I sent you away from yesterday's class with a question about "aim," and I think that will be a useful discussion for us to take up next week. You may remember our filling in this timeline so as to fully understand the context for our readings:
 |
| [click to enlarge] |
Kinneavy -- writing from a point on our timeline that was pretty well contextualized within public and civic activism -- argued that we didn't have a developed enough theory of aim, especially to account for the kinds of genres he assumed students needed to (or desired to) write.
From another vantage point on our timeline, Royster argued that we didn't have a developed enough theory of voice -- we didn't have a "symphonic" enough paradigm -- to fully account for "hybrid" writers and scholars like herself.
 |
| [click to enlarge] |
From their vantage point on the timeline, Kirsch and Ritchie argued that we didn't have a developed enough research ethic for observing the unobservable, for writing the unwrite-able subjects, and for ensuring that oppressive or dominant views don't overtake the act of observing. Flynn argued like Kirsch and Ritchie, and in fact her piece was one of the catalysts for theirs.
All three of these arguments are at the heart of our considering Literacy and Social Justice as a "politics" of writing. But for Kinneavy, aim remained the principal question around which other questions revolved, such as "Who can write?" "Who has the right to write?" and "What can/should writing be able to achieve?"
For that reason, we'll tackle it again next week, paying attention to whether and how social justice literacy has more to do with available voices, genres, readers, or paradigms. What, according to our theorists, seems most to determine its success?
Here are some related questions we may take up:
- How do we deal with notions of authority and belonging (i.e., who has the right to write)?
- How do we deal with boundaries (e.g., racial, gendered, ethnic, classed, etc.) -- what are their limitations or possibilities?
- What is the usefulness of concepts like "resistance," "marginalization," and "community" in determining who has the right to write?
Last week's terms will still be relevant (please be sure to capture them on your syllabus):
- community
- cross-boundary discourse
- feminist/feminism
- identity/identification
- ideology
- literacy
- marginalized/marginalization
- resistance
- voice
Finally, a note on the readings:
- We'll read Cushman's and Enoch's essays in their entirety.
- I am excerpting Prendergast's "Race: The Absent Presence" (pp. 36-46), although you are always welcome to read the entire piece.
- I am also excerpting Keating's "Interrogating Whiteness" (pp. 901-2, 910-16), but feel free to read it all the way through if you desire.
Have a great week,
-Prof. Graban
