Part TWO — § 4

The “making of knowledge” of writing, or, in other words, the conflicts over “writing” and writing practices are, therefore, at the heart of the new Ph.D. program. Writing, in other words, is not taken as a self-evident practice: it is a theoretical construct, and, like all theoretical constructs, it is a site of critique and contestation. In the wake of poststructuralism — to point to one site of contestation over “writing” — “writing” is understood as the practice of the production of texts, and a “text” (what Derrida calls, a “fabric of signs") is any site of signification. Since the sign is always an effect of spacing, trace, dissemination and difference marked by self-division and slippage and traversed by absence, "writing” becomes a practice of “differance." This is another way of saying that the conventional understanding of “writing” as the place of the convergence of “language” and “experience” is radically questioned by an understanding that no longer regards “writing” representationally—as the mimesis of presence-as-experience.

The contestations over the very identity of “writing," for example, have produced (to simplify some complicated issues) such “knowledges” of “writing” in the contemporary cultural and pedagogical institutions as:

Writing as “expression” theories argue that writing is “made” by (expressing) the experience of the subject. The source of experience is usually posited as outside the domain of language. As a result of the encounter of the unfettered subject — in its full sensuality — and the immediate object in the world, the subject acquires experience — as an extension of his/her unitary identity-body. Various phenomenological theories of writing, which put the emphasis on the “interiority” of the subject, also produce a knowledge of “writing” as a species of experience and are thus versions of expressivist theories.

Writing as “reflection” theories contend that knowledge of "writing" is “made” by positing it as a relation of adequacy between the signifier and signified. The role of writing is thus to relate the two mimetically. In these “knowledges” of writing, writing is a medium of intersubjective inquiries into the being of the world or (more pragmatically) writing as the accurate and usable representations of an already existing set of practices (business practices, military practices, technical writing,...) In short, “reflectionist” theories of writing are more overtly functionalist than “expressivist” theories. Of course, both are representationalist and founded on “presence."

Although writing-as-expression and writing-as-reflection are more or less the dominant frames that underlie most instituted theories and practices of writing in the contemporary academy, there are other modes of “making knowledge” of writing in contestation with these hegemonic forms. For example, some Neo-Kantian views construct a knowledge of writing as a symbol-making practice. Poststructuralist theories of writing, as I have already suggested, make a radical break with all representationalist theories of writing and theorize writing as a practice of “differance." There are, of course, numerous variations on the “making of knowledge” of writing. My aim here is not to offer a “survey” of theories of “writing” but to mark the arche-frames that articulate some of the current modes of making knowledge of writing. My immediate purpose here is to begin to point out what is meant by the “making of knowledge” and the question of theory and practice upon which the new Ph.D. program at Albany is built. This program is not a “delivery” system for a commodity already available called “writing” but a contestation over what constitutes “writing."

