Ratcliffe, Krista

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Marquette Universitye-Publications@MarquetteEnglish Faculty Research and Publications English, Department of4-1-1999Review of Feminism and Composition Studies: InOther Words by Susan Jarrett & Lynn WorshamKrista RatcliffeMarquette UniversityPublished version. JAC, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Spring 1999): 313-318. Permalink. © 1999 Association ofTeachers of Advanced Composition.Book Reviews 313figures" or groups of writers and the terms of analysis are invariably ways ofarguing these writers' status, proving why they belong in the canon, why they aregreat writers, and why we should devote so much time and attention to them.(This advocacy ischaracteristic of those arguing for a revised canon, and explainswhy the movement hashad lessimpact than it might have had: aswe have pointedout in several articles on Willa Cather, the canon is invariably expanded bymaking the strongest possible case for the work of a new author withoutquestioning the criteria for inclusion.) This form of advocacy limits our terrain,we argue, and by implicitly accepting this aswhat we do, what our job is about,these critics are unable to see beyond these disciplinary constraints to imaginewhat we might do instead. (Tuman, of course, explicitly accepts the role ofadvocate and would resist our or any other challenge to the primacy of thecanon.) The lesson seems clear to us: unless you critique disciplinarity, you canonly replicate its terms. And it is precisely the persistence of such definitionsof our jobs and goals that limit the manner in which we can engage the broaderdemands of education.ReviewsFeminism and Composition Studies: In Other Words, Susan C.Jarratt andLynn Worsham, eds. (New York: MLA, 1998.401 pages).Reviewed by Krista Ratcliffe, Marquette UniversityIn TeachingtoTransgress,bell hooks proclaims that "all of us in the academy andin the culture as a whole are called to renewourmindsif we are to transformeducational institutions-and society-so that the way we live, teach, and workcan reflect our joy in cultural diversity, our passion for justice, and our love offreedom" (34;emphasis added). This call for renewal is heeded and passed onin Susan Jarratt and Lynn Worsham's admirable collection FeminismandCompositionStudies:In OtherWords,which invites readers and contributors torenew their thinking about feminism, about composition studies, and about the"alliances and discontinuities" of the two.This call for renewal is textually (re)presented by the collection's organiza-tion. Framed by Jarratt's notable "Introduction" and Worsham's impressive"After Words," FeminismandCompositionStudiesis divided into three sections:"Feminisms for Composition," "Specifying Locations," and "ExploringDiscontinuities." Each section contains its own set of articles aswell as its own314 JACresponses, enabling the texts to converse with one another and with readers.Offering savvy theoretical critiques and pragmatic pedagogical practices, thiscollection tackles issues as seemingly diverse (though obviously connected) aslanguage function, identity, agency, collaborative writing, computers, writingprogram administration, writing in the disciplines, racism, and history. Bymapping such important sites of feminist theory and praxis within compositionstudies, this collection carves out a unique space for itself.FeminismandCompositionStudiesdiffers significantly from its predecessors.Like Louise Wetherbee Phelps and Janet Emig'sFemininePrinciplesandWomen-sExperiencesinAmericanCompositionandRhetoric,it adopts a wide selection oftopics. But unlike the Phelps and Emig collection, whose articles are organizedalphabetically so that readers may impose their own schemata upon the text,Jarratt and Worsham's collection exhibits amore marked theoretical focus,whatSuzanne Clark calls "a discursive, historically situated epistemology." Jarrattelucidates: "All authors share three orientations. Each writes from a vantagepoint informed by poststructuralist language theory and postmodern culturaltheory. Each is committed ... to an intellectual, scholarly endeavor combinedwith a social movement. And each accepts the necessity of working from afeminism taking shape among other kinds of social difference." Other prede-cessors-Andrea Lunsford's ReclaimingRhetorU:a,Shirley Logan's WtthPenandVoice,Cheryl Glenn's RbeumcRetold,and even my own Anglo-AmericanFeministo,allengestotheRhetoricalTraditions-allinvite historical women, such asAspasia,Ida B.Wells, and Adrienne Rich, into the rhetorical tradition, in part, to informcomposition practices. In contrast,FeminismandCompositionStudiesfocuses noton historical figures but on rhetorical figures-that is, on language and itsconsequences for feminism and composition studies.The