Mathieu

Mathieu, Paula. Tactics of Hope: The Public Turn in English Composition. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook and Heinemann, 2005.

Matthieu defines street (her preferred term in lieu of community, worksite, etc.) as places off campus that have unique spatial politics and rhetorical practices. The term is racially coded but at least reminds us of problematic assumptions unlike empty signifiers like "site of service." She proposes TACTICS as preferred practices for engaging with the street--preferred, that is, over "strategic logics," the university's usual way of engaging. She writes, "A strategic orientation seeks to control spaces and create institutional relationships with an 'other' in the community" (xiv). STRATEGIES include dynamics like a search for stability, control, sustainability, and "measurable student outcomes" (xiv). She also calls this a "problem orientation," essentially a deficit model where the academics fix that which is broken. "The goal," she writes, "of charity or a problem orientation is to decrease the prevalence of a given problem. It often involves strategic initatives and long-term plans" (xix). Her notion largely comes from de Certeau (Practice of Everyday Life), who sees strategies as official actions, sanctioned by state appartuses, creating stability.

TACTICS, on the other hand, are rhetorical, project-based (often small in scope), locally/collaboratively defined, changing, "grounded in both time and place" (xv), and most crucially involve "hope." "...this approach seeks tactical uses of time and resources to celebrate, encourage, or develop those aspects of a body that are already working" (xix). Thus, "hope." Mathieu says, "I find this tactical orientation both exciting and deeply humbling, one that is grounded in hope but in a critical manifestation of hope, one that is based in action and proceeds with eyes open" (xix). Here, too, she relies on de Certeau, who sees tactics as temporal responses to uncontroled situations.

Mathieu reviews evidence of comp's social turn--such as service learning and place-based writing pedagogies and various versions of public intellectualism, situating these trends within Dewey, Freire, liberation theology, marxism, and British cultural studies. She argues that the corporatiziation of the university has led many institutions to push movement to the street, which they can market and use as branding opportunities. But she also sees a more genuine hope: "This desire to be a connected agent in the world, active in ways other than as a consumer (see Mathieu 1999), is a healthy hope, one shared by many faculty and students" (14). And also, "...we seek to overcome feelings of cynicism about our ability to be relevant in the world and embrace some form of optimism" (14).

"To hope, then, is to look critically at one's present condition, assess what is missing, and then long for and work for a not-yet reality, a future anticipated. It is grounded in imaginative acts and projects, including art and writing, as vehicles for invoking a better future" (19). She turns to a homeless activist whose writing is timely, always evolving, part of an ongoing attempt to provoke, anger, and make people laugh. The immediate outcome is not always known or demonstrable. This is a TACTIC. The Streetwise paper (a homeless periodical), similarly, foregounds the act of writing together as an end in itself. Finally, Not Your Mama's Bus Tour, was about the performance itself (the outcome was unpredictable). According to Mathieu, we ought to resist the transactional notion that civic writing must immediately do something (50).

Her next example: her own Literatures of Homelessness courses. "It is imperative to get beyond the initial blush of satisfaction in doing communally or socially engaged work and ask the difficult questions that follow" (60). She says that civic engagement courses (ASL, etc.) must invite significant collaboration from community partners (they should never be an afterthought) who the institution should compensate and value and stem from personal relationships with them, not careerist moves on the part of faculty. The classes should involve small interventions (tactical projects) in local situations, but with an eye on global context. She sums up, "Consider what a project orientation instead of a problem orientation allows you and your students to accomplish. Projects should begin with community needs and not merely seek out places to serve" (82).

Finally, Mathieu shares horror stories that revolve around students and faculty not respecting the time of agencies: breaking appointments, failing to sustain involvement at a site, etc. She claims these problematic practices stem from top-down, institutionalized service learning projects...initiatives that don't stem from a community need but rather an institution trying to market itself or an academic doing a sanctioned, pre-fab experiment. Tactical, personal, unofficial, grassroots projects are better, she says. She tells stories of Howard Zinn, Diana George, and Sandra Andrews, whose civic engagement illustrates the value of tactical intervention.