This contestation over writing is not limited to what is reified in composition programs as “expository” writing but is equally true about the other reification in the knowledge industry called, “creative writing." Is “creative writing” what the Romantics “made knowledge” out of — "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” of the subject (Wordsworth, Preface to the Second Edition of “Lyrical Ballads")? Or is the “making of knowledge” of “creative writing” what T.S. Eliot — indirectly and pointedly contesting Wordsworth — regarded to be the effect of “a continual extinction of personality” of the subject, such that, “the emotion of art is impersonal” ("Tradition and the Individual Talent")? Is “creative writing” a fragmenting of the linear text so that it can reflect “unexplainable” “experience” and thus subvert the order of representation (by typographical rearranging of letters, removing spaces between words and typing them together, breaking up the sentences...)? Or is such a so-called “experimental” practice of “creative writing” a sign of intellectual immaturity and emotional arrest that leads to ethical delinquency—an adolescent's hiding his/her insecurities by taking refuge in what Yvor Winters called “imitative form” (In Defense of Reason)? For Winters “creative writing” is not simply finding “the verbal equivalent of states of mind and feeling” (e.g. for chaos, find chaotic typography and for disorder, compose a disorderly text...) but an uncompromising evaluation of “states of mind” through ethical considerations and philosophical elucidation. For him, to pick up pieces of a text from out of a hat (to point to a common practice in poetry readings and “creative writing” workshops) and to regard the outcome as a “creative” act is to take refuge in a simplistic mechanical device from serious philosophical thinking about the alea. Or should one place the “making of knowledge” of writing, as Robert Coover suggests, in cyberspace, in the site of the hypertext—“With its webs of linked lexias, its networks of alternative routes (as opposed to print's fixed unidirectional page-turning)" — and take the hypertext as a new modality of “writing” that “presents a radically divergent technology, interactive and polyvocal"? Is the hypertext radically new or, as Coover himself asked on another occasion when pressed for a more historical understanding of writing, is the hypertext as old as the Torah (a hypertext of great complexity) — the difference is that now through CD-ROM and other devices we have a “mechanism for activating” an ancient mode of writing for popular access? Or is Coover's embrace of the hypertext (whether he regards it to be a “new” or a “re-newed” mode of writing) simply an instance of what some critics consider shallow thinking — at best a form of technophilia, at worst, a fetishization of gadgets—and a philosophical and theoretical evasion rather than a serious engagement with ideas about writing or the human situation?

What is the “making of knowledge” of experimental writing? Is it a substitution of the mechanical manipulation of typography or cyberspace for philosophical speculation, or is it a rigorous philosophical de-structuring of the workings of logos as presence, which underlies mimesis (whether in “realistic” writing, “experimental” texts or “hypertexts")? How is knowledge of “creative writing” made, and is the writing in question “creative” or a recycling of old-avant-garde techniques (e.g. collage) or the work of “fancy” or of “imagination” (Coleridge, Biographia Literaria)? Or is the knowledge of “creative writing” made of something altogether different? For instance, the mode of production of writing itself — as it was contested by Andre Breton (with Philippe Soupault) who questioned all that had come before — became a search for an “other” reality by means of “automatic writing” that took the subject into sur-reality. Is “creative writing” an archewriting? Is it the trace-ing of absences that enable presence (Derrida, Glas), and thus Hegel is as much a “creative writer” as Genet? If that is the case why the nomination “creative writer” and not simply a “writer," is “creative” a marketing device? What marks a “writer” of “criticism” as distinct from a “writer” of “fiction” (Derrida, “The Law of Genre” and the matter of Blanchot)?

Or is the “making of knowledge” of writing, best displayed by avoiding “A” or “The” “making of knowledge” and combining a number of modes of production? Or, better yet, displace the “making of knowledge” with “makings” — the S of the plural has always served as an easy way out of (an evasion of) thick philosophical and political-institutional issues. Better still replace “making” with “strategies." Doing so erases the philosophical, valorizes the practical and the pragmatic, and leads to “eclectic” acts. This route avoids hard-edged issues in the name of “pluralism” (the “S") and repeats the clichés about multiplicity. After all, the "S" of the plural is the last defense of those embedded in the status quo but who have no argument for its legitimacy.

One of the issues here is the difference of pluralism and plurality. Pluralism is the reification of a formalist multiplicity while plurality is an understanding of human societies based on knowledge of (not “empathy” for) the other and the inclusion of differences. Pluralism uses difference to simply create a policy-stalemate — “on the one hand, on the other hand” — and deploys formal devices, such as allowing everybody to speak, as a testimony to its (seeming) openness, which is rarely reflected in its (largely closed) policies and practices of decision making. Plurality, on the other hand, not only allows people to speak but actually incorporates the differences people speak into the making of public policy. Pluralism is based on the old linear notion of identity; plurality is differential—the understanding that there is no self-same, self-identical identity. All self-sameness is the construct of the dominant ideology. Instead of engaging the historical necessity of differences and the truth of their contestations, pluralism posits all truths as equal — the truth of privilege and the truth of exploitation; the truth of pleasure and the truth of poverty. In doing so, pluralism places the “truth” of the status quo under immunity from critique. But critique is at the core of plurality, for it is only through critique that one acquires historical understanding—“knowledge” — of the contesting truths of differences and how the “dominant” self-evidence is always based on the suppression of the “un-said” of the historical and social conflicts.

