Teaching Tech Writing: Week 14
On Theory, Practice, and Method. Patricia Sullivan and James E. Porter.
So, the different conceptual categories for "types of academic work" - theory, practice, and methodology - do their own work, according to S & P, in legitimizing the claims specific to the work ("Our position is that the concepts 'theory,' 'practice,' and 'methodology' as used in professional writing represent different types of socially constructed warrants" (301)). The authors' position suggests that genres (and method), broadly applied, are not merely descriptive of types of professional writing. The work does not simply fit into one of these categories, the data or supporting claims found within becoming self-sufficient and establishing a "closed" argument: the categories themselves become part of the work, establishing a warrant by descriptive fiat. "Because this work displays the markings of genre x," establishes the categorical description, "it is best served by genre x." The power of this operation erases the presence of the category of work itself, removing it from considerations of feasibility.
The authors wish to see conceptions of type become more "dynamic and negotiable." A binary between theory/practice invalidates the suggestion of their combination; therefore, the authors move toward a "notion" of praxis, founded on an openness in practice. I think we here in the English department understand the ramifications of the theory/practice split as well as anybody else. And I think we understand the importance of establishing conciliatory terms between the two; we're no longer able to run the business like it's 1979. Yet we still tend to split concerns, if not on a day-by-day basis as the authors suggest happens in the professional writing classroom, but spread over the coursework. There is the theory class, and the methods class. There is the Foucault day, and then there is the annotated bibliography day. The problem occurs after: when, having proved ourselves in coursework, we begin applying theory - the institutional imperative to see a variety of theory as the only likely approach tends to place student writing within the bounds of the theoretical. Maybe because it's easier, in a way -
But that, of course, ignores the pervasive reach of theory into every corner of our practice. Everyone, after all, theorizes a reading, or the act of reading - there's no reading outside of theory. It's like a paradox from a Rush song! "You may choose to integrate a pathology of the subject into a fully realized materialist critique of cultural capital/If you choose not to problematize the recursive nature of hypertext reading practices, you still have made a choice!" ZING
But what is a fully situated reading? - one in which we understand not only the theoretical, asynchronous forces at work, but also the place in which we do the work, our timely surroundings. This is the observational power of the practice outlook - the question is how to combine the twin understandings into what the authors call "praxis." Prudential action is of course the understanding between subject and structures of power - how do act in the best interests of society? and all that - and expresses itself in the writing context that authors envision by being open to the suggestive influence of theory or practice while in the methodological throes of practice or theory. Seeing the forest for the trees, as it were, but still being able to refer to close-ups of the bark.
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