Erratic Pulse

For centuries written communication in Western culture has been predicated on a transmission model. This model conceives of the writer as an encoder of information which is sent through a text, or "signal," to a reader who decodes the information. The transaction occurs in a space that has been described as, simply enough, "reality."

In 1969, composition theorist James Kinneavy offered the discipline known popularly as "English" a visual image of this model, a triangle, which was adopted by writing teachers as a heuristic for teaching students about the writing process. While helpful in many ways, Kinneavy’s triangle implies that written communication is a closed system in which meaning is produced and conveyed within the narrow confines of writer, reader, and reality with the text functioning as transactional conduit. It’s a humanist heurisitic in which the writer is conceived as acting upon the world while not being acted upon by the world outside of the static poles of the triangle. Yet, this heuristic has been reified to the point of being a Platonic form, a model upon which other models are based.

Enter Byron Hawk with a new paradigm for composition, complex vitalism, which does not lend itself to such a clean, linear representation of writing and communication. In A Counter-History of Composition: Toward Methodologies of Complexity, Hawk sets forth an argument for conceiving of the production of meaning and knowledge as a process which cannot be contained within the confines of a geometrical design. It ebbs and flows and is ceaselessly changing — always emerging in new articulations, new forms, new expressions that result from forces beyond the individual communicator. These new forms and expressions become old as soon they emerge. The key for writers and communicators is to seize the moment, work from that moment, and then be prepared for the next emergence.

Previous paradigms conceived of knowledge as being either objective or subjective; the resulting conflict between these two epistemologies perpetuated already-existing binaries that manifested themselves in dialectical approaches to method and invention. Complex Vitalism has moved beyond models based on binaries. Knowledge of the world is conceived as relational and dynamic and ever-changing; knowledge and the world act upon humans as humans act upon it. This posthumanist paradigm conceives of human subjects as parts of life rather than central actors in determining the meaning of life and directing its processes.

Our notions of writing are basically blown to bits when Complex Vitalism is constructed as a pedagogy for composition and rhetoric, primarily because so many of them are based on reified conceptions about what constitutes effective (and ineffective) writing/communication and are supported by practices that are institutionally sanctioned and theoretically justified. Even “new” paradigms appropriate some of these reified notions, as Hawk’s critique of Thomas Kent’s Post-Process Theory: Beyond the Writing Process Paradigm points out: “[M]ost of the work in the collection seems to focus (explicitly and implicitly) on dialectics and the communications triangle, missing much of the complexity involved in the movements of a distributed vitality” (193). For reasons similar to that expressed by this example, Hawk supports moving beyond these models and cites Marilyn Cooper's call (from Dobrin and Weisser) to replace them with ecological ones that postulate “dynamic interlocking systems that structure the social activity of writing” (qtd 223). In short, we need to stop thinking about writing as a static, solitary practice and begin to see it as just another of life’s ecological processes.

Putting these methodologies to work in the classroom

If I were to adopt a pedagogy informed by complex vitalism, I’d be a very different teacher than I am now. I would tell my students on that first day that classrooms are places where knowledge is produced, not prescribed. Operating in the spirit of Kameen, I would present myself as a person with a history that includes certain knowledges — knowledges I’d be happy to share with them throughout the course. I’d tell them my take on knowledge, informed as it would be by Hawk’s text: that it is changeable and dynamic (examples from history could be used to express this), that it’s not something “out there” (as it is for current traditionalists) or “in here” (as it is for expressivists) and, in fact, isn’t really any thing at all.

My class prep process would change. I wouldn’t “plan” certain readings for certain dates for certain purposes, as I now do. In fact, I wouldn’t even have a list of assigned readings. I’d try to operate according to the principle of kairos, introducing texts and other material at opportune moments, probably in response to issues touched on in class — and I’d ask my students to do the same thing, encouraging them to bring in something (or share something verbally) that relates to an idea or issue brought up in class no matter how indirect the relationship may be. If a student would like to map out the relationship in some way, fine; but I wouldn’t expect that — allowing instead for a moment of quiet reflection and contemplation before moving onto other things . It isn’t up to me or that particular student to point out the relationship. I’d leave it up to the other students to draw their own connections within the field that Hawk calls a “constellation of relations” — in short, constructing/conducting their own knowledge—about the text or material presented kairotically.

As you can see, I would create a space in the classroom for silence for the purpose of listening and reflection. I was very much impacted by the section from Chapter 6 called “Listening Over Dialogue” for a number of reasons. Hawk’s paraphrase of part of Kameen’s Writing/Teaching — “[f]or reflexive thinking to occur, the students (and teachers) need to focus on listening to others rather than jumping self-centeredly to their own positions” p. 230) — gave me reason to re-evaluate the role of silence in classrooms; and what’s more, Toby Fulwiler’s note (in his review of Writing/Teaching) regarding the nonverbal support silent persons provide discussions made me feel as if my silence was not a deficit but a positive contribution to the class. (240)

I once read (I think in a Joseph Campbell book) how some Native American cultures allowed for long silences in their conversations and storytelling; this was contrasted with Western modes of oral communication that expect every silent space to be filled in with words. I remember being intrigued by the role silence—listening, reflecting—had in these cultures but never took the step of transporting it into pedagogy—until now. When Hawk writes that “listening is a basic rhetorical and ecological reality” (232), I get it. Although I do not require students to participate in classroom discussions (unlike some instructors of Revisions who allot a significant number of points to what they call “social practice”), I will never, after having read this book, change my mind and add participation to my course requirements.

In his conception of the posthuman subject in terms of complexity theory, Thomas Rickert offers ambience as something that “connotes distribution, co-adaptation, and emergence, but it adds an emphasis to the constitutive role of the overall environment.” (qtd 177). Hawk notes that Rickert is integrating the “network logic of complexity with the ambient logic of Heidegger, which signals a move . . . to distributed vitality.”

Now, how can I bring this network logic of complexity to my students? Most simply, by telling them about it, describing a situation similar to what I just described. I could do it by drawing their attention to conditions of the classroom at a specific time—its temperature, its light, its arrangement of desks, and how all these things play some indirect role on our knowledge-producing activities. I could do it by innovative assignments that ask them to compose — either in writing or orally, using a handheld recorder — in different environments at different times. I could ask a student who wants to write a paper on, say, law or the legal system to sit for half an hour in, say, a college cafeteria and observe five random people and five material things and note how each are in some way influenced by (or influence) laws; I’d ask the student to consider as well how his or her behavior is shaped by laws or legal expectations encoded in that specific location. By situating his or her body and ideas within an ecological context, this student may gain a broader perspective of “law,” specifically how things outside of the academic purview of “law” reflect or relate to it. Such a mapping of constellations follows a method of invention based in part on co-responsibility, kairos, emergence, and ambience described by Louise Wetherbee Phelps (206).

There is still so much more to think about. This text introduced me not only to a number of concepts expressed in various ways by terminology I’ve not used as part of my daily life. It's a challenging book but one that is bound to impact, in some way, how I live and teach.