Pluralism, thus, becomes an alibi for “not knowing." If one does not have rigorous knowledge of the “making of knowledge”—of the historical production of contesting “truths," of differences — one cannot “explain” why. The keepers of the status quo seek to marginalize rigorous “explanation” with its troubling inquiries into the “why” of things — especially the “why” of power. Thus explanation is frequently dismissed: critical inquiries into “why," for example, are often seen as a negation of “nurturing," or “feeling," or “experience." In place of a rigorous understanding of the “making of knowledge," upholders of the status quo commonly “express” an “emotion," a “preference": “this is MY view and, of course, there are other views”—as if such a stand obviates the need for a critique of these views. The "S" of the plural is used to marginalize rigorous knowing. The Ph.D. in English at Albany requires that a pluralism of preferences (eclecticism) not be used as an evasive cover for “not knowing," for not engaging the contesting “making of knowledge." To be eclectic is to have a position and, like any other position, that position is not given but is produced historically and socially. As such, it requires an argument and is located in relation to contesting positions. Nor is pluralism self-evident: it is also a constructed position and needs an argument. It cannot be used as an evasion of rigor but has to be articulated rigorously and in contestation with other positions.

I end this excursus, then, by a “contestation” over “writing." I argue that “writing” is a practice of critique. From a materialist position, writing is not simply an articulation of experience (phenomenologically or otherwise ), or reflection of an already existing (ahistorical) world, and certainly not merely an allegory of signs or construction of symbols, nor quest for the “other” reality. Rather, “writing," in its most complex and comprehensive understanding, is the historical act of making sense of the regimes of intelligibilities by uncovering their material limits — in poems, philosophical texts, newspaper editorials, novels, filmscripts, theory, speeches, advertisements, criticism, cybertexts. Writing is the name of a historical and social practice of making sense of the objective world, not a skill, nor a genre, nor a formal convention, nor a set of rhetorical strategies, nor an affect,.... To teach writing as a skill, a genre, a formal convention, rhetoric or affect is to reduce literacy — a social act of knowing — to a set of formal “strategies” for managing and adjusting to the existing social relations or the “pleasure” of the subject. Pedagogy is for educating critique-al citizens, and critique-al citizenship involves enabling people to analyze, explain and participate in open contestations over social priority. It requires “knowledge” not simply “empathy."

From a materialist position, therefore, to understand the “making of knowledge” of “writing” rhetorically, for example, as an act of “internalizing the questions of readers” and as the “strategies” to “persuade” them is, in the last instance, to accept the existing order of the social that has produced those “questions” and “readers” and also set the limits of “persuasion." “Persuasion” is not simply the effect of the desires of the subject but the outcome of the social relations of production in which the subject is situated. In short, one is always “persuaded' under what Marx calls the “silent compulsion of economic relations” (Capital, 1, 899). The “making of knowledge” of “writing” in such a (rhetorical) manner is thus an adjustment to existing reality and not a critique of its un-said limits. But writing, in a materialist understanding, is a social practice engaged in changing existing social organizations. That is, writing is critique, and critique is a contribution to social transformations. Writing as critique is an integral part of pedagogy for public citizenship. It is a questioning of the limits of existing practices, an active intervention in the social. Writing (as critique) is a process and practice through which the subject deploys concepts to arrive at a materialist and historical understanding of the structures of social relations and institutions. “Critique” does not take “experience” or the existing world as given but examines their genealogies and shows how they have be-come [sic.] instituted and how they can be de-instituted. It historicizes “signs” and “agency," among other things, and puts in question the “populist," experiential priorities of both the pedagogy of desire and the pedagogy of techne, which at times masquerades as “critical teaching."

