Ethan Shapiro

Craig
ENGL 310
Embodiment Power

New Perspectives Harriss idea of community Lunsfords idea of Self, based

Theorists have been glorifying from Anzalduas writings on the

the idea of community topic. Anzaldua talks about how

(embodiment) by using broad the traditional frame of writing is

and vague generalizations. This in a white males voice, and not

sweeping over the intricacies of a female, Marxist, Latina, etc.

of groups has lead there to be no Anzalduas idea of identity is that

operating rules or boundaries one shifts through all sub-

for set communities. identities as they write depending

on who they are writing for and

what they are writing about.

Existing Theory Discourse Bartholomae bases Expressivism F&H - is a theory

his whole Inventing the of writing that involves letting

University on the idea that there the students write for themselves,

is this academic community and of themselves, and by

the student community that is themselves. It thrusts the power

trying to write in the language of of writing into the student and

the academics. Students must act not in the system of education or

or come up with their own ways teacher. The focus is mainly on

of understanding the set the Students voice and not a

community collective group or identity.

 Complication The complication stems from The complication comes from

Harriss position that these the focus that Lunsford and

communities are too vague and Anzualda put on the groups or

overarching while also being identities that they share with

completely useless or others and how they are writing

uninteresting for students to want for more than themselves every

to write in. time they write.

Implication One The main implication here is that The first and biggest implication

there is no conflict or talk of is that writing is not always

change in the discourse about the individual and is not

community and this results in always a one-man operation.

stagnation of writing theory. Writing is bigger than the

individual.
Implication Two The second implication is that The second implication is that

individuals and communities one can pick and choose which

both need attention when writing communities to write for at any

and it not solely a black and given time, despite always

white picture. belonging to many.

Exigencies

Out with the Old:

