Weisser

Weisser, Christian R. Moving Beyond Academic Discourse: Composition Studies and the Public Sphere. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois U.P., 2002.

Weisser narrates a brilliant, accessible, clearly articulated history of the field in his early chapters, suggesting that student-centered expressive models of process begat social constructivist views of language and knowledge, which in turn begat the social turn, which is now evolving into emphases on public writing. He sees service learning and community-based courses (forays in the public sphere) as the next step in this evolution.

Mature evolution as a field, he says, means looking toward theories from other disciplines and Weisser relies on social theory. He theorizes the notion of the "public sphere," leaning heavily on Habermas. Habermas, Weisser says, defined public sphere as a "discursive domain where private individuals debate social and political issues" in a setting apart from the state (47). Habermas bought into the myths of freedom and free and equal participation (everybody debates rationally regardless of identity) as well as the notion that the public sphere could take up issues of "common concern" (universal). Inns, coffeehouses, and pubs flourished in mid-18th century but began to decline after the liberal revolutions late in that century--many critics suggest the public sphere's been in decline ever since, a decline fostered by industrialism and the growth of capitalism. Nancy Fraser and others critiqued Habermas' notions for being idealized. Fraser argued that what is "public" and what is "common concern" are rhetorical notions (e.g., wife battering) (85).

Drawing on (critiques of) Habermas, Weisser develops his own model of public writing. Public writing happens in a particular cultural setting and is by extension shaped by context and ideology (96-97). Yes, there's a context for a given debate, but it's more than that. We also need to teach things like who has been and still is excluded from the debate: the "need to consider how ideology, racism, classism, and sexism have played significant roles" (99). Acknowledge "imbalances of power" in the debate (103). Small, local, specialized venues count--it's not just letters to the editor of a major newspaper--a local venue counts as well (104-105). The public isn't a monolithic concept; public writing need not be directed to a "diverse audience" or a "general audience." Social change happens at the local level with special interest groups who organize and mobilize one another and create "subaltern counterpublics" (106) before and during the process of reaching out. Weisser further complicates Habermas' notion of "common concern" and "public" issue as well, reiterating that a public issue need not be on the entire public's radar. In fact, it might not be (sexual orientation, e.g.) (107-109).

Finally, he critiques the over-emphasis on public writing as something that's geared toward changing minds. He returns to Habermas's notion that public sphere is apart from the state. Not so, he says, noting that public writing ought to engage the government and other apparatuses. It's not just about pontificating in a park or on an editorial page. Affect change in public policy. Contrary to Habermas's conception, affecting actual material change is part of the public sphere. "Students' public writing can have significant, tangible, immediate results if it is directed toward publics where both debate and decision making are central goals. As facilitators of public writing, it is important that we help students locate strong publics where their voices can lead to action" (111).

Cushman, b

Cushman, Ellen. "The Public Intellectual, Service Learning, and Activist Research." College English 61 (1999): 328-336.

Cushman argues that we should broaden our conception of 'public intellectual' to account for the democratic gains being made by ASL and activist research initiatives. Instead of just looking at NYTimes editorialists as public intellectuals, we should consider the literacy workers, activists on the ground, volunteers, etc. to also be part of that group.

Mutnick

Mutnick, Deborah. "Inscribing the World: Lessons from an Oral History Project in Brooklyn." College Composition and Communication 58 (2007): 626-647.

Mutnick describes an outreach initiative--"Our Legacies: Who We Are, Where We're From"--that gathered oral histories and visual celebrations (photo-essays and the like) of her child's school building, which was celebrating its centennial. She's interested in rhetorical work/pedagogy that engages and revitalizes a public sphere, pointing to Habermas's notion that the march of capitalism essentially destroyed/privatized the public sphere. Mutnick sees the existence of "counterpublics" (various voices, including those of dissent) as hopeful, and argues that civic places are constructed by the interplay of these voices and material reality.

The oral histories and story circles comprise a material rhetoric in that they reveal material realities, conflict, and a "bottom up" narrative/s. Individual stories run the risk of fostering status quo liberalism, but projects like this contextualize with social history and allow for competing/dissenting voices. In this way, the project transcends liberalism and becomes a person-in-place, individual-in-context pedagogy. Civic engagement, in Mutnick's project, means "inquiry into meaningfulness of place, infused always with the identities of those who pass through" (643).