theory of language underpinning this volume assumes that words andtheir attendant lines of reasoning must be continually critiqued to test theircurrency and then reaffirmed and/or refigured. The responsibility for suchaction falls to everyone; this responsibility should generate not a consumeristrejection of the past but an historically-grounded appreciation of where, how,and why history moves us and we move history. Worsham explains,If there are words we cannot choose again (and these words will vary from time to time),then there are still other words to choose that speak their truth with a sense of history,with gratitude for what the raging stoic grandmothers made possible in their time andplace, and without bitterness for what they could not, would not see-merciful wordsthat take no shortcuts through anyone's storied experience.Words and their meanings propel this project. Like the narrator in VirginiaWoolf' sARoomofOne'sOwn,who ponders the meanings of "women and fiction"by first wondering "what the words mean," Jarratt and Worsham's collectioninvites contributors and readers to ponder the meanings of feminismandcompositionin all their multeity. Initiating this conversation, Jarratt offers"porous rather than impermeable" definitions, not just to establish the param-Book Reviews 315eters of the study but to invite further redefinitions. She names rhetaricas thatwhich "mobilizes an interaction between representation (political) and re-presentation (cultural)"; feminismas a "thoroughly rhetorical" political move-ment "whose aim is to supersede itself"; and compositionas "a complex set ofsymbolic practices, textual inscriptions being one among many." Laying thesewords and their disciplinary lines of reasoning side by side, Jarratt exposes theintersections of feminisms and composition studies as fruitful sites of inquiry:Both . . . seek to transform styles of thinking, teaching, and learning rather than toreproduce stultifying traditions. They share a suspicion of authoritarian pedagogy,emphasizing instead collaborative or interactive learning and teaching. They resist thepurity of approach and the reduction of their scope by moving in and around manycontemporary critical theories and disciplines.If the aims of this anthology are to "push the boundaries of knowledge inboth feminism and composition" and to "transform disciplinary knowledge,"then they are achieved. Feminist studies will benefit, for example, from GailHawisher and Patricia Sullivan's exploration of the question, "What constitutesfeminist action in e-space?" But for this audience, it seems more appropriate tofocus on how composition studies will benefit.Part I, "Feminisms and Compositions" offers multiple definitions ofgendered subjectivities and multiple rhetorical tactics for producing and analyz-ing such subjectivities. In her insightful response to this section, Clark notes that"the writers take an unsentimental look at the category of woman and raisequestions about feminist differences." For example, by questioning earlierfeminist researchers' transparent use of personal experience as evidence, LauraBrady argues for a more complicated use of gendered experience (asone of manydifferences) and for amore "contingent rhetorical analysis of citation and tropes[that] emphasizes the intersections between language and ideologies (such astheideologies of gender)." By questioning the invisibility of nineteenth-centuryAfrican-American women teachers in the history of composition, Shirley WilsonLogan not only charts previously uncharted disciplinary territory but demon-strates how this remapping affects contemporary attempts "to speak theunspeakable, to talk about and have students write about issuessurrounding raceand gender in composition classrooms and in all classrooms." By questioningthe dearth of women in the history of cultural studies (both inside and outsidecomposition studies), Nedra Reynolds offers interruption as a tactic of agency,which she defines "not simply [as] finding one's voice but [as] intervening indiscourses of the everyday." By questioning the "ethic of care" that hauntsfeminist pedagogy, Eileen Schell wonders whether this ethic traps non-tenuretrack women in "a form of exploitation sweetened by emotional or psychicrewards" and tempts tenure-track women into acycleof privileges made possibleby the former's exploitation. In response to this section, Deborah Kelshadmonishes feminist colleagues for abandoning classical Marxism, which shebelieves "offers important concepts from which to develop a third-wave316 JACfeminism." The "unsentimental look" that Clark ascribes to these writersmanifests itself in their implied views of history. Reynolds rejects patriarchalhistory by arguing for a more inclusive rendering; Brady and Schell, in differingdegrees, call for a break