College English - Volume 64, Issue 1, 2001

Hindman introduces the articles in this special focus on personal writing. In these articles, the authors strive to clarify what is meant by “the personal” and “personal writing,” and to suggest criteria for measuring the effectiveness of personal writing.

This symposium presents a written dialogue of scholars expressing not only excitement but also frustration over the ways in which current work in composition and literacy studies has explored the politics of the personal.

Opponents of expressivist writing pedagogy claim that encouraging the personal narrative in first-year rhetoric classis is a great disservice to students. Supporters of personal writing responded by making personal writing activities supplemental to traditional academic writings. Spigelman posits that personal narratives can actually serve the same purpose as academic writing and can accomplish serious scholarly work.

In three voices - one as a scholar, one as a writer, and one as an alcoholic - Hindman considers the question: in what ways can our own personal writing illuminate the theory and practice of teaching composition? Demonstrating the process of composing the self within the professional, she responds both passionately and personally to literary criticisms about recovery discourse. Her purpose is to “make writing matter” and, in doing so, to attempt to dispel the tension between competing versions of how the self is constructed. She also considers how, in and for recovery, she learned to write, and how it has affected her professional writing. This type of writing, which she has called “embodied rhetoric,” offers lessons for composing a better life.

Teaching, like politics, can be considered to be the “art of repetition.” But teaching, again like politics, is also capable of enlarging our political views by challenging current arguments or by examining the limitations of the argument. The four books reviews here, which examine race, culture, and sexuality, are poised to inform the politics of their readers, but find themselves bound by the problem of political mantras. Says Stockton: “Never have so few propositions been repeated by so many in such a shore time over such a broad range.” Although not without merit, all four books struggle with politicized texts that have all been done before.