Friday, September 8, 2006

Carlton, "Comp as a Postdisciplinary Formation"

Carlton, Susan Brown. "Composition as a Postdisciplinary Formation." Rhetoric Review 14.1 (1995) 78-87.

Carlton levels a complicated argument about whether or not composition ought to be framed as a discipline. She begins with North's concerns about a preponderance of lore and multiple, contending methods from The Making of Knowledge in Composition, and she echoes North's "ambivalence" about conferring disciplinary status on composition studies. Perhaps, Carlton suggests, a postdisciplinary characterization is more appropriate, given that postdisciplinary practitioners "reproduce the complex features representative of disciplines" and they "generate material disciplinary apparatuses that make representation possible" (79) even while they "think and act beyond the limits of the traditional discipline" (79).

Carlton considers the rise of doctoral programs in composition (a turn commonly viewed a synonymous with professionalization and credentialing, which also render permanent a laboring underclass of contingent faculty). Especially with the production of composition studies (a kind of institutional "power play"), we must continue to be concerned with how we represent disciplinary activity (both textual and extratextual) in such a way that accounts for "a complex set of cultural practices" (79).

Included here is a recap of a disagreement between Janice Lauer and Patricia Harkin at the '91 CCCC in Boston over the status of lore as a legitimate form of disciplinary knowledge (reread this section). Carlton prefers a postdisciplinary stance (an appropriation of the "post" logics figured in postructural currents) over the antidisciplinary stance. Finally, the article argues that we must expand on programmatic and curricular gains and resist compromising lore or favoring a monolithic methodological orientation to gain disciplinary status.

Terms: "postdisciplinary" (78)

"Many of us in composition studies oscillate among these three attitudes of ambivalence, celebration, and hostility; but I believe that ambivalence is the most productive stance, as it acknowledges the complexity of composition studies' relationship to the disciplinary apparatus" (78).

"Without denigrating our recent epistemological and ideological ventures, we can still claim that their continued transformative power is limited by the extent to which we are able to make good decisions now about how to structure the current institutional spaces we inhabit and how to construct additional institutional spaces for ourselves" (80).

"I agree with Rankin that if a type of knowledge or relationship is to flourish within the university beyond a single classroom or a small, local community of practitioners, it must be coded in a way that makes it congruent with contemporary ideas of what knowledge can be" (82).

"A rhizomatic structure runs counter to the prevailing norms of disciplinarity. It constitutes a material, extratextual critique and alternative to a university norm" (82).

"Why a teleconference? By using new technology, the practitioners represent their discussion as 'cutting edge' knowledge. By using expensive technology, the practitioner conference acquires 'value.' These appeals to disciplinary, university codes of authority allow a postdisciplinary practice to be smuggled in under the very gaze of the disciplinarians" (83).

"Instead, we need a critical mass of compositionists in tenured positions, not a few isolated and outnumbered representatives, if we are going to expand the spaces for cultural critique and democratic action" (84).

Related sources:

Bourdieu, Pierre. An Outline of a Theory of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1977.

Lauer, Janice. "Rhetoric and Composition: A Rhizome." CCC Convention. Boston, 22 Mar. 1991.

Winterowd, W. Ross. Contemporary Rhetoric: A Conceptual Background with Readings. New York: Harcourt, 1975.

Posted by Derek Mueller at September 8, 2006 10:45 AM to Writing Technologies