Working Article: Consensus

Hi Everyone, I'm posting what I think is the start of an article about consensus process in the composition classroom. I'm undertaking a major revision of a thesis chapter in the hopes that I can get it published as an article somewhere. Any and all feedback would be helpful. Here, I'm wondering if my distinction between the two forms of consensus is clear enough and if I've hit the right tone.

In what is popularly coined the “Battle of Seattle,” a consensus-driven direct-action movement blocked the Washington Consensus of neoliberal trade policies. While the corporate and government authorities in the WTO attempted to write trade policy that would affect economic conditions worldwide, the bodies of a global multitude clung together across Seattle’s city blocks, resisting tear gas and pepper spray, singing “this is what democracy looks like.” On one side the Washington Consensus, on the other side, grassroots consensus. No event better demonstrates the tension between signifier and signified for this critical term.

While the Washington Consensus operated through top-down, manipulative ideological consensus, the opposing movement operated on what David Graeber (formerly Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Yale) cites as the “apparent miracle of consensus decision making in which one can see thousands of people coordinate their actions without any formal leadership structure” (4). The Washington Consensus was an over-reaching ideology; the consensus-driven oppositional movement was a specific, local action. While the Washington Consensus attempted to repress dissent, the consensus process of the opposition found a way to agree on an action while maintaining ideological differences.

Considering this apparent conflict over the definition of consensus, it is no wonder Raymond Williams calls the term “now a very difficult word to use” (77). Ranging in definition from a “positive sense of seeking general agreement” to a “’manipulative’ kind of politics seeking to build a ‘silent majority’ as the power-base from which dissenting movements or ideas can be excluded,” consensus has two strikingly different signifieds (77-78). So contentious is our conflict in definition that a powerful ideological global consensus can line up against a consensus-driven grassroots movement on any city block worldwide.

Discussions of consensus in composition studies have, likewise, balanced conflicting connotations, processes, and outcomes, mainly in debates about collaborative learning ushered in by social construction theory. Responding to these debates from the mid to late eighties, John Trimbur states that “the notion of consensus is one of the most controversial and misunderstood aspects of collaborative learning” (602). The two competing connotations of consensus and the goal of these debates are made clear by Trimbur: “To develop a critical version of collaborative learning, we will need to distinguish between consensus as an acculturative practice that reproduces business as usual and consensus as an oppositional one that challenges the prevailing conditions of production” (612). Which line of definition has consensus fell on in composition studies? And what can the global justice movement and its history and practice of consensus decision making teach us about student agency and consensus process in the composition classroom?

Cornel Rocking

Composition and Cornel West

I just finished the text and am floating on a Brother West high.

The interview at the end is outstanding, and I know I'll be on a West kick from it for the rest of the summer. I'm looking at his memoir, Democracy and Race Matters, Prophesy Deliverance!, and Evasion of American Philosophy as texts that I will at least check out, if not read in full. Democracy Matters and Evasion seem like they have the most to say to my work and I want to know more about how West does what he does everyday, and I think that means reading his memoir.

As far as the text goes, I like the fuel that interview gives to the work done in a composition classroom. Coming into the text, that's what I wanted. I want some texts and motivation and philosophy when I step in the class on Monday mornings. The first three chapters and the interview did that for me. Chapters four and five I wanted to be closer to West's ideas and closer to the composition classroom, although they were interesting in their own right.

Did any body find it interesting how West danced around the notion of rhetoric in the interview? It seemed like Gilyard wanted him to speak directly about the traditions of rhetoric and how they affect him, but West has a much broader view, speaking about voice and embodiment, talking about where words are lacking, and talking about the "cerebral song" of academia with its lack of soul (105). West was a fish that couldn't be caught in Gilyrad's net of rhetoric, and they moved on to talk about the classroom where there was much more agreement and excitement.

Teaching here at LMU, high on a bluff over LA and with Hollywood in sight, I was hit hard by what West says with school as this "manicured, deodorized place" that doesn't engage with the world or connect with the tragic (at least in most instances) (109).

West says that deep education has "everything to do with awakening" and that happens through acknowledging the tragic, absurd, and mysterious, and feeling them: "They [students] are part of a whole larger system, too. But that's going to be painful. And the only way that pain is real is when people feel as if those claims are tied to them" (111).

This reminded me of a student coming to class and saying that he and a group of friends at dinner had realized that there was life outside of LMU. They had forgotten in their first semester in college that life existed elsewhere. There was so much to do and think here that they hadn't read the news, or thought of life beyond the bluff. Here, at LMU, the admin privledges social justice and the education of the whole human, but that obviously isn't ingrained or my student wouldn't have come to class this way with all the students agreeing with him.

This made me think of the one moment this year when I really saw LMU engaging with the tragic, and that was in the 20th anniversary of the Jesuit martyrs (november 16, 1989). They dyed the fountain red to represent their blood and they made crosses for each of the martyrs and put those on campus. This felt like a real connection to the tragedy in history and it tied into the United States military empire attacking the Jesuit tradition, and so I think that many students felt it in a real way and they became critical about the history, awakened to the structural violence in our society, and through protests, prayer, and vigils here and at the SOA protest, they acted on new possibilities for the future.

Now, the question always for me is: how do I tie this into the classroom? How do I get students into this critique and into possibilities beyond market ideals?, and how do I do that while justifying my practice to all the stakeholders involved? And, when and if I do this, is it enough? How do I know that that practice in the classroom has importance and relevance once those students hit the streets and life outside the university, down away from the bluff?

Position Statements- SRTOL

I like your idea of posting that resolution on community literacy up, AJ. We can reference that as we move through texts and use it in our teaching practice to guide what we do. In the same spirit, I thought I'd throw up the 1972 resolution of Students Rights to Their Own Language (which was amended in '74 to read like the following):

We affirm the students' right to their own patterns and varieties of language -- the dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their own identity and style. Language scholars long ago denied that the myth of a standard American dialect has any validity. The claim that any one dialect is unacceptable amounts to an attempt of one social group to exert its dominance over another. Such a claim leads to false advice for speakers and writers, and immoral advice for humans. A nation proud of its diverse heritage and its cultural and racial variety will preserve its heritage of dialects. We affirm strongly that teachers must have the experiences and training that will enable them to respect diversity and uphold the right of students to their own language.

Since this was controversial, they published the linguistic and cultural justifications and have that up for reading as well, with an updated bibliography.

I've been reading Parks's book about the SRTOL. While he argues that the truly radical language and history of the resolution were cut out, this statement still looks progressive today, and I don't think we do nearly enough to make this part of our classroom practice (as Parks mentions too).

CCC position statement

I was just navigating the CCC web site a little bit and came across the section containing the position statements. There is something undeniably encouraging, and inspiring, about being part of an academic field that sees the importance of explicitly laying out a position on the value and importance of community service work as scholarship. I cannot envision this existing in another discipline within the humanities. Here are the four reasons why "community-based literacy work should be valued and rewarded as institutional service by universities, colleges:"

1. Enriching the literacy environment of a region contributes to the welfare of all, including higher-ed institutions well positioned to take a leadership role on these matters.
2. Postsecondary students, instructors, and institutions can benefit from the curricular innovations developed by working with learners of all types. Innovations with one population can contribute to improvements with other types of learners.
3. Productive partnerships with non-academic organizations promote the reputation and stature of post-secondary institutions with local communities, business partners, and others interested in student learning.
4. College/community partnerships provide opportunities for students at various levels to meet, interact, and learn.

Very cool. I'm interested to see how these ideas are expressed, performed, explored in actual composition programs.