Sid Dobrin Postcomposition

Postcomposition Sidney I. Dobrin

Sidney Dobrin begins his book with asserting that composition studies will end at some point, if not very soon, or at least be redefined.  He makes clear that “it [the end of composition studies] won’t cause or signify the end of writing (or even writing instruction)” (1).  Early in the book, he defines writing and composition, stating that “composition (studies) [is] an academic discipline and composing [is] an act that is chained by that discipline to an understanding of student subjects performing that act (often only as academic performance). Writing is a phenomenon that requires the attention of intellectual and scholarly inquiry and speculation beyond composition. Writing is more than composition (studies)” (2).  Dobrin argues that composition studies needs to redirect much of its focus, specifically on writing instead of (writing) subjects and pedagogy, and calls for a disruption of the field, a particular disruption of epistemological and bureaucratic systems that perpetuate a neglect of the study of writing. He also discusses the historical lack of a methodology in composition studies, hence part of the reason why the writing classroom falls short on the purpose of teaching writing. This lack of a methodology connects to Sanchez argument too, in which Sanchez contends that epistemological and ontological concerns needn’t be addressed, but methodology ought to “be updated” (his proposed neo-empiricism) (“Outside the Text” 242). What I see here is the methodology will enable a disruption to the field.  As I see it (in connecting Sanchez and Dobrin’s positions), instead of “composition studies cast[ing] the classroom and the classroom compositionists as heroic figures and construe[ing] research as useful only if it reports on or has application to classroom practice” (9), the field can reconceptualize itself and its goals through methodological disruption. I, too, see this disruption important, particularly if we teachers desire to create a radical classroom and pedagogy.   

The first chapter, “Disrupting Composition Studies,” suggests a shift (student) subject to writing, which will in turn shift Composition Studies’ focus to writing theory and away from the realms of cultural phenomena ― ideologies, politics, subjectivities, agencies, identities, discourses, and rhetorics ― and how they exist before writing. “much of what is touted as composition theory is not theory about writing but theory about how writers write—or more often about writers themselves, issues of identity” (11). In addition, the field will shift away from an emphasis on writing pedagogies. Both these focuses ― student subject and pedagogy ― have limited the field’s borders and produced a conservative framework in thinking about composition, the classroom, teaching, and, most importantly, writing. In moving away from this focus and approach ― (student) subject, pedagogy and agency ― we, as he posits, develop a postcomposition (and actually a rethinking of what composition is), wherein we focus intently on the writing (although he also identifies the impossibility of concepts such as subject and agency). It sounds like Dobrin wants a balance of research on subject, agency and writing, which would enable a better understanding of subject/subjectivity, as well as the empowerment students have in writing ideology and culture (versus ideology and culture writing the students).  He is not the only proponent of this reconceptualizing of writing and subject, as he remarks, “Sánchez’s work and Susan Miller’s “Technologies of Self?-Formation” make clear that such an approach to understanding subject-formation is essentially the work of interpretation and that such approaches deny students—or at least deny that students have—the power to write the very artifacts of their own subjectivities” (14).

Dobrin contends that composition studies and compositionists resist theory for institutional (funding is available), as well as methodogolocial (the objects of study ― students ― are readily available) reasons, because of a lack of identifiable, tangible assessment of improvement (as the field is filled with teachers, bureaucrats, et al. who all believe in “improvement” of students’ writing).

 

The Space of Writing

The “post” in postcomposition that Sid calls for is a spatial, not a temporal, understanding of writing.  Composition, in continuing a literary tradition of reading and writing, has typically embraced the temporal, a conceptualizing that writing and texts function with and in time.  Dobrin discusses Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Laocoon: An Essay upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry (1766), a analysis of two strands of art ― poetry and painting ― and their relationship to time and space, to exemplify how composition has submitted to ideologies and methodologies that English departments, with their focus on Literature, such as poetry and fiction, function in progressive time.  In contrast, painting functions spatially.  What I see here is an interesting connection to images and the writing and composing of images.  If writing and composing comes to encompass something more than the written word, such as images, we can develop a different, and much more complex, understanding of what it means to write and what writing means.  But even if writing and composing doesn’t move beyond the written word,  the written word could continue to be performed spatially (as Sid exemplifies when he writes in the margins).

