JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory, Volume 16, Number 2, 1996 Page: 225

                                
In the Margins: An Exploration of
Boundaries in a Student/Teacher
Response Dialogue
DAWN K. DREYER
Idiscover that your skin can be lifted off layer by layer, Ipull it off, it lifts off,
coils above your knees, Ipull ...      Monique Wittig, The Lesbian Body
I was ashamed. I was afraid, and I swallowed my shame and my fear. I said to
myself: You are mad! What is the meaning of these waves, these floods, these
outbursts? Where is the ebullient, infinite woman who, immersed as she was in
her naivete, kept in the dark about herself, led into self-disdain by the great arm
of parental-conjugal phallocentrism, who hasn't been ashamed of her strength?
Who, surprised and horrified by the fantastic tumult of her drives (for she was
made to believe that a well-adjusted normal woman has a ... divine compo-
sure), hasn't accused herself of being a monster?
Hl kne Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa"
This is a piece of writing about layers, concerned with excess. Excess of
voices, excess of selves-it is a piece of writing concerned with the way language
contains excess. I realize through reading Angela's writing, through reading
my writing-looking at the lines and pages that have been cut, discarded-that
there are so many voices that must be excluded from this essay.
I get up, and go to my closet. Istare at my jeans-the thin jeans, the ok-average-dayjeans,
the fat jeans. It seems like each time Isit down to write, Ido this. At some point in the
writingprocess, Istep out ofthe loose cotton shorts Iwear around the house, andpull on
my jeans.
Thinking about my audience for this essay-a journal, an academic jour-
nal-I make choices in my writing. At first, each choice seems to involve a
violence, an abandonment, a marginalization of the least authoritative voices,
the whispers, the voices which seem too monstrous, threatening to break the
surface, to contaminate, to take over.
In my students' writing, it is these "other" voices which excite me. Perhaps
it is because in my development as a writer, it has been through exploring my
"other" voices that I have found the authority to negotiate a writing self within