Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository

Introduction
This work is the culmination of a journey that extends from
my introduction to the field of composition and rhetoric and to
the fulfillment of my doctoral studies with my dissertation.
Because of this, it is a very personal journey that has served
to define my philosophy of writing as well as my philosophy of
the teaching of writing. The spread of time that this work
represents and all that I have done throughout that time, as a
student and as a teacher, has been inspirited by the twin urges
of Uncertainty and Certainty: not simply the contrary but
kindred influences exerted by each of them upon perspectives of
reality and “truth” but also how to exist - to teach and to
write and to think - amidst that stress and struggle that
effuses from their opposition. All too often, the tension of
those opposing calls compels those who experience it to choose
one of them over the other. To worship one of them, almost like
a god, while the other is forgotten. Forsaken. All too often,
this is unconsciously done, leaving the choice to appear
“natural” or “sanctified” or both. And all too often, no matter
whether it is Uncertainty or Certainty that becomes deified,
this choosing breeds severely dualistic “black or white”
perspectives of reality and “truth” that allow for no confusion,
no contradiction, and no compromise. “Right or wrong,” “good or
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