Dobrin identifies that composition studies have begun to accept spatiality in writing, particularly geographic and cartographic metaphors in which often space and place are conflated, as a way to explore student subjects (33).  But Dobrin quickly remarks on the limitations of metaphors, referencing Althusser’s position that metaphors limit theory and that theory, if one desires for a full development of it, requires a move beyond description and beyond theory (34).  Calling for a move beyond metaphors for describing writing will, a la Dobrin, break through the limits of compositions (as the current situation renders composition studies to continue to describe how students write or how teachers can best instruct students to write).  Yet, Althusser’s theory on metaphor and theory is only a beginning to understanding the relationship between space and writing. Thus, Dobrin explains Derrida and de Man’s positions on metaphors in which outside of metaphor is more metaphor, and asserts that “there is no linguistic, discursive, rhetorical, grammatical theory outside of metaphor; there can be no theory outside of metaphor” (35).  Hence, while he identifies the limits of metaphor and critiques the deployment of spatial metaphors in composition studies, he also agrees that it would be frivolous to dismiss metaphoric spatiality in the field. What he desires to work through is an approach to a “more-than-metaphor” in considering the “spatial properties of writing” (36).

At this point, I was curious as to what he meant by “spatial properties of writing.”  At first, I thought of a black alphabetic letter (letter “a”) inhabiting the white space of the page, filling “negative” space of the page, disrupting the potential of a consistency amidst the space of the page, working against and with the ideology of the space of the page (of course, Sid may slap me upside the head here for thinking about ideology), and transforming the space of the page.  I then began to consider when a word formed (the word “alphabet”), intensifying inhabitation, disruption and transformation. And, of course, when words formed (“alphabetic letter”) and how it continues to inhabit, disrupt and transform the space of the page as I string words along.  Yet, I’m still restricted by boundaries (the horizontal space between one line and another, the vertical space between the end of a line and the end of the page).  But I assume these boundaries are fixed (yes, I can change though the line spacing and margins), and this is the point, I think, Sid is trying to make: those boundaries are NOT fixed; we assume they are, but we have to disrupt the boundaries.

Sid continues with identifying the difference between space and place, with the latter being a moment of inscription, of a function of writing.  After exploring the philosophical inquires of space historically, he concludes that “definitions within space, are formulated through occupation” (39).  And it is during occupation, and when space becomes place, that meanings are produced.  “The moment of possibility exists in the moment prior to space becoming place, the moment before arrangement and meaning . . . this moment in space, the moment prior to order and arrangement, emerges from the edge of chaos. This is where writing—not text, but writing—occurs. We write in that space and at that time” (40).  Ultimately, he contends, and I concur, that space, as well as occupation, is political, not simply social. “all occupations are political; all considerations of the spatial must account for the political. All occupations are discursive, rhetorical, hegemonic. Through its occupations, space is not merely social; it is political” (43).

“space, then, is ambiguous in that it is freedom; it may be bordered or identified by means of places within its borders, but space is unstable, uncertain because of the possibilities it contains for occupation. Space is yet-to-be written. It is potential; it is imagination; it is the possibility and means of every discourse to disrupt every discourse, to disrupt its own discourse” (41).

After theorizing space, place and occupation, Dobrin brings the conversation back to the field of composition.  As most scholars focus on establishing composition studies historically, again evidence of literature and literary studies influence in temporally conceptualizing its definition, scholars submit (my wording) to the bureaucracy that will eventually homogenize (my wording) the field.  It is composition studies’ neglect of its own occupation ― its focus in FYW courses, writing programs and subject formation/administration ― that has rendered instability of itself.  If the field so desires to continue to exist, it needs to move beyond the (artificial) safety it currently occupies.

“Composition studies is in need of spatial disruption” (56).

Interesting remarks with posthumanism (I haven’t formulated thoughts on them yet, partially because of my ignorance of Posthumanism and Posthuman):

I like this quote: “If there is, as Sánchez claims, too much writing, it is because the technologies of storage and circulation have exceeded the possibilities of production. Production has taken a backseat to circulation and storage. It is not that there is more space in which to store writing; it is that writing moves (or flows) in more efficient ways . . . Circulation, particularly in a new-media, computer-mediated enhanced system of circulation, shifts the focus of writing away from the producer of writing to the writing itself and the systems in which it circulates. Such a move allows us to sidestep the disciplinary trap of subject, allows us to begin to theorize writing neither as process nor product but as occupying circulating spaces within space” (57-58).  And Sid continues with his larger argument about subjects: “Without subject, we assume (perhaps incorrectly), writing cannot be produced, distributed, circulated, or consumed” (60).

