Postmodern cultural studies and the politics of writing instruction

Bruce McComiskey, Purdue University

Abstract

Postmodern critical cultural studies writing instruction empowers students to transform and participate in democratic power formations. Students in postmodern critical cultural studies composition classes learn to critique politicized representations from a variety of (often marginalized) subject positions, compose politicized representations from a variety of (often empowering) subject positions, and experience localized narrative and structural modes of legitimation established by various institutions and enforced on a variety of texts. Postmodernism is a critical perspective that presupposes a world in which fractured subjectivities, occupying varied and often contradictory positions in social formations and power hierarchies, represent their worlds politically through language, and these subjectivities' discourses are legitimated or rejected according to localized (particular socio-cultural) rhetorical norms. Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary blend of critical strategies for examining everyday social practices as they occur within specific economic and political contexts; its practitioners seek to understand how social groups and institutions produce culture (through politicized representations), consume culture (from multiple and contradictory subject positions), and distribute the culture they produce (according to socially constructed localized modes of legitimation). Postmodern critical cultural studies writing instruction prepares students to establish democratic social organizations using a postmodern critical perspective. Students in these writing classes critique representations generated by particular discourse communities and the powerless subjectivities they construct; and students compose their own representations (constructing empowered subjectivities through rhetorical practices) for consumption by target discourse communities in the attempt to create more egalitarian social formations.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Lauer, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Language|Language arts

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