Post-post-process

Tanya and Immy's blog posts on this week's 601 readings have brought up some interesting questions and issues regarding Nancy Sommers' article on student vs. experienced writers revision strategies and the Breuch piece on post-process theory.

I posted some fairly long responses to each of their blog entries, but I want to back-track and pose a few questions and thoughts about each area.


I like the way Immy unpacks the student writer vs. experienced writer dichotomy in Sommers's article. I think that the binaries of experienced vs. inexperienced writers, skilled vs. unskilled writers, basic writer vs. first-year "typical" writers get us into trouble. There were practical reasons to create those categories for the researchers, no doubt, but how do they prohibit a wide angle examination of what actually happens for writers without putting on stigmatizing labels? And what of all the baggage these labels carry? Also, I'm puzzling through the idea of "maturity" in relation to writing? What these analyses bring up, whether directly or indirectly, is the question of age and experience as well as cultural background, mastery of the subject at hand, power relations within institutions, etc. How have we (or have we not) examined the role of age and psychological maturity in these studies? We have been giving Emig a hard time for singling out Lynn, but is her major factor (beyond the past writing archive) the unsual psychological "maturity" and insight of Lynn as a young person? We'd probably say yes. Yes, Lynn is exceptional, beyond her years. She's an unusually "mature" writer compared to the rest, it seems. So we value an ethos of experience, self-reflexivity, and maturity. How to get there?

Tanya's ruminations on Breuch make me think a lot more about what function post-process theory serves. My question is: What role and function does post-process theory really serve as this historical juncture in composition studies? Is it a reactive discourse? A flip-the-script moment, moving toward a paradigm shift? Or is it really a discourse and set of theories that describe the epistemological shifts that are already underway? Anti-foundationalism and post-modern discourses have permeated much of the scholarly work in composition and rhetoric (I'm not so sure these discourses get played out and enacted in the pedagogical arena). How do those discourses really seep into the modernist enterprise of first-year writing instruction? I'm having a Sharon Crowley moment, I guess, as I think about the arguments she makes for abolishing the first-year writing requirement with all its modernist trappings. If we are really going to be post-process, perhaps we need to get rid of first-year writing in the first place and be post-first year writing.

I'm struck, too, how frequently Britton et al reference Emig's study. I have read and reread Britton et al many times, but this time the Emig segments stood out for me. I'll say more about that in another entry because I'm suddenly seized with a lot of fatigue and I'm actually starting to "nod off" at the keyboard. I've read too many 105 papers today--more to read tomorrrow, too. I'm not feeling very post-process tonight!

Remind me to post the recipe for squash and apple soup that I made this evening It's definitely steeped in process theory: all that chopping and blending, how could it not be?