And another quote: “The technology is the subject; the subject is the technology. Given composition studies’ focus on student writing-subjects and that those subjects are inseparable from technology—for composition students embroiled in the culture of corporate America, this is easily identifiable in the pervasiveness of wearable and integrated information technology devices—we can no longer address writing-subjects, student or other, —as subjects but instead must begin to consider the posthuman position (or at minimum transhuman). Such a shift, then, demands a realignment of focus not upon the individual as producer/originator of writing but upon the complex systems in which the posthuman is located, endlessly bound in the fluidity and shiftiness of writing” (72-73).

“we must first acknowledge that the primacy of the student subject in composition studies results not from a genuine disciplinary interest in students as subjects, in students as writers, or even in subjects in general but grows from the simple fact that subjects are the primary capital of composition studies” (74).  “composition studies’ adherence to economic models have forced the field to value academic pursuits—those that deal in the capital of the institution, the students—over intellectual pursuits that often ignore the confine of capital in favor of the movement of speculation and possibility. Of course, I should also note that composition studies’ adherence to economic models is less a composition studies problem per se than it is a condition of higher education in general” (75).

“The act of writing, for instance, is inherently an act of resistance; it does not require a subject; it does not need an identifiable outlet of transfer to the subject from the text. Disruption is inherent in the mechanism of writing (see Žižek; Badiou; Derrida); it is not the intent of the subject. Writing resists. Ultimately, though, the thing that probably matters least in understanding writing is understanding subjects. To be clear: this is not a claim that there are no subjects, that subjects do not matter, or that subjects do not affect what we know about writing. This is simply the claim that in order to develop more accurate ways of describing what writing is and what it does, the subject must be removed not just from the center of the stage but from the theater and perhaps the entire theater district” (76).  “seeing writing not as the product (or process) of a producing subject but as a never-ending (re)circulation in which larger producing/desiring machines generate and perpetuate writing throughout network, system, and environment” (77).  “What is more interesting/useful in studying writing is not the agency of the subject or even of the writing-subject but the agency of writing itself, be it identifiable agency of specific texts, the recurring agency of writing in multiple, networked formations, or the intellectual agency of a concept, idea, or theory” (78).  “Agency—what we have traditionally thought of as the power of subjectivity—moves free of the subject, gaining occupancy in space through circulation and through appropriation, remix, and recirculation. No longer does agency remain with individual agents; instead, it travels, shifts, and evolves through the circulation of writing. Agency gains power not in individual nodes or conductors within the circulatory network but through its movement/velocity in network space, what Ridolfo has called “flows of information.” (I take up “flow” and “information” in later chapters.)” (79-80).

“if humans have always been enmeshed with their technologies, as Hansen and Clark suggest, then we can say that humans have always been cyborg, hybrid, or posthuman. The degree to which humans become posthuman comes into question depending upon the level of technology and the scale of integration. This begs the question as to whether the technological interaction can be thought of as inherently part of the human or inherently what makes the human always already posthuman” (86).

Systemic reactions.  Three points: (1) Intellectual reaction- theory/thinking from which technology emerges.  (2) cooperate/material reaction- “the extraction of resources to make expressions of the technology, the production of any material demonstration of the technology, the distribution/circulation of the technology intellectually or materially, the consumption of the technology and the material representations of the technology, and the disposal of the technology and its material mechanisms” (89).  (3) energy reaction- “evolves from the agency the technology attains and its ability to sustain, reinscribe, and spread its agency—its rhetorical velocity. The energy reaction is political; it is not inseparable from the intellectual or the corporate. The energy reaction results not from the ubiquity of a technology but from its invisibility, its ability to naturalize itself as not-technology” (89).

I do wonder how Dobrin would account for new discoveries in the sciences.  In several moments, he uses physics, such as two objects cannot occupy one space at the same time and create a place, to support how he conceptualizes space.  Yet, what about possibilities when physics is turned on its head?  For example, quantum physics, which proposes that an object can be in two places at the same time.  How does writing spaces and places change here?

I plan to play today with a Greimasian square (complements of Phil Wegner) to try to understand better the potentiality that Dobrin desires composition studies to move toward.

Dobrin, Sidney I. Postcomposition. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2011.

Sánchez, Raúl. “Outside the Text: Retheorizing Empiricism and Identity.” College English 74.3 (2012): 234-246.