Ecocomposition and Identity

Dobrin and Weisser “assert that identity and how it is manifested through discourse is shaped by more than social conventions and is also influenced by our relationships with particular locations and environments” (567) and that, in light of this, ecological and environmental perspectives must be included to insure that composition studies thrives and remains relevant. Also, they assert eco-composistion has an impact on our culture’s survivability:  “understanding these relationships is crucial to survival” (573). 

Maybe it’s just my combative nature, but I have a difficult time buying that composition and writing, in practical terms, have as much to do with identity formation as they claim. Drew raises the question acutely: 

“What may be problematic, however, in our current thinking about the place of discursive learning, is that students often exist for compositionists exclusively within the classroom, when the material reality of their lives, and the spaces they inhabit, would suggest that this is only a partial picture at best. In addition, if the places of discursive pedagogy are not only multiple, but in conflict as well, then the classroom itself may be more complex, and simultaneously less effective as a location of learning than we might have assumed” (59-60). 

Identity is a malleable thing that changes and reacts to most everything we do. Aren’t the things people engage with the most commitment more influential on their identities? For our students, is writing as much a part of their day to day activities as we would hope? Do they engage in writing and inquiry through writing enough to influence their identities? Don’t they mostly learn in environments outside the classroom, and even outside of the theoretical environments we as teachers attempt to establish? Aren’t our students spending more of their time socializing and watching television than on our writing assignments?  I guess what I fail to see is whether time spent writing is more formative than time doing other things? 

“Costanza and Daly define a social trap as "any situation in which the short-run, local reinforcements guiding individual behavior are inconsistent with the long-run, global best interest of the individual and society" (57). When fashion, consumer addictions, laziness, and social insecurity induce all of us—students and faculty alike—to fall into social traps of unsustainability, then a curriculum that does not provide the tools and the time to identify and critique the implications of such traps becomes a trap in itself. To address this cycle requires recognizing the degree to which social traps infiltrate our institutions” (Owens, 29). 

Owens describes the idea of social traps. As teachers but also members of an unsustainable culture, are we capable of setting anything but social traps? Is sustainability antithetical to our culture? In practice, how do we even begin to design a curriculum that is outside our consumer culture enough to be thought of as sustainable? Does Owens provide us with real solutions to the problems raised by the other readings?