Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository

to coin wholly new and different monikers for those camps or
schools – I do not abide by them. Because I do not see myself
or my teaching philosophy defined according to their cleaving
delineations, I have chosen to defy them. And because of this,
I feel that, as a teacher, what is needed here too is dialectic,
or, as Lester Faigley referred to it, “synthesis.”
In his essay, “Competing Theories of Process: A Critique
and a Proposal,” Faigley examines three different, and widely
held to be irreconcilable, “conceptions of writing as a
process,” with the stated intention of laying bare the
limitations that such static definitions impose upon that same
“process” each would seek to describe, claiming that
“disciplinary claims for writing must be based on a conception
of process broader than any of the three views” (528). After
portraying the differences between them, he offers his solution
to averting those limitations and, to Faigley, it can be
summarized in a single word: “synthesis.” In that last part of
his article, “Towards a Synthesis,” he writes:
If the process movement is to continue to influence
the teaching of writing and to supply alternatives to
current-traditional pedagogy, it must take a broader
conception of writing, one that understands writing
processes are historically dynamic – not psychic
states, cognitive routines, or neutral social
relationships. This historical awareness would allow
us to reinterpret and integrate each of the
theoretical perspectives I have outlined. (537,
emphasis added)
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