The Ongoing Evolution of Writing
The most obvious relationship between these new perspectives and the old is that, well,
they are new. They are building off what came before them. You would not have Harriss
communities without Bartholomaes Inventing the University. You would not have Lunsfords
(and Anzalduas) Mestiza rhetoric without Flower and Hayess Expressivism before it. These
earlier theories paved the way for further discourse on their topics and thus emerged the new
wave of theories.
Before going into the present, it is important to note that Flower and Hayes built off the
theories that came before them. The ideas of power in writing did not emerge out of nowhere.
Writing discourse used to center around exigence, audience, and constraints, and before that it
was all about how individual authors worked, and before that how to properly draw animals on
the walls of caves.
Flowers and Hayes put the power in the individual student and because of that they
progressed writing into a much more open area. Students were not held back by the strict,
regimented processes of writing before them. They could have their own thoughts, ideas, and
theories developed. Expressivism was all about how the students would find their own voice and
use that when writing.
Anzaldua has many voices. She has her lesbian voice, her Marxist voice, her human
voice, any voice that one could try and attribute themselves to. Lunsford and Anzaldua push the
idea of individualism past itself and into a combined group of individuals. Basing their main idea
of the flow of identity on the fact that overarching writing discourse was done in the voice of
a white male, Anzaldua lays out how people of other identities use different voices to speak for
the community that identifies as such.
Anzaldua asks herself what voice, tone, am I going to take? (Lunsford 11). Instead of
every individual having their own individual voice, they now have the responsibility of carrying
the voice of their communities. Anzaldua states that if I cant find a voice, a style, a point of
view, then nothing can get written, (Lunsford 11). By attributing these constraints onto her
writing, she is purposefully expanding the reach of her voice beyond just her own mind. Between
every single community you belong to, Anzaldua says, you must constantly find a voice to
project your writing.
After Flowers and Hayess struggle for the individual voice to be heard, Anzaldua pushes
that aside and says listen up, youre not just an individual, but many. No matter how hard
someone wants, they cannot separate themselves from their encompassing identities or
communities. This means that the power is not solely within the individual, but within every
group that has individuals speaking for them. Anzaldua brings up a house she was collaborating
on. She talks about how a second story house is impinging on your neighbors because now your
windows are higher up and can view and be viewed by the. Per Anzaldua, this extends into
writing.
Whenever a writer is attempting at discourse they should consider who they represent,
says Anzaldua. Decide which voices to bring to the forefront, and which to let lie. Writing is no
longer an individual practice, but a communal one involving the hearts and minds of anyone
within any community that the writer belongs to. It is important to look back on Flowers and
Hayes and see that they believe that, Writers create their own goals (JSTOR Flowers 366). Per
Anzaldua that no longer applies. Reaching into Harriss thoughts one learns that his contempt
with the idea of writing communities lies in the fact that these goals are uncharted.
Harris begins his essay by stating my admiration for the theorists David Bartholomae
and Patricia Bizzell, (JSTOR Harris 12). Bartholomae who came before him identified the idea
of embodiment in the sense that he believed students were unable to identify within the academic
field just yet. Bartholomae strongly argues that instead of actually identifying with, and
belonging to, the community that is being written for, students must pretend, act, or create the
university.
Bartholomae talks about the privileged academic writers versus the limited writing of the
students. Because of their lack of language, students are unable to write in regards to what is
being asked of them. Now this idea of discourse opens up the ideas of wider communities that
different writers belong to and how different languages are used by different communities in
their writing. Bartholomae expands upon the individuals embodiment and sorts them into the
discourse that they are writing for.
Harris himself admires Bartholomae and what he was attempting to do. The contention
between where Harris and Bartholomae depart from one another is that Harris believes there is
no set guidelines for this so-called community. The tendency for sweeping generalizations and
vague demarcations between groups is what causes Harris to pull back from the idea that
community is a guiding factor in writing, and instead, argues that one should try to teach writing
in more than the sense of an academic community versus the students community.
Harris argues that it is not a black and white situation and he bases this off the fact that
even though teachers are writing in their supposed academic discourse, their discourse will
always be affected by a host of beliefs and values that we hold regardless of our role as
academics, (JSTOR Harris 19).
In going against the traditional this or that mindset, Harris opens the writing community
to the idea that maybe there is more than individualism, and maybe there is more than academia.
It is not one or the other, but a host of overlapping mentalities that cause an intersectionality
among writers. He states that our students are no more wholly outside the discourse of the
university than we are wholly within it, (JSTOR Harris 19).
Bartholomae was strict in his ideas concerning students lack of ability to write in their
discourse of academia. By laying out this foundational preconception of students inabilities,
Bartholomae equipped the writing community with the terminology and theories that it needed to
grow from to progress. Part of Bartholomaes theory is that one will not be able to fully
understand a discourse at first, but after spending time with it and growing in knowledge of
terms and ideas one will be able to find solid footing and discuss with the best.
The same can be said for a wider window. Instead of looking just at discourse itself with
its individual terms and ideas, one can look at theories of writing broader discourse. This
embodiment is something that can be expanded and expanded to larger and more generalized
groups, but on the inverse, it is something that goes as small and exclusive to the individual
person. Harris touches on this in his work and it is something that will be expanded further in the
future.
Each individual person on this planet, the few who are off this planet, has their own
unique discourse. Something that is only explainable and effective within themselves. Each mind
is its own community of one, and each thought is its own portion of discourse. As humans, we
are social animals, and because of this we flock together. Despite everything we will do to
associate with bigger and wider groups, we will always have the power and embodiment of just
ourselves.
To quote Harris, the sense of like-mindedness and warmth that make community at once
such an appealing and limiting concept, (JSTOR Harris 20). Harris wanted to keep the idea of
community to very small, localized groups rather than being something that could be huge, and
all encompassing.
As a writer, and a future teacher, I believe that community is both big and small. I am a
community of one and seven billion. We all belong to different groups, factions, communities,
they all boil down to one individual unit the writer. We are all writers of our own discourse and
we will all create our own theories our own terminology. There is nothing as wholly concrete
about the theory of writing beside the fact that words will be written and those words represent
meaning. As teachers, it is our job to find the meaning that works. It is our job to convey that
meaning to our students who will not possess the same skillset as us. Students who will not
belong to the same communities as us. Students who do not know the university. It is forever
important to not forget where we came from. Build off the past and work on improving for the
future. Progress in the writing community might start from a sermon of academia, but it echoes
all the way down to the individual.
Questions of where the power lies in writing depends on what level of discourse the
writing is being aimed. When speaking of communities like Marxists one would say that Engels
and Marxs manifesto speaks for the community. When speaking about a persons private diary
the power lies directly within that person. Writing is not like mathematics in that there tends to
be one solid answer for every possible exigence. There are an infinite number of ways to
approach any subject and depending on all the varying factors we might end up at one end of a
spectrum or another. Like chess, writing involves thinking from the perspective of those viewing
the moves you make, and trying to counter the moves they would issue before you have even
made yours. Unlike Chess, the winner is subjective. There is no checkmate in discourse,
although many would love to believe there is, and the game goes on forever. A perfect theory
will never exist and that is a theory that I firmly believe.

Works Cited
Bartholomae, David. "Inventing the University." Writing on the Margins (2005): 60-85. Web.
Flower, Linda, and John R. Hayes. A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing. College
Composition and Communication, vol. 32, no. 4, 1981, pp. 365387.,
www.jstor.org/stable/356600.
Harris, Joseph. The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing. College Composition and
Communication, vol. 40, no. 1, 1989, pp. 1122., www.jstor.org/stable/358177.
Lunsford, Andrea A. Toward a Mestiza Rhetoric: Gloria Anzalda on Composition and
Postcoloniality. JAC, vol. 18, no. 1, 1998, pp. 127., www.jstor.org/stable/20866168.