Finitude’s Clamor: Or, Notes toward a Communitarian Literacy

To the extent that rhetoric and writing studies bases its theories and pedagogies on the self-present composing subject—the figure of the writer who exists apart from the writing context, from the “world,” from others—it is anti-communitarian. Communication can take place only among beings who are given over to the “outside,” exposed, open to the other’s effraction. This essay therefore calls for the elaboration of a “communitarian” literacy that understands reading and writing as functions of this originary sociality, as expositions not of who one is (identity) but of the fact that “we” are (community).