The reason for moving beyond the usual pedagogy of pluralism (evasiveness legitimated as tolerance) is to turn the classroom and the scene of knowledge into a site of production and not consumption—into a site of historical understanding of the contesting pluralities of differences. When I take a position in my classes on the “making of knowledge” and produce “writing” as “critique," the majority of my students oppose my position. But they would not know that they oppose “writing” as critique and my pedagogical practices unless I engage them in the “making of knowledge” of writing as critique. In contesting my notion of writing, they become historically ACTIVE agents in their own pedagogies, in their own production of the “making of knowledge." My students — who are trained in what Kuhn would call the “normal” knowledges of writing — react to my theory of writing-as-critique by first claiming that I am mis-informed about “writing," “creative writing," “composition theory” or that I am simply an “enemy” of writing. My “other” theory, in short, is seen as a mark of “hostility” or as a non-theory, a non-knowledge (mis-informed). However, as they contest my theories, they begin to realize that “mis-informed” is more an ideological naming that puts their minds at ease than a rigorous critique-al engagement of knowledge, and the faultlines of "well-informed” begin to become visible to them. They see how the notion of "well-informed” is deployed as a subtle strategy for marginalizing those theories that contest dominant practices. By engaging critique, they learn how to take a position against me—not simply as “preferences," anyone can do that: “I disagree with your views” — but through the development of an argument to explain why they oppose my position. In other words, students have to explain what makes their position more of an adequate explanation of "writing"? Not just because they do not like what I say; not just because it produces “anxieties” in them ("anxieties” that cannot be controlled by simply calling my position “mis-informed"). Not just because it alienates them from their settled notions and self. Instead they have to explain WHY this particular view and not the other one(s)? What makes their view “well-informed” and the other “mis-informed"? What are the historical and social factors producing their “preferences," their “anxieties"? Is their opposition more a philosophical matter than a question of professional and career anxieties? In developing an explanation, they come to know both their own position and that which they are contesting.

This is one of my points about critiquing the idea of teaching as a “delivery” system: the purpose of pedagogy is to teach students to critique-ally understand and produce their own explanations for Why, to become effective critique-al citizens for democracy. It is this philosophical rigor and historical understanding of the “making of knowledge” that is the project of the Ph.D. program in English at SUNY-Albany. To develop its pedagogy as a rigorous philosophical critique, the Ph.D. in English moves away from being simply a “delivery” system.

The instability and contestatory status of such terms as “writing” and “creativity” are, of course, already written into the very sub-title of the program: “Ph.D. in English: Writing, Teaching, Criticism."[1] Each one of the three terms marking the Ph.D. are terms in contestation, and, in fact, when the program was set up, they were chosen with regard to contemporary literary theory which has made them spaces of conflicts and contestations (open terms) free from any arbitrary closure. “Writing," for example, in the texts of Derrida, de Man, Nancy, Blanchot, Cixous,.. has been rigorously problematized. In the wake of poststructuralism, "writing” has lost its commonsensical innocence and commercial self-evidence. It is the "theoretical” (i.e. non-representational) practice of the production of texts. A “text” is any semiotic activity that constructs “meaning." However, since the sign is always an effect of differance, trace, dissemination and spacing — which are articulated by slippage and traversed by absence — “writing” becomes a practice of “differance”. “Writing," in short, is no longer the name of a “technique," a “skill," or a “genre” ("poetry," “fiction,"...) but a space for philosophical inquiry into the very “first principles” of Western thinking ("logocentrism").

Hegemonic power opposes “theory," in part, because "theory” problematizes (opens up for critique) the terms that the ruling power wants put under arbitrary “closure." Thus the elite Group in the English Department at SUNY-Albany acts as if "writing” is an already decided practice, and all the Ph.D. program has to do is “deliver” it according to their specifications. This is, of course, an extension of the Vice-President's view of knowledge as “commodity." “Writing” as far as the Group is concerned is a pre-packaged, known commodity. In other words, the Group reads “writing," “teaching," “criticism," as self-same entities with a fixed, transhistorical identity. They are “pre-given” and not open to contestation: they are closed terms, each with a singular “meaning” — the “meaning” that naturalizes the privileges of the Group.

