Process: A Rebuttal
It seems only fair at this moment that process should have an opportunity to address critiques that it engenders a myopic focus on the individual student, that its goal was/is universality, and that it constitutes, or tried to constitute, writing as a codified system. Of these three, overdetermined individuality receives the greatest emphasis in critiques made by post-process, a charge, I would note, undoubtedly more easily made if process is deemed to have no part in the social/cultural turn.
Process scholarship, plentiful and vast, offers the only genuine rebuttal to the critiques of post-process. The following, then, constitutes a brief profile of process scholarship through the early social/cultural turn that contributed to the substantiation of writing process as a domain of knowledge, or a unity of discourse, in our field. Such statements have traditionally focused on (1) the intersection of process with the disciplinarity of rhetoric and composition; (2) the nature of what writing is; (3) the nature of the process that we teach as well as how we teach it; and (4) the actual process students engage to produce writing.
Because post-process has been especially critical of the focus on individuality in process theories, I attempt in this brief process profile to bring some attention to notions of the student-subject, even when these notions are only tacit. We should again be reminded that process theories constituted a response to current-traditional theory that had virtually elided any consideration of the individual. Nevertheless, my primary purpose is to (re)acclimate our sensibility to the historical richness of writing process discourse and to bring into relief those aspects of process against which post-process situates itself.
Process Profile
Among the first to research and advocate the importance of writing in the educational curriculum was Janet Emig. In “Inquiry Paradigms and Writing,” Emig recommends an agenda to which the research of writing should adhere: “inquiries into writing, into composition, probably need to be informed by at least four kinds of theories: 1) a theory of meaning; 2) and if this is different, a theory of language; 3) a theory of learning; and 4) a theory of research,” all of which, she added, “should be consonant or congenial” (165). Certainly, the tacit presence of the student-subject inheres in this excerpt, for it is in relation to the student-subject that meaning, language, and learning matter. It was and is the student-subject, quite as much as the contribution to the constitution of a scholarly field, that renders these questions worthy of inquiry.
In the keynote address given at the Conference on College Composition and Communication Convention in San Francisco in March 1982, Emig offers a blueprint of what she imagines writing pedagogy should accomplish (and tacitly of what it ought to prepare students to be). Arguing that notions of literacy need to change to include writing, her blueprint provides criteria for what any literacy “worth teaching” ought to accomplish. It should provide access, sponsor learning, unleash literal power, and “activate the greatest power of all—the imagination” (“Literacy” 177–78). Emig’s ideal pedagogy would direct what student-subjects might experience. Emig’s 1964 article, “The Uses of the Unconscious in Composing,” which argues that writing is not often accomplished by a rational, conscious, coherent method, also foregrounds the student-subject. Because it involves the unconscious, writing, Emig insists, is messy, and she further advocates that teachers change their curriculum not just to allow this messiness but to encourage it. Situated at the site of the student-subject, then, the unconscious that Emig recommends for consideration constitutes a fuller conception of the student-subject.
In her discussion of qualifying paper for the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1963, Emig reveals an even more explicit consideration of the student-subject. She reports that she chose to focus on the inconsistencies in 19th century authors’ texts regarding the acts that led to writing because she believes that “the teaching of writing was [as] deformed in the past as it is in the present by concentrating on what the teacher does, not on what the student writer is experiencing” (“The Relation” 1). Her starting point for a consideration of what leads to writing is the student, not pedagogy. In “The Origins of Rhetoric: A Developmental View,” Emig adds that she wanted to look at “the origins of rhetoric in the life of an individual rather than in the life of a culture” (55). While we would now contend that the life of an individual is inseparable from the life of a culture, Emig’s stated goal attests to an intention to examine the individual student-subject who learns to write. Of course, there are Emig’s seminal works, The Composing Process of Twelfth-Graders, which focuses on the writing processes of real subjects, real students, and “Writing as a Mode of Learning,” which advocates writing not just as one of many modes of learning but as a unique mode of learning. Significantly, writing as learning is described as “active, engaged, personal—more specifically, self-rhythmed—in nature” (124). This statement also attests to her belief in the primacy the student-subject ought to occupy in any notion of learning and in any notion of writing.
Other scholars call for a synthesis of approaches to writing and for broader conceptions of writing. Janice Lauer speaks to pedagogical issues, James Kinneavy to the nature of writing process, and Sondra Perl to the nature of writing itself. In “Instructional Practices: Toward an Integration,” Lauer argues that the two major pedagogical directions of composition teaching—art and as nurturing natural process—should be integrated, along with the pedagogies of imitation and practice. This integrated approach, she writes, “offers a more stimulating and supportive context in which students can learn to write and write to learn” (3). Lauer argues for a both/and perspective rather than an either/or, a syntheses of approaches that expand the pedagogical horizon. In “The Process of Writing: A Philosophical Base in Hermeneutics,” Kinneavy voices a concern that writing process was often too narrowly conceived, and he calls for a more comprehensive notion of process. He provides theoretical and pedagogical depth by applying Martin Heidegger’s notion of hermeneutics to the notion of writing process. Such a perspective, he suggests, provides a more flexible, recursive, exploratory, and, especially, pluralistic perspective than the “almost monolithic notion floating in the journals that there is a single process underlying all invention, prewriting, writing, and editing stages” (8). Speaking to the complexity of writing and the need for deeper understandings of its process, Perl discusses teachers’ insights into their own composing processes and products, noting one teacher’s conclusion “that at any given moment the process is more complex than anything we are aware of” (“Understanding” 369). Perl maintains that these sorts of insights “show us the fallacy of reducing the composing process to a simple linear scheme and they leave us with the potential for creating even more powerful ways of understanding composing” (369). This call for an examination of actual writers’ insights into their own writing situates the starting point of inquiry with the student-subject, the writer.
Lester Faigley contends that a disciplinarily shared definition of process is needed if a discipline of writing is to ever achieve legitimacy. If writing process were to continue influencing the teaching of writing, he argues, “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” (“Competing” 537). From the expressive perspective, he says, we should study the possibilities that technological changes engender for personal expression. From the cognitive focus on problems, we should study the imbrication of writing process and power; and from the social perspective, we should study how texts serve power as well as the power relations that shut down certain discourses. Faigley’s broad characterization of what writing process ought to be implies a complex notion of the student-subject.
Richard Gebhardt and Charles Kostelnick also discuss the need for broader perspectives, suggesting that early theories to date did not yet approximate the complexity of writing process. Gebhardt notes that “the