Networked Process

Helen Foster

Description

Helen Foster problematizes one of the dominant metaphors in rhetoric and composition, the notion of “writing process,” and, in turn, offers an important and engaging new approach for the future of the discipline, one that directly addresses the complexities, challenges, and opportunities for writing research in a postmodern world.

Informations

• Publié par: Parlor Press, LLC
• Date de parution: 01 août 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781602357235
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Lauer Series in Rhetoric and Composition
Series Editors, Catherine Hobbs and Patricia Sullivan
The Lauer Series in Rhetoric and Composition honors the contributions Janice Lauer Hutton has made to the emergence of Rhetoric and Composition as a disciplinary study. It publishes scholarship that carries on Professor Lauer’s varied work in the history of written rhetoric, disciplinarity in composition studies, contemporary pedagogical theory, and written literacy theory and research.
Other Books in the Series
1977: A Cultural Moment in Composition by Brent Henze, Jack Selzer, and Wendy Sharer (2007)
Untenured Faculty as Writing Program Administrators: Institutional Practices and Politics , edited by Debra Frank Dew and Alic Horning (2007)
Composing a Community: A History of Writing Across the Curriculum , edited by Susan H. McLeod and Margot Soven (2006)
Historical Studies of Writing Program Administration: Individuals, Communities, and the Formation of a Discipline, edited by Barbara L’Eplattenier and Lisa Mastrangelo (2004).
Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College English Studies (Expanded Edition) by James A. Berlin (2003)


Networked Process
Dissolving Boundaries of Process and Post-Process
Helen Foster
Parlor Press
West Lafayette, Indiana
www.parlorpress.com


Parlor Press LLC, West Lafayette, Indiana 47906
© 2007 by Parlor Press
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
S A N: 2 5 4 - 8 8 7 9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Foster, Helen, 1950-
Networked process : dissolving boundaries of process and post-process / Helen Foster.
p. cm. -- (Lauer Series in Rhetoric and Composition)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60235-019-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-020-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-021-2 (adobe ebook)
1. English language--Rhetoric. 2. Report writing. I. Title.
PE1404.F67 2007
808’.042071--dc22
2007026549
Cover design by David Blakesley.
Cover background “Magma Share” © 2005 by Eva Serrabass. Used by permission.
Printed on acid-free paper.
Parlor Press, LLC is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles in print and multimedia formats. This book is available in paper, cloth and Adobe eBook formats from Parlor Press on the World Wide Web at http://www.parlorpress.com or through online and brick-and-mortar bookstores. For submission information or to find out about Parlor Press publications, write to Parlor Press, 8 1 6 Robinson St., West Lafayette, Indiana, 47906, or e-mail [e-mail].


For Kate and Janice


Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Profiling Process and Post-Process
Post-Process
Entrance of Post-Process Theory into the Discourse of Rhetoric and Composition
Post-Process Moniker and the Discourse of Rhetoric and Composition
Post-Process Scholarship and the Social/Cultural Turn
Critiques of Process within Strand Two Post-Process
Calls for Reform within Strand Two Post-Process
Repercussions for a Post-Process Profession within Strand Two Post-Process
Post-Process Scholarship that Positions Itself Beyond That of the Social/Cultural Turn
A Few Rejoinders to Thomas Kent’s Edited Post-Process Collection
Process: A Rebuttal
Process Profile
Process, Post-Process: A Point of Stasis
Writing Process/Post-Process Unbound: Networked Process
2 Exploring Networked Process in James Berlin’s Cognitive Maps
Berlin’s Cognitive Maps
“Current-Traditional Rhetoric: Paradigm and Practice”
“Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories”
Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century American Colleges
Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900–1985
“Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class”
The Platform That Berlin Built
3 Networked Subjectivity
Subjectivity: Entering the Network
Articulating Networked Process: Mapping Networked Subjectivity
Space/Time/History
Language/Discourse
Self
Alterity/Other/Horizon
Addressivity/Answerability
Networked Process: Networked Subjectivity and Writing Process(es)
4 Situating Networked Subjectivity
Discursive Relations
Multiple Epistemologies/Multiple Subjectivities
Multiple Literacies/Classroom
5 Textbooks, Writing Program Reforms, Institutionality, and the Public
Audience, Self, and Alterity
Understanding
Language/Discourse
Context and Horizon
Purpose: Addressivity and Answerability
Introduction to “Basic Work and Material Acts: The Ironies, Discrepancies, and Disjunctures of Basic Writing and Mainstreaming”
6 Networked Process and the Long Revolution
Institutional Place(ment)
The Writing Major
Re-visioning Rhetoric and Composition
Disciplinarity
Notes
Works Cited
Index
About the Author


