“Global warming isn’t real, you know,” a student announced. Of course this assertion was intended to make me flustered and start a ruckus. Did it work? Maybe a little. The discussion stopped short of a ruckus, and the question was not nearly enough to engender a full-fledged flustering. This was an amazing opportunity to lead the student to an awareness of the ways in which his personal experiences, ideas and social contexts inform his view and perception of the world. Dobrin and Weisser claim that, “By exposing students to this multitude of perspectives, we can hope to help them develop mature positions of their own” (582). The student held a very firm position, yet he was not aware of the forces that led him to the formation of his belief.
The idea that who you are is inevitably and intricately linked to what you write has been embraced by composition theorists since the 1970s and 1980s. Dobrin and Weisser discuss the way that environment shapes the writer in various ways. It “expanded the way we thought of identity, asserting that it emerges not just from the internal processes of the individual, but also from a wider variety of influences: the social conventions we share with other human beings” (567). Drew enriches this idea by bringing attention to the “power of the conditions of that authorship” (65). The writer must also consider the context of the environment in which he or she is writing.
The eco in ecocomposition relates to this idea of individual and shared writing environments. The prefix points to the idea that place and its relationship to the individual are critical categories that influence the language we choose to use to construct our thoughts and ideas. Drew enriches this notion through her description of the student as a sovereign individual passing through in one of many spaces that they will inhabit in a lifetime, “By reimagining students as travelers we may construct a politics of place that is more likely to include students in the academic work of composition, and less likely to continue to identify and manage students as discursive novices” (Drew 60).
Ecocomposition relates to ecology in a way that is distinct from ecocriticism. While ecocriticism is a place-based frame of literary analysis, ecocomposition deals with the production of written discourse. It is closely tied to the traditional definition of ecology. In fact, Dobrin and Weisser cite Ernst Haeckel’s 1866 definition of ecology, “the study of all the complex interrelationships referred to by Darwin as the conditions of the struggle for existence” (572). and then suggest that this definition is interchangeable with the definition of contemporary composition studies.
The “eco” points to this notion that an understanding of our physical place in the world is essential to understanding not only the way we write and shape our world, but also composition as a whole. Our “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. The inclusion of ecological and environmental perspectives in composition theory, we argue, is essential to the discipline’s continued growth and development. Composition’s roots do indeed tap into ecological sciences” (Dobrin and Weisser 567).
Owens suggests most powerfully a social duty to participate in the various places that we inhabit and to challenge the trajectory of that environment. Academic institutions have a duty to educate on this, the most important duty entrusted to us due to our cognizance of the situation, our ability to influence, and our duty as citizens of this particular environment. We must “take the existing information on sustainability and begin inventing ways of applying this information to our work as teachers and scholars so as to invite collaboration and exchange between faculty and students” (Owens 33).
I answered my student’s bold claim with a request that he consider other reliable sources and research his hypothesis with a discerning eye. My response didn’t totally miss the mark. However, by proposing that he take into consideration the myriad “attitudes, ideas, ideologies, and perspectives that pertain to place or location,” I could work toward the goal of increasing his critical awareness of the world and his place in it (Dobrin and Weisser 582).
Savannah's post, for me, offers a good response to Mackenzie's belief that ecomposition doesn't have much to do with identity by pointing out ways that "where we stand" and "where we come from" are issues related to identity, another dimension of subjectivity that we might add to Lorraine Code's description of subjectivity as ecoogical location.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite "go to" quotation when it comes to thinking about the relationship between ecocomposition as an emerging area of study (I suspect emergence status is why Dobrin and Weisser differentiate ecocomposition so much from ecocriticism when, as Melissa points out the distance isn't as large as they suggest) comes from Thayer's book, Life Place:
Somewhere in the swirl of life, each of us ponders three essential questions: “Who am I?” “Where am I?” and “What am I supposed to do?” We often consider the first question in isolation, as if it were the true key to our existence—as if the matter of who we are could be resolved independently of the two remaining questions. But all three of these questions must be answered in consort, as together they articulate the totality of the human condition. We do different things with varying degrees of understanding and purpose. We are born, live, feel, think, act, move, settle, and die. Questions of our existence and action are separable neither from each other nor from place—but it is place that we have most often ignored.
—Robert L. Thayer, Jr., LifePlace: Bioregional Thought and Practice (1)
These readings definitely made me think about the term "ecology" in a way that I never had before. I guess it's kind of like "sustainability"-- a term that actually has a broader meaning beyond an environmental perspective. In the Cooper article, which I read, she speaks of writing in a way that is similar to the "discursive" method in Dobrin/Weisser. They all argue that writing itself is a form of "ecology"--a system of understanding information that exists in relationships with other information. Instead of seeing writing as hierarchical, these texts encourage us to see it as we see the systems of life on Earth.
ReplyDeleteI think Savannah as well as the texts we read are right--place is an important and often-ignored factor in how we write and how we are read. We talk about things like gender, class, race. But place is just as relevant.
