Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository
Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository
hetoric in America, where “binary characterizations continue to loom large.” This is an unfortunately very similar estimation to that put forward by Peter Elbow but two years earlier in the very same journal. In his essay “Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries,” Elbow brings his already examined philosophy to the titular issue of “voice.” To Elbow, the debate about voice among those in the field of composition and rhetoric is stuck in a theoretical “stalemate,” a “slumbering contradiction,” because it has been reduced to “an adversarial zero-sum model where one side must be wrong for the other to be right” (172), the all-too common response to a confrontation with contradiction. Furthermore, it would seem that Elbow himself, his place and purpose in the field, has also been tainted by such an “either/or, zero-sum” perspective – and coincidentally in terms of not only this question of “voice” but, through it, those historical taxonomies that would divvy the conversation of the field, both past and present, into so many simple parcels of theoretical property. Of this he explains: Because I have been so often cited as representing a whole “school” in composition studies, I think that this kind of misreading got ingrained and that it has affected how many people understand the landscape of composition studies – tending to see it as a site for either/or, zero-sum conflict between positions. (173) After exploring how to bring his doctrine of “embracing contraries” to that question of “voice” and, in doing so, trying 238
to renovate his portrait, Elbow offers a conclusion that is, again, not unlike Mao’s. And like Mao’s, its meaning extends beyond the particulars of his essay. He declares: I have another wider meta-goal for this essay. I’m asking us to learn to be wiser in our scholarly thinking and writing. […][W]e can learn to step outside of either/or thinking (usually adversarial) and work out a both/and approach that embraces contraries. Such thinking can often release us from dead-end critical arguments that are framed by the unexamined assumption that if two positions seem incompatible, only one can be valid. (184) This said, Elbow’s Embracing Contraries was published in 1987 and it saw him striving against “either/or” - “right or wrong,” “good or evil,” “us or them” – perspectives that hinder and undermine writing and teaching and thinking. Twenty years later in those pages of College English, he was still banging the same old drum. The question must be asked … Is anyone listening? Will anyone listen? If they don’t, what can be done about it? There would seem to be two choices. Give up and give in, out of frustration and disillusionment and even bitterness. Or keep banging that same drum too. 239
- Page 195 and 196: turned outward, towards society and
- Page 197 and 198: as a whole. These essays attempted
- Page 199 and 200: students had to do it from and for
- Page 201 and 202: teacher staring back at me. A lazy
- Page 203 and 204: ut inwards, to themselves, and to p
- Page 205 and 206: Again, if I took that long, hard lo
- Page 207 and 208: subjectivity” of those same “po
- Page 209 and 210: eflecting writing and those questio
- Page 211 and 212: work” (318). For me, it is this s
- Page 213 and 214: ut what is thought and, possibly, w
- Page 215 and 216: of the “Deweyan” community - th
- Page 217 and 218: question, “Can writing be used to
- Page 219 and 220: Shapiro took those seventy essays a
- Page 221 and 222: instructor’s standing within such
- Page 223 and 224: in responding to drafts, in confere
- Page 225 and 226: elevance of context is what finally
- Page 227 and 228: different composition scholars and
- Page 229 and 230: a human being living in this world
- Page 231 and 232: that “perplexity” and “disequ
- Page 233 and 234: development” (219). If my experie
- Page 235 and 236: e seen as “diverse” or “diffe
- Page 237 and 238: from without, and, because of it, w
- Page 239 and 240: twelve- to fourteen-week college se
- Page 241 and 242: for granted. And once you have take
- Page 243 and 244: learning community therein. Because
- Page 245: or white” perceptions of reality
- Page 249 and 250: Elbow, for example, have said about
- Page 251 and 252: Works Consulted Aristotle. Rhetoric
- Page 253 and 254: and Process Models of Composing"."
- Page 255 and 256: ---. "The Winds of Change: Thomas K
- Page 257 and 258: Ong, Walter J. Fighting for Life: C
to renovate his portrait, Elbow offers a conclusion that is,<br />
again, not unlike Mao’s. And like Mao’s, its meaning extends<br />
beyond the particulars of his essay. He declares:<br />
I have another wider meta-goal for this essay. I’m<br />
asking us to learn to be wiser in our scholarly<br />
thinking and writing. […][W]e can learn to step<br />
outside of either/or thinking (usually adversarial)<br />
and work out a both/and approach that embraces<br />
contraries. Such thinking can often release us from<br />
dead-end critical arguments that are framed by the<br />
unexamined assumption that if two positions seem<br />
incompatible, only one can be valid. (184)<br />
This said, Elbow’s Embracing Contraries was published in 1987<br />
and it saw him striving against “either/or” - “right or wrong,”<br />
“good or evil,” “us or them” – perspectives that hinder and<br />
undermine writing and teaching and thinking. Twenty years later<br />
in those pages of College English, he was still banging the same<br />
old drum. The question must be asked … Is anyone listening?<br />
Will anyone listen? If they don’t, what can be done about it?<br />
There would seem to be two choices. Give up and give in, out of<br />
frustration and disillusionment and even bitterness. Or keep<br />
banging that same drum too.<br />
239
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