Illustrations
Figure 1. Early Process/Post-Process/
Radical Post-Process Continuum
Figure 2. Networked Subjectivity
Figure 3. Space/Time/History
Figure 4. Language/Discourse
Figure 5. Self
Figure 6. Space of the Self
Figure 7. Alterity/Other/Horizon
Figure 8. Addressivity/Answerability
Figure 9. Networked Subjectivity
Figure 10. Multiple Epistemologies /
Multiple Subjectivities
Figure 11. Multiple Literacies/Classroom


Acknowledgments
As any book is, this one is likewise thoroughly intertextual, for every graduate professor I’ve studied with along with some intellectually formidable colleagues has influenced the scholarly journey that culminated in this book. My thanks go to all for the challenges and discussions. However, special consideration goes to the interlocutor who inspired the dissonance of this inquiry. Although he was gone before I had the chance to study with him, his passion, inspiration, and keen intellect live on in his work. Thank you Jim Berlin, wherever you are.
Without the patience and good humor of David Blakesley at Parlor Press, this book would literally not have been possible. Dave is a terrifically hard-working editor, whom I’m convinced rarely sleeps. And to Lauer Series’ editors Catherine Hobbs and Patricia Sullivan go my appreciation for careful readings and insightful comments.
For material support of my work, I am indebted to the University of Texas El Paso for a research grant, as well as to the English department for a course release.
My thanks extend to Claudia Rojas for contributing her talents in graphic design and to Scott Lunsford and Paul Lynch for their skills in manuscript editing. Thanks, too, for the thoughtful manuscript reading and questioning offered by Brian McNely. Although he’s convinced me that we use the notion intertextuality to our own detriment, I’m consigned to using it until he coins a more appropriate term, an event I eagerly anticipate in the not so distant future.
My love and appreciation go to my family who have never quite understood why I want to do this but who support and encourage me, nevertheless. To my children—Katy, Blair, and Hailey—thank you for tolerating me and my scholarly baggage. To my five-year old grand-daughter Kaitlyn, who recently asked me to read aloud a scholarly article only to stop me mid-sentence after about three pages to announce that “I know stuff, too!” thank you for the concrete reminder that all “stuff” has value. Finally, for the inexhaustible encouragement and inspiration, along with the occasional timely reminder that this line of work was my choice, I can never accurately measure my gratitude for the tolerance and understanding of my husband and best friend, Don.


Introduction
Rhetoric and composition emerged some forty years ago in response to a variety of institutional and cultural pressures occasioned by perceived crises in student writing and the inadequacy of prevalent writing curricula to successfully address them. As the teaching and learning of writing became the focus of study, the term writing process came to represent not only a material, curricular approach to the teaching of writing, but also a significant, symbolic representation of the field itself.
Dedicated faculty lines, thriving graduate programs, and field-specific scholarly journals and books have since created a dynamic knowledge base of writing studies that continues to benefit from and to be challenged by poststructuralist, feminist, critical, and postmodern theories. In the wake of these productive challenges, writing process has become increasingly suspect as a curricular approach and, particularly, as a symbolic representation of the field whose disciplinary interests now far exceed the boundaries of the traditional first-year composition course.
This turn has come to be labeled post-process , and, although not well defined as a position or school of thought, its general sentiment is gaining currency with those discontented with process. Many, however, do not comfortably identify with either position. Process today is not the process of the 1970s and early 1980s on which our disciplinary identity was based and post-process remains for many a nebulous concept that equally misses the mark. Thus, a tension ensues that either can polarize or productive