Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and the Subject of Composition

Author:   Lester Faigley
Publisher:   University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN:  

9780822954927


Pages:   304
Publication Date:   28 February 1993
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Out of stock   Availability explained
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

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Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and the Subject of Composition


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Overview

"An assessment of the study and teaching of writing against the larger theoretical, political and technological upheavals of the past 30 years, """"Fragments of Rationality"""" asks why composition studies has been less affected by postmodern theory than other humanities and social science disciplines. For Lester Faigley, the very conservativism of composition teaching - which has resisted the challenges of postmodern thought - makes it a revealing object of study. Composition at first seemed ready to accommodate postmodern ideas, but by the late 1980s, writing teachers were beginning to question many of the traditional presumptions underlying their approach to the task. This crisis in theory has come just as the tenacious back-to-basics movement, a heightened emphasis on education for economic productivity, cuts in funding for public education, and the increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots in US society have forced teachers to consider the role of literacy instruction in reproducing social inequality. Drawing on the insights of Foucault, Lyotard and other postmodern analysts, Faigley addresses the theoretical debate about the """"self"""" the student writer is asked to occupy, the """"modernist"""" goal of producing a rational, coherent student subject, and the writing instructor's unconscious imposition of elite values and expectations in evaluating student work. He explores how networked computer technologies in writing classrooms are destabilising texts and subjects, and he asks what this loss of authority will mean for teachers of literacy. Faigley concludes by arguing that the electronically mediated culture in which we live has not brought an end to meaning, history, or subjectivity, but it does require thinking through the politics of location. In postmodern theory he finds ways of describing how subjects encounter boundaries in negotiating across competing discourses, and how awareness of those boundaries can be introduced into classroom practice."

Full Product Details

Author:   Lester Faigley
Publisher:   University of Pittsburgh Press
Imprint:   University of Pittsburgh Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.408kg
ISBN:  

9780822954927


ISBN 10:   0822954923
Pages:   304
Publication Date:   28 February 1993
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   No Longer Our Product
Availability:   Out of stock   Availability explained
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

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Very much like reading Foucault at his clearest and most convincing. This book is written with real authority, and it makes sense in all sorts of ways. <br> --James Slevin, Georgetown University


Very much like reading Foucault at his clearest and most convincing. This book is written with real authority, and it makes sense in all sorts of ways. <br> --James Slevin, Georgetown University


Very much like reading Foucault at his clearest and most convincing. This book is written with real authority, and it makes sense in all sorts of ways. --James Slevin, Georgetown University


"Very much like reading Foucault at his clearest and most convincing. This book is written with real authority, and it makes sense in all sorts of ways.-- ""James Slevin, Georgetown University"" ""Very much like reading Foucault at his clearest and most convincing. This book is written with real authority, and it makes sense in all sorts of ways."" --James Slevin, Georgetown University A well written and important book, as relevant to the field of professional communication as to the broader field of composition.-- ""Technical Communication Quarterly"""


Author Information

Lester Faigley is Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas.

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