aggressive acts

There is a curious line that caught my attention in one of the supplemental readings, David Bartholomae’s “Inventing the University.” On page 595, Bartholomae states that writing “is an act of aggression disguised as an act of charity.” I’ve never thought of writing in quite this manner. Sure, there can be writing that is aggressive, but can’t there also be charitable writing, or political writing, or romantic writing, or whatever? Doesn’t the author determine the function of a particular piece of writing? To make a blanket statement relegating all written communication to an act of aggression is an idea I couldn’t quite get my head around.

But then I thought of Bartholomae’s words in “Writing With Teachers:” “there is no writing without teachers.” So, drawing from this, if all writing is an act of aggression, then all writing instruction is instruction in aggression. Or, maybe, writing instruction is an inherently aggressive act. This idea, somewhat repellant to me as an English teacher who often looks at literacy instruction as liberation, made more sense upon reading Mina Shaughnessy’s “Diving In: An Introduction to Basic Writing.” Her point that academic writing is an elite, exclusionary discourse fits well with Bartholomae’s concept as writing as aggression. How much writing instruction is actually a chance for the teacher to point out the deficiencies in his or her students’ writing. To show, as Shaughnessy puts it, “what is wrong with students.”

It made me think about my own writing classes. How often have I made a student’s paper “bleed ink,” as Joyce so memorably put it, thinking that I was doing that student a favor? It would be very easy for this student to consider my interventions, as benevolent as they seemed to me, as aggressive and demeaning. This, it doesn’t need to be said, is the least of my goals as a writing instructor. Shaughnessy’s call to for the teacher to critically examine the hidden implications and power structures of writing instruction is essential.

Make prose, not war.