thoughts while in my composition seminar.....

I had to read these articles for class and "journal" them...what a better place to work all of this information out than right here on this blog...for better or for worse.

Janice M. Lauer, “Graduate Students as Active Members of the Profession”
Robert Boice, “Work Habits of Productive Scholarly Writers”
Carol Berkenkotter and Thomas N. Huckin, “Gatekeeping at an Academic Convention”
Deborah Mutnick, “Time and Space in Composition Studies: ‘Through the Gates of the Chronotope’”

I read the articles in the order that they are listed above. The first three worked well together while I conceptualized the Mutnick piece as an elaboration or discursive outgrowth of the Berkenkotter and Huckin article. The tenor of the first three articles centered on writing and its various processes in regard to publishing while the fourth articles proved to be an effective, if not extremely compelling, example. I definitely felt that I was the audience for these readings. As such, I also became keenly aware of that old and familiar tension creeping up into my chest. I have a tenuous relationship with writing because whether it is “academic” or personal it reflects part or parts of my subjectivity/subjectivities. In short, I am always writing myself into any text that I am working on/with.
I thought that Lauer's article pointed to the crux of the problem when she describes the notional space of being a student and attempting to publish. She disrupts the “publish or perish” claim that haunts many graduate students' nightmares by positing other ways to conceptualize what constitutes our developing professionalism and the extrinsic and intrinsic pressures that accompany this rhetorical situation. I myself have been told on countless occasions to fashion my scholarship to fit a particular academic discourse community. I have been told to “be a player” and to “network.” I have found that this does not necessarily work well for me or for friendships. Indeed, I understand the value of dialogue and of the valuable work that can be accomplished in contributing to a conversation and “being” part of a community. But the question that I ask is to what cost? To be more specific, how much does one have to tailor or, better yet, camouflage particular aspects of how her/his personality, clothes, academic work, etcetera in order to survive? I would like to know just how “necessary” this is and what are the costs?
Lauer gives no answers, she simply posits more questions. I can appreciate this because I don't think that there are any concrete answers to gravitate toward when it comes to how one negotiates her/his self as an aspiring scholar and professor. To be a player and to network raises red flags for me that point out the potentiality of a rhetorical violence. This violence, while on the level of language, is extremely damaging, indeed. I have seen too many graduate students involve themselves in this “proactive” behavior that fosters a competitive spirit which inhibits supportive and collaborative networks. Consequently, to be a player and to network means to isolate yourself as a struggling academic while at the same time comparing your successes to others' failures. It is for this reason that I found Lauer's discussion on an “ethics of care” (234) to be comforting and, at the same time, challenging. I like this concept because it disrupts a negative environment that stultifies collaborative work at the expense of individual achievement. Lauer asks “[i]s an ethics of care possible, probable, practical, especially for our students who strain to position themselves in the field?” (235). I do not know the answer to this question and, I suspect, no one else does either.
Although I have some methodological issues with Robert Boice's article I found his psychological research on scholarly writers interesting if not compelling nonetheless. I was heavily trained during my undergraduate training as a music therapist in the area of behavioral psychology. The field of behavioral psychology is useful and in many academic circles valuable in the acquisition of monies for various programs. However, the work of behavioral science, like almost all other sciences, establishes a self imposed importance through empiric observation. When being trained as a counselor at Florida State University, I was always told: “If you didn't see it [meaning a certain type of behavior] and document it then it didn't happen.” This practice ossified in my young mind the privileging of materiality and its relationship to writing and its processes. This is not to say that I disagree with Boice's research or his approach per se but I do wonder if writers and writing processes for that matter can be observed and categorized so easily.
My writing process is always changing that is why it was hard for me to “place” myself under the various rubrics in Boice's article. For the most part writing, is excruciatingly difficult but not in the sense of a writer's block. Rather, I have all of these ideas swimming around in my head like little fishes and when I attempt to grab them they just slip out of my grasp...schooling in some dark corner of my mind. I'm also completely astounded at the amount of knowledge that I do not know and that I probably, when all is said and done, cannot know. Consequently, I become overwhelmed. I read texts and I ask myself: “what can I possibly contribute to any conversation?” Nevertheless, I have a few questions about Boice's article: Why is passive always negative? Why is active seen as the exemplar? I do appreciate Boice's attempt to disrupt the binary between passive and active by distinguishing active and passive waiting. I see this as an attempt to make a conceptual change on the level of language (217-18). However, this type of approach still creates binaries. I find myself occupying all and, paradoxically, none of the categories that Boice outlines in his article.
One of the more compelling pieces to Boice's argument is his approach to emotion and writing. It is at this point in the article where he combines behavioral and cognitive approaches in his research (212). Boice tells “blocked” writers to start writing before she/he “feels” like writing or “before feeling ready to write” (220). He suggests that we make writing a habit. “The most reliable motivation comes in the wake of regular involvement in writing, not in advance of it” (220). I think that this point of entry is most important. For me, writing as habit detours the other concepts of waiting that enfold active or passive approaches. I also found his concept of “stopping” to be most valuable indeed. I remember when I was writing my master's thesis. I was working forty hours a week and I was taking a night class. I would get up at 5:00 a.m. and write until 7:30 a.m. In the evenings, I would read and prepare. In essence, I established a writing habit that Boice describes and I found it highly productive. However, I have changed since enrolling in a Ph.D. program full time. I have found myself caught between active and passive approaches to writing and my sense of self has been disrupted to the extent that I cannot find a “writerly” self to engage with in the actual process of writing. Hence, this is what I mean earlier when I stated that I could not find myself in Boice's article.
Berkenkotter's and Huckin's article reminded me of the arbitrariness of the academy. I thought that it was insightful because what counts as an “excellent” CCCC's paper presentation abstract depends upon who is in power. This is where Mutnick's article became most compelling for me, since her article was, in it's earlier stages, a CCCC's presentation paper. I just kept coming back to the same conclusion as I read these last articles. The academy through a language system can be tenuous and rhetorically violent. Bodies that move within the academy's purview are constantly under pressure to fulfill the terms of what it means to be not only a scholar but a viable contributor to the conversations that shape the emerging field of rhetoric and composition. Must then writing and, more specifically, subjectivity formation through writing (and publishing) be dialectical and seemingly violent? I think that each of the authors of the articles that are represented here are grappling with how to detour the inscribed ways in which current traditional ideologies have come to define the academy. I would hope that the current will change.