from past feminist practices and a move toward moresophisticated ones. Logan most astutely articulates a process of rethinkinghistory, a rethinking that does not reject the past but renews it, exposing its(in)visible presence in our daily lives.The second section, "Specifying Locations," offers locations for feministpraxis, locations that emerge both assubject positions and ascultural spacesthatwe may choose, however limitedly, to inhabit. In her arresting response, EllenGil-Gomez pinpoints this section's focus: "what engages me the most in theseessays is how the authors view the subjects they position aswell as the positionsthey are subject to." What engages me most about Gil-Gomez's piece is herconcept of "piece-making," which emerges as her processes of writing andpedagogy. Defined as"nurturing my fragments and accepting the conflicts theyraise inside me," piece-making serves as a metaphor for each writer's contribu-tion to the ideaof feminist locations. Pamela Caughie's contribution isaconceptof passing, defined as "that always slippery difference between standing forsomething (having afirm position) and passingassomething (having no positionor a fraudulent one). She shrewdly assessesour field's drift toward culturalstudies, a drift that, in her opinion, often leavesstudents, teachers, and scholarswith no means of negotiating the double bind wherein the imperative to speakfor others collides with the risk of appropriation. Recognizing that one need notbe trapped in such a static standpoint, Caughie offers passing "not as a solutionto the double bind ... but as a descriptive theory" that enables us to understandhow "[s]elf critique without a postmodern effort to detach concepts of identityfrom their metaphysical foundations leaves us with a choice between theconfessional and the fraudulent." Wendy Hesford's contribution is apedagogyof witnessing, or asking students "to bear witness to the particularity of theirstruggles, privileges and agency" when investigating historical moments thatmay not fit neatly into their existing frames of references; such pedagogy, sheargues, functions as a kind of feminist activism. Christy Desmet's contributionis a pedagogy of friendship "that respects lived individuality"; she grounds thispedagogy in theories of feminist jurisprudence because they advance a subjectdefined "by negotiating the distance between aperson's particular circumstancesand the place assignedto that person by asystem of legaldefinitions." Hawisherand Sullivan's contribution is a feminist praxis in e-space; they argue that"women must confront issuesof gender and power in the construction of theirviews of e-space," rethinking "public and private spaces" in ways that servewomen's "political and social goals." Finally, Margaret Morrison's response isa smart, ludic, must-read meditation on how "polymorphing into polyethoi"resists the seduction back into "the apparently stable humanist subject, the'!'."BookReviews 317The third section, "Exploring Discontinuities," offers us not just concreteexamples of feminist pedagogical tactics but also exemplary models of reflectivepedagogy. Andrea Lunsford and Lisa Ede in their letter of response to thecontributors thank them for, among other things, enlarging our sense ofpedagogy by associating it not only with classroom practices but with writingprogram administration and writing in the disciplines. For example, Joy Ritchieand Kate Ronald self-critically narrate two of their courses, lucidly articulatinghow their "attempts to teach rhetoric asfeminists have changed [their] rhetoricalchoices as teachers" and resulted in feminist pedagogies that "nurture possibili-ties for agency, resistance, and change" for their students and themselves. Min-Zhan Lu cogently argues for a feminist pedagogy of sequenced writing assign-ments that refigure experienceas that which "should motivate us to care aboutanother's differences and should disrupt the material conditions that have givenrise to it." Gail Stygall tests her assumption that collaboration in the writingclassroom is not necessarily empowering for women by analyzing three class-room collaborations via "a feminist-critical linguistic analysis"; she concludesthat "women fare better in collaborative talk when the feminist teacher explicitlyteaches and models new forms of talk." Amy Goodburn and Carrie ShivelyLeverenz askthe important question, "What does it mean for feminism to informa site of composition studies that remains surprisingly undertheorized: that ofwriting program administration?"; they then insightfully reflect on how asharedexperience became a site of desire for and resistance to feminist managementprinciples, such as dialogic collaboration, multiple sources of authority, andshared leadership. Harriet Malinowitz purports that because Writing in