“Authority” in Composition Scholarship
Ellen Cushman and Terese Guinsatao Monberg expand notions of sensitivity toward cultural, social, and gendered identities in developing critical composition pedagogies in their essay. Most of the scholarship that Perspectives on Research has been concerned with this quarter has proposed a need for awareness and sensitivity to issues of identity in the context of the University; more specifically, in the context of the writing classroom. The message seems to have been, thus far, that some deeper thinking needs to be done, on the parts of composition scholars as well as instructors, in developing new pedagogical methods for teaching student writing. Essentially, there has been a call for an expanded view of composition and what it should accomplish in the university classroom, rather than suggestions that the current system itself is fundamentally and irreversibly flawed. Ellen Cushman and Terese Guinsatao Monberg’s essay, however, seems to suggest just that notion. In their contribution to this identity in composition conversation, they argue that there is a need to rework the entire set of ideologies behind the scholastic system. These scholars contend that the productive solution lies with the acts of “Re-Centering” and “Re-Positioning”. Basically, it is not the composition pedagogies themselves that need so much attention; but rather it is the methods and ideologies from which these pedagogical approaches are developed that must be re-worked.
Much of Cushman and Monberg’s essay focuses on “questions of ethnographic authority” (167). They explain the relevance of the authority question by arguing that “While recent moves in composition and cultural studies scholarship have encouraged academics to cross borders and boundaries, many of us have remained skeptical, protective, and hesitant. For example, Jacqueline Jones Royster, bell hooks, Gesa Kirsch, Malea Powell, Janice Gould, and Patricia Sullivan, have all asked, warned, and/or demanded that scholars be more careful of where they step and for whom they speak” (167). This is a notion that the entire essay seems to struggle against. Scholars must be free from limitations concerning authority and representation is effective critical composition pedagogical and research approaches are to be achieved. Their essay seems to move away from notions of political correctness in suggesting that certain boundaries have to be opened up within the discipline of composition studies and its growing relationship and relevance to cultural studies.