I have already indicated, in my long excursus on “writing," that the term “writing” is not a self-transparent entity referring to an “object” out there. “Writing” is an oscillating term like all terms of culture. So when we refer to a Ph.D. in “writing," we are not referring to a “closed” system of knowledge but to an open field of contestation. “Writing," in the title of the Ph.D. degree, in no way determines a fixed identity for the Ph.D. but instead puts that very identity in question and in contestation. The entire Ph.D. program, in light of the contemporary understanding of “writing” becomes a philosophical, theoretical and self-reflexive inquiry into all modes of the production and dissemination of “meaning” and textualizing practices. “Writing” is not the name of a “skill” but the site of ongoing textual movements of meaning in/within social institutions.

The fate of “teaching” is no different. The Group and the Vice-President for Academic Affairs talk about “teaching” as if it is the name of an already determined and closed practice. But far from having a stable identity, “teaching” is the general space of social contestations over the articulation of subjectivities. “Teaching," in other words, is the space in which the historically required “consciousness skills” are taught or contested. These "consciousness skills” are always the subject of class contestations since they are embedded in the very formation of the labor force. To say, the Ph.D. is a degree in “teaching” is, therefore, to say the Ph.D. is a degree in conflicts and contestation over the historicity of “teaching” and its involvement in the production and dissemination of knowledges in class societies. As such, “teaching” is an element in class relations and, therefore, an “open” practice. However, as I have argued in my “For a Red Pedagogy," the practice of “teaching” is often reduced to simply class-room management and to tasks and skills: how to attract the attention of students in a large class; how to tutor; how to grade; how to lead discussions. “Teaching” in the sub-title of the Ph.D. marks this general area of undecidability. In other words, the Ph.D. in English at SUNY-Albany recognizes that “teaching” cannot be “fixed” in any single discourse or practice.

Turning to the third term in the designation of the Ph.D. in English at SUNY-Albany, “criticism” is taken by the ruling Group to mean a “commonsensical," “intuitive," “experiential" “appreciation” of the “experience” reflected in novels, poems, short stories.... The Group's reification of such a limited notion of criticism is a thinly disguised “fear of theory”—one that has its roots in the “criticism” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. One exemplary site of this “fear” is, of course, the writings of F.R. Leavis, whose views on “close reading” still dominate the academy. It is Leavis's “fear” of theory — most clearly articulated in his contestations with Rene Wellek ("Literary Criticism and Philosophy," Scrutiny v. 6, 1937, 59-70)—and not an awareness of the contemporary rearticulation of “criticism” that informs the Group's understanding of “criticism” in the sub-title of the Ph.D. degree. The Group somehow thinks that by pointing to “criticism” it can exorcise “theory” from the program! But, if there is such a thing called “criticism” separate and autonomous from “theory," how do we read T.S. Eliot's essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent," or Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's “A Literary Representation of the Subaltern: A Woman's Text from the Third World"? Is not their “criticism” embedded in “theory"? What about Wallace Steven's essays? How about Derrida's reading of Levinas; Irigaray's reading of Plato, Judith Butler's reading of Freud/Lacan? Are these "criticism"? Are these "theory"? To close off “criticism” and separate it from “theory” is once more an indication of a desire for control — a desire to fix the meanings of cultural terms and representations in order to hold on to power by reifying signification and arresting the differential movements of the sign. The sub-title of the Ph.D., “Writing, Teaching, Criticism," opposes such totalitarian treatment of cultural terms and marks the Ph.D. in English at SUNY-Albany as a space for open, contestatory and democratic inquiries—not as the site of fixed identities.