Recent theoretical and technological developments, including concepts of networking elaborated by Bruno Latour, enable composition studies to take an empiricist turn toward issues of identity. More specifically, these developments help the field more strongly connect the figure of the writing-subject to the experiences of actual writers. In this…

Examines crucial differences between E. Levinas and M. M. Bakhtin in an attempt to construct an ethics for the postmodern subject and to offer an angle of intervention into the current debates, especially the "social constructivism versus essentialism" controversy. (TB)

Suggests that moves to dispersed authorship signal not a challenge to the old ideology of authorship, but rather its appropriation for commercial ends. Identifies alternatives to this appropriation and explains why embracing these alternatives is important. Concludes that scholars of rhetoric and composition need to identify, theorize, practice,…

Presents a debate between traditionalist ideas from Xin Lin Gale and postmodern ideas from Cheryl Glenn and Susan Jarratt. Quotes Gale who says that you cannot have it both ways, foundational and antifoundational: using the historical evidence to champion Aspasia while at the same time "reclaiming" her from the biases of those very documents.…

Examines Kathy Acker's narrative methods, which are exemplary of postmodern feminism, as they concern gender differences and desire. Suggests that much theorizing about literary postmodernism has not considered the modalities of desire as they concern gender difference. (TB)

Shows that Antin's talk poems satisfy basic needs. Discusses Antin's view on an art that addresses the concerns of "common life" and concentrates on feelings that do not depend on elaborate and evasively self-sustaining formal constructs. (EL)

Urges compositionists to reframe Writing across the Curriculum (WAC) to reach beyond university boundaries. Reviews calls for an expanded conception of WAC, describes a program that carries writing instruction and literacy research beyond university boundaries, and suggests problems and benefits that may accompany this change of orientation for…

States that a number of college literature and composition teachers have shown that they care intensely about ethical issues, although they express themselves in the language of postmodernism rather than that of traditional ethics. Claims the traditional ethical goal of building "character" can be harmonized with the postmodern effort to build…

Discusses how the rise of a culture of professionalism--and the attitudes, institutions, and interests that separate and define those within a profession from others--has been of great interest to historians and sociologists, and also to professors of literature. Draws attention to the ways in which professionalization channels discord into a few…

Suggests that what makes Charles Johnson's "Middle Passage" significant and eminently teachable is that it is an accessible example of "historiographic metafiction"--bestselling postmodern novels set in the past. Notes that students find the novel "easy" and enjoyable and that teaching the novel with some of its intertexts, such as H. Melville's…

Investigates how disability is discovered, constructed, and performed in a certain type of cultural practice, that is, in a postmodern, undergraduate college classroom. Argues that the implementation of an autobiographical pedagogy must extend beyond the dimensions of race, gender, and sexuality and must include disabled persons in these…

Highlights Canadian writer George Bowering's view of reading as metaphor and process (shaping both his fiction and his developing sense of interpretation as a political act) by focusing on two of his books, "Burning Water" and "Caprice." (SR)

Examines the deliberations prior to the Challenger disaster from the perspective of three major approaches in recent scholarship in rhetoric as applied to technical communications: positivism, postmodernistic social constructionism, and classical Aristotelianism. Champions an approach based on Aristotle's "Rhetoric." (HB)

Presents a critical review of the three historical studies of Aspasia written by feminist historians. Asks how historians and scholars can write radically alternative histories of rhetoric without compromising their credibility. (NH)

Suggests that, if politics matters to any field, it should matter to composition instruction, which faces the crisis of postmodernity along with other disciplines. Considers how a truly common knowledge might be pursued and its possible relevance for the field of composition studies. (HB)