive of language as a differential network of signifiers. Since each signifier exists in reference to another and not to a prior reality or to an anticipated outcome, postmodern verification depends entirely on discursive coherence. [0 As he describes the development of contingent beliefs, Dewey does recognize the importance of economic considerations. The material means must be considered because we all too often "hoist the banner of the ideal, and then march in the direction that concrete conditions suggest and reward" (Quest 281). When economic conditions are ignored during the development of values in theory, they "take revenge by declaring that [they are] the only social reality" upon which individuals should act (Quest 282).
Works Cited Barthes, Roland. "The Death of the Author." The Rustle of Language. 1968. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1986. Berlin, James. "Poststructuralism, Cultural Studies, and the Composition Classsroom: Postmodern Theory in Practice." Rhetoric Review. 11 (1992): 16·33. Bizzell, Patricia. "Beyond Anti-Foundationalism to Rhetorical Authority: Problems Defining 'Cultural Literacy.'" College English 52 (1990): 661-75. --.
"Marxist Ideas in Composition Studies." Contending With Words: Composition and Rhetoric in a Postmodern Age. Ed. Patricia Harkin and John Schilb. New York: MLA, 1991. 52-68.
Dasenbrock,.Reed Way. "Taking It Personally: Reading Derrida's Responses." College English 56 (1994): 261-79. Derrida, Jacques. "Signature, Event, and Context." Glyph 1. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1977. 172-97. Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Capricorn, 1934. --. Democracy and Education. 1916. New York: The Free Press, 1967.
--."The Development of Pragmatism." Philosophy and Civilization. New York, Milton and Balch, 1931. 13-35. Experience and Nature. Revised ed. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1929.
"The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy." Experience, Nature, and -.Freedom. 1917. Ed. Richard Burnstein. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960. 19-69. - . How We Think. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1933. - . The Quest for Certainty. A Study of the Relationship ofKnowledge and A ction. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1929.
Elbow, Peter, and Pat Belanoff. Sharing and Responding. New York: Random House, 1989.
The Postmodern Impasse ofAgency 101 Emig, Janet. "The Tacit Tradition: The Inevitability of a Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Writing Research." The Web of Meaning: Essays on Writing, Teaching, Learning and Thinking. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton/CooK, 1983. 146-56. Faigley, Lester. Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernism and the Subject of Composition. Pittsburg: U of Pittsburg P, 1992. Foucault, Michel. The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Trans. Rupert Swyer. New York: Pantheon, 1982. 215-37. - . "Afterword: The Subject and Power." Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Ed. Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982. 208-26. - . 'What is an Author?" Contemporary Literary Criticism: Literary and Cultural Studies. 2nd ed. Ed. Robert Davis and Ronald Schleifer. New York: Longman, 1989. 262-76. France, Alan. "Comment on 'Is Expressivism Dead?'" College English 55 (1993) 548-59. Finlay, Linda Shaw, and Valerie Faith. "Illiteracy and Alienation in American Colleges." Freire for the Classroom: A Sourcebook for Liberatory Teaching. Ed. Ira Schor. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 19R9. 63-86. Gunn, Giles. Thinking Across the Grain: Ideology, Intellect, and the New Pragmatism. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1992. Howard, Rebecca. "Reflexivity and Agency in Rhetoric and Pedagogy." College English 56 (1994): 348-55. James, William. "Pragmatism and Common Sense." 1910. Pragmatism and Other Essays. New York: Pocket, 1963.73-86. - . Principles of Psychology. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1981.
Jarrett, Susan. "Feminism and Composition: A Case for Conflict." Contending With Words: Composition and Rhetoric in a Postmodern Age. Ed. Patricia Harkin and John Schilb. New YorK: MLA, 1991. 105-23. Kent, Thomas. 'On the Very Idea of a Discourse Community." College Composition and Communications 42 (1991): 425-45. Murray, Donald. Expecting the Unexpected: Teaching Myself-and Others-to Read and Write. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1989. - . Learning by Teaching: SelectedArticles on Writing and Teaching. Montclair, NJ: Boynton/ Cook, 1982. - . Write to Learn. 3rd ed. Chicago: Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston, 1990. - . A Writer Teaches Writing. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968.
Peirce, Charles Saunders. Collected Papers: Pragmatism and Pragmaticism. Vol. 5. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1960. Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1979. Rosenblatt, Louise. "The Transactional Theory: Against Dualisms." College English 55 (1993): 377-86. Russell, David. 'Vygotsky, Dewey, and Externalism: Beyond the Student/Discipline Dichotomy." Journal of Advanced Composition 13 (1993): 173-98. Smith, Paul. Discerning the Subject. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1988. Snyder, Carol. "Analyzing Classifications: Foucault for Advanced Writing." College Compo· sition and Communications 35 (1984): 209-16.
102 JAC Szkudlarek, Tomasz. The Problem and Garvey, 1993.
0/ Freedom in Postmodern Education.
Westpon, CT: Bergin
Vopat, James. "Uptaught Rethought-Coming Back from the Knockout." College English 40 (1978): 41-45. West, Cornel. The American Evasion
0/ Philosophy.
Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1989.
Westbrook, Roben. John Dewey and American Democracy. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991.
M.A. and Ph.D. in English with Specialization in Rhetoric and Composition The University of South Florida offers a specialization in rhetoric and composition at both the M.A. and Ph.D. levels. Students can choose this specialization to prepare themselves to conduct research into rhetorical history, theory, and practice, and to teach composition and literature at the college and secondary levels. This program allows students to study the history and philosophy of rhetoric, the theory of composition, composition research and its design, the teaching of writing and literature, the theory and practice of stylistic analysis, and the administration of writing programs. Students also study traditional British and American literature and critical theory. Teaching assistantships, tuition waivers, and other kinds of financial aid are available. For further information call or write: Professor Sara M. Deats; Director of Graduate Study; English Department; University of South Florida; Tampa, FL 33620 (813-974-2421).