It was difficult for me to think about "ecocomposition" in anyway other than, as Dobrin puts it, "inserting trees into an essay." It was difficult because my understanding of the word "composition" was quite narrow. Composition is not merely formatting one's thoughts into essays, but more broadly, I have come to understand that composition is our articulated world view. The "eco" then, in "ecocomposition," is the world in which we are reacting to; making ecocomposition not only highly relevant to today's composition students, but relevant in the larger scope of negotiating identities throughout one's life.
ReplyDeleteWhat are the layers of our identities: student, daughter, environmentalist, Twilight-lover, cancer-survivor..etc., and where do these identities fit into the college experience? To me, composition is the bridge between who we are, and who we think we should be.
In thinking about composition as the articulated aspect of our socio-awareness, I imagined two circular spheres hovering above one another, creating a feedback hum (sorry if this is spiraling off into oblivion.) Which means that navigating, updating, allowing for change and critical thought becomes so important in the success of negotiating our identities.
I liked when Savannah's student declared that global warming wasn't real. I had my own example of trying to prompt critical thought in a student who had adamantly shut down Wallace's Consider the Lobster. He said he'd been eating meat all his life and thinking about it now would just be pointless because it seemed gross. I asked if he would be willing to hear the other side of the argument even though he didn't agree with it. Rather than shutting the argument down, could he respond thoughtfully to its claims?
When we understand ecocomposition as worldviews constantly in flux--malleable as we begin to articulate them--it becomes easier to extend patience when a student makes these absolute declarations.
I was trying to remember where Zeus appeared in the Cognitive Process Model of Composition, zapping harmonious communities with the twin lightning bolts of individualism and Greco-Roman patriarchy. Cooper’s article helped me to decode all those arrows. Kidding aside, the cognitive process model I looked up was described as recursive and included an audience which was presumably reified in the task environment to which the writer returns as he or she writes. I thought that cognitive models assumed that the mind changed and adapted and morphed much more than the examples Cooper includes; I also thought that real, social, persons as audience could be included. Perhaps ecocomposition’s greater awareness of social inextricability is measured in degrees.
ReplyDeleteYet, Cooper promotes ecocomposition over the cognitive process model as not only more aware of writing’s inextricability, but more concrete (and thus verifiable). I’m not sure that I understand how place, an ecosystem, or a shared writing environment represents less of an imagined construction than the spectral audience Cooper disparages. 1) How is place more knowable? I didn’t grasp how a place, for instance, isn’t continually constructed in the mind while writing. My thoughts are not realized instantly as divine fiat, though I’m working on it. Until anyone’s projected effects are checked against feedback, it seems tough to avoid projecting. OK, so deemphasizing thought processes brushes that issue aside (or more generously, makes room to explore interrelatedness). 2) But still, an ecosystem as contextual model appears to me to be constructed along similar lines as the imagined audience. A human diagram to circumscribe nature's interactions, the concept of an ecosystem places very confident arrows and boxes. By the above discussion I don’t mean to imply that sagebrush is a cultural construction. I think the real world is dandy. I just still wonder how ecocomposition provides relational metaphors that are better underpinned by reality than those psychology provided for the cognitive-process diagrammists, whose arrows crackled with another magic. I’m still not sure.
I agree that Savannah’s student presented an excellent opportunity to examine how beliefs are created and defended. That student will hopefully find inroads to reality. The Owens article recommends that composition instructors intervene more assertively. I tend to rate Savannah’s approach as wiser, and think it reflects better-organized priorities. Owens speaks in ethical terms—and I think that his tone is wholly appropriate to arguing against consumerist anti-environmentalism. Yet, as a student of the Humanities, I have learned that not every occasion for writing is best approached in the moralizing mode. I am working to see that my students don’t misconstrue their assignments to be narratives of uncritical outrage. There is a danger, I think, that assumptions implicit within the culture of The University will escape disruption if Owens’s recommendations are followed.
ReplyDeleteI invoke my disciplinary background because I like it. Disrupting assumptions is something I think the study of literature does well. Teaching ecocritical perspectives in literature seminars develops an invaluable tool for interrogating and interpreting texts. At my first opportunity to teach, I can only offer a Fisher-Price wrench version of that tool, but I’m glad for the chance to do it. However, just as I wouldn’t teach Poetry 101 using exclusively a Marxist hammer, I know that I am best equipped to teach composition with a mixed tool box.
Even while ostensibly working on sharper definitions, Owens derives too much benefit from the slipperiness of the word “sustainability,” asking how long a “canon of information or methodological practices” can be sustained (“be supported”) without “sustainability” (“the study of sustainable agriculture and forestry, environmental ethics” and so forth).
An humanist may ask, "Will we sustain our humanity?" "What good is nature, chaotic or ordered as it may be, without humanity?"
A philosopher might ask, "What are you calling natural?"
A psychologist might ask, "What good is sustainability without health and happiness?"
Everything is all tied up in everything. But disciplines are such useful fictions because of the heterogeneity of the questions they sometimes produce. It's alright for disciplines to prioritize their presentation of the essentials of an education, I think. When the student in my class said, “I know what sustainability means, I can give you a dictionary definition and I’m taking an Environmental Studies course… but the way you talk about sustainability, it seems like it could be applied everywhere.” I reflected on my disciplinary background and on goals of the present course. And I decided that I was doing my job after all.