theDisciplines (WID)inadvertently reinforces "existing disciplinary structures,"women's studies may offer WID abetter model of a field operating in "a resistantmode, attempting to disrupt learning asusual." What these essays all remind usis that feminist pedagogy is located not simply in pedagogical tactics (groupwork, journaling, or circled chairs, for example) but in the 'U1Dand the J:vwofthese tactics. In her response, Margaret Lindgren aptly identifies anotherconnecting thread: "[I]fthe issue of change is important enough, ... we will findways to identify our complicities and then to narrow the gaps between ourprinciples and the particulars of our lives."For me, the most intriguing thread running throughout this collection isthat the tactic of choice for narrowing the gap between principles and particularsis a storied cultural critique-that is, a critique that discursively maps theinextricable intertwinings of the personal and the cultural. Jarratt claims thatsuch self-reflective feminist narratives are necessary for feminism if feminists areto recognize the differences among us (the many Fs)while still making possiblethe political movement (these). Forthe same reason, she argues that distinguish-ing the "theoretical, political, and rhetorical" differences between "self-reflec-tive feminist narratives and [unmarked] expressive paradigms" is necessary forcomposition studies.318 lACAs astoried cultural analysis necessary for both feminism and compositionstudies, Worsham's" After Words" richly reinscribes hooks's call to renew ourminds. Always conscious of historical moment(s), Worsham delineates thechallenge now facing feminism:The immediate and most pressing task for feminism's third wave is to forge a collectivesubject capable of making mass movement-if not sisterhood, exactly, then surely analliance that does not protect us from our differences but finds in difference, disagree-ment, and even despair occasions to hear one another's words; an alliancethat recognizesthat our histories and experiencesare not only diverse in all the ways we have learned toname them, they are also intertwined in complex and mutually determining ways.After deftly demonstrating that a similar challenge also faces compositionstudies, Worsham offers means of meeting these challenges. Positing piece-making as peacemaking, narrative as radical, and whiteness as loneliness,Worsham imagines an ethical agent working within language toward thecoexistence, not the consilience, of differences. (Re)weaving the narrativehistories of feminism, composition studies, whiteness, her family, herself, andBlue Betty (you must read this one), Worsham textually enacts the third-wavefeminism that she so desires, one figured via "merciful words that take noshortcuts through anyone's storied experience," least of all her own.By identifying" other words" to definefeminismand composition,Jarratt andWorsham's collection forwards conversations in feminism and compositionstudies. In 1979,Julia Kristeva argued that because both historical women andthe category Woman have historically been missing from history, the "insertioninto history" of women and Woman also demands a "radical refUsalof thesubjective limitations imposed by this history's time" ("Women's Time" 1256).In 1998,Jarratt and Worsham's collection embodies this argument, demonstrat-ing that the "insertion"of women and Woman into the ongoing history ofcomposition studies demands a continual rethinking of existing categories (notthe least of which are feminismsand composition),which in turn demands acontinual renewing of our own subjectivities, our politics, and our culture. Thisinsertion-as-renewal process is important, then, not just to women who desireto seethemselves in the history of the field but to everyone in the fieldwho mustnecessarily be affected by the resonances of such amove. For this reason alone,Feminismand CompositionStudiesspeaks not just to feminists but to everyonewithin our field.Works Citedhooks, bell. "A Revolution of Values: The Promise of Multicultural Change." TeadnngtoTransgress:EducationasthePracticeofFreedom.NY: Routledge, 1994. 23-34.Kristeva, Julia. "Women's Time." TheRhetoricalTradition:Readingsftr!m ClassicalTimesto thePresent.Eds. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston: Bedford, 1990. 1251-66.Woolf, Virginia. "The Modern Essay." TbeCommonReader.1925.Ed. Andrew McNeillie. NewYork: Harcourt, 1984. 211-22.-. A RoomofOne'sOwn. 1929. New York: Harcourt, 1989.

Review of \u3cem\u3eFeminism and Composition Studies: In Other Words\u3c/em\u3e by Susan Jarrett & Lynn Worsham

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Review of \u3cem\u3eFeminism and Composition Studies: In Other Words\u3c/em\u3e by Susan Jarrett & Lynn Worsham

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