Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Oct 31: Placeholder Post for "Post-structuralism to Multiculturalism"

Dear Good Folks,

This may be one of our most vast and complicated "turns" and I don't expect we'll finish discussion today. More likely, the concepts undergirding post-structuralism and multiculturalism will also bear on our exploration of theories of "literacy" next week. For now, as a starting point, we might consider these working definitions of our key terms, before complicating them together:
  • Poststructuralism: A descriptive condition referring to movements associated with the analytical strategies of philosophers, linguists, theologians, literary critics, and rhetoricians (primarily) after the 1960s, which generally characterized attempts to subvert or contest structuralist theories. Has roots in psychoanalytic, Marxist, cultural, feminist, and gender criticsm, but is most often associated with deconstructors who moved toward approaching textual criticism based in reader response. Questions that poststructuralist critics might pose in a rhetorical sense, include, What is an author What does it mean to write? To what degree do the privileged, academic discourses of the West write the writer rather than being written by the writer?
  • Multiculturalism: A descriptive condition of society in which different cultures coexist (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). A type of policy that addresses demands of cultural groups and the challenges presented to those groups from a status quo. An assumption of fundamental humanity for all persons and cultural groups. That is, multiculturalism works to rectify relationships of domination and seek to correct problematic representations and appropriation of non-dominant cultures by dominant groups (SEP Online). 

For our purposed in theories of composition, based on the presumed post-linguistic turn that is serving to open up composition theory, praxis, and/or history in the decades reflected by our syllabus, we might see a range of goals of "multiculturalism" most clearly in the Ohmann’s discussions of class, Lu’s uptake of Pratt’s contact zone, and Alexander and Rhodes's refusal of “narrative coherence.” Here are some questions we might take up:
  • What could become of a politicized (ideologized) orientation to composition in a post-structuralist world)?
  • What could it mean to see "difference" as resource?
  • How can dissensus lead to rhetorical knowledge?
  • What does it mean to interrogate difference as a linguistic ideology?
  • Of what should the multiculturalist canon consist?
  • What questions about rhetoric-writing relationships should we open up?
  • On what theoretical grounds can we see students, teachers, and community stakeholders as agents in a post-structuralist world?
  • What should be our methods or modes of cultural criticism?
  • What are key distinctions between culture, ideology, and dogma--furthermore, how do we differentiate (historically) between "ideologies" and "dogmas"?
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