Journal of Advanced Composition, Volume 11, Number 1, Winter 1991 Page: 45
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Interrupting the Conversation 45
to "keep the conversation going rather than to find objective truth" (Philoso-
phy 377). In Rorty's ideal system, the paradigm would be dialectically
challenged and undermined, never allowed to wallow in stultifying, "normal"
discourse.
It is at this point that the strain of juggling the concerns of social
construction with those of education are most apparent. Perhaps in an effort
to make Rorty's perspective more operational, social constructionists in
composition talk about "the conversation" (bywhich Rorty invites abnormal
discourses to engage normal discourse in perpetual "edification"), while at
the same time suggesting a more normative, systematic approach to
knowledge-that based on the consensus of the discourse community. This
seems logical; if social constructivists are to direct the teaching of rhetoric
and composition toward any end, they cannot have students running about
discoursing abnormally. As a correlate, educators have to assume they have
some more or less stable knowledge worth imparting to students, knowledge
that can be assimilated and used until it is tested and perhaps abandoned.
Thomas Kent underscores the tension the hermeneutic stance causes for
constructionist teachers of composition when he notes that Davidson's and
Derrida's "analyses of discourse suggest that (a) both writing and reading
require hermeneuticskills that refute codification, and, therefore (b) neither
writing nor reading can be taught as a systematic process" (25). For this
reason, social constructionists in composition seem to make strange bedfel-
lows with less-constrained, edifying philosophers who do not face similar
occupational hazards. Put another way (and not too glibly, I hope), the
educable unit that educators deal with is the individual student: we do not
teach bodies of consensus-builders; we can only teach their members. The
dialogue's pervasive preoccupation with consensus, it might be argued, is at
odds with the teacherly focus on individual interpretation and agency to
which it also subscribes.
Distinguishing among Knowledges
Premise 3: Consensus/knowledge is "discovered" solely through public dis-
course (rhetoric).
A key, perhaps the key, argument in the dialogue's constructivist theory
of knowledge rests upon the presumption that all reality is mediated through
language. As I noted earlier, such a premise is central to discussions of
rhetoric-as-epistemic and makes it easy to understand social construction's
appeal to those of us whose job it is to teach language skills. Critiques of
premise 3 can be leveled from at least two slightly different perspectives.
Many writers in speech communications as well as the cognitive sciences
maintain that emphasis on the discourse within the social environment as the
generator of knowledge ignores the ways in which the human brain "pro-
duces" ideas and perceptions. Other critics fault premise 3 for ignoring the
non-social aspects of the "self." Both groups, basically, are making the case
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Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition (U.S.). Journal of Advanced Composition, Volume 11, Number 1, Winter 1991, periodical, 1991; (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc28604/m1/51/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .