Networked Process. Helen Foster
of the various institutional sites with which writing overlaps. Such a conceptualization could maintain the conversations that ebb and flow within and among these sites as a complex network in which the past, the present, and the future co-exist in a web of genuine organic simultaneity.
Because post-process is so ill-understood, Chapter 1 profiles post-process in an attempt to answer the first question of stasis theory: What is? This profile illuminates the heterogeneous nature of the post-process position and gauges the nature of its criticism aimed at process. I then compile a process profile that demonstrates the heterogeneous nature of writing process, along with its material and metaphoric roles in forming our early disciplinary identity. Ultimately, I map the process and post-process profiles along a continuum to assess how they differ and how they resonate. The point of resonance is identified as the point of stasis, the place at which both share some degree of common value, the place at which productive dialogue might create material and conceptual spaces that exceed the limitations of both positions.
I name this material and conceptual space networked process. As a metaphor for rhetoric and composition’s contemporary disciplinary identity, networked process evokes both the growing number of sites and the relational loops that characterize the discipline, a discipline of ever-increasing complexity.2 Materially and conceptually, networked process encompasses a variety of sites, including multiple notions of writing processes, spaces/places, epistemologies, literacies, disciplinary artifacts, and subjectivities. But a proverbial and fundamental conundrum common to both process and post-process, and thus to the sites with which they are networked, is subjectivity, or the individual who writes.
In Chapter 2, I explore historical scholarship that points toward the possibility of stasis between process and post-process, as well as the scholarly journey that eventually arrived at said stasis. James Berlin’s scholarship, specifically his cognitive mappings of various classifications of writing, is the focus. Analysis of these cognitive maps illuminates how his work speaks to a theory of networked process: they provide (1) a panoramic view of the first half of the process/post-process continuum mapped in Chapter 1, (2) a complex representation of relations that culminated in the theory that would come to be characterized as post-process, and (3) a platform for further elaboration of networked process.
In Chapter 3, I take up the conundrum of subjectivity. First, I articulate a theory of networked subjectivity that describes the materiality of the individual who writes. Then, I posit the conceptual potential of networked subjectivity to function as a heuristic for curricular, pedagogical, and programmatic decision-making. Networked subjectivity describes the nature of the subject and its relation to the world, suggesting that while not a teleology, the subject is nevertheless the necessary analytical ground for entry into the complexity of networked process.
In Chapter 4, I situate networked subjectivity relative to specific discursive formations or webbed relations with which writing and the teaching of writing inevitably co-exist. These discursive formations include power relations, discourse communities, epistemologies, subjectivities, literacies, and classrooms, all of which can be productively considered as sites that exponentially increase the dynamic complexity of networked process. My description of these discursive formations does not exhaustively explore networked subjectivity. These formations represent the minimum networked sites we ought to consider in the pursuit of our educational enterprise.
In Chapter 5, I use networked subjectivity as a heuristic to assess various sites of a network. First, I consider the artifactual site of a well-known first-year composition textbook, and then I turn to the material and conceptual site of a published composition program reform effort. These analyses illustrate that a notion of subjectivity, whether tacit or explicit, influences a conception of what writing is and thus sets in motion a set of assumptions and practices regarding how it ought to be taught. These analyses also indicate the capacity of curricula, pedagogies, writing programs, local institutions, and state governments to convene in the complex site of a particular student subject position, a site that can easily undermine and frustrate the most well-intentioned educational goals and objectives.
I conclude in Chapter 6 with a discussion of the disciplinary ramifications of networked process, as I attempt to (re)imagine the possibilities for the space of networked process and what it could portend for our disciplinary identity. This space, along with others not yet imagined, might become an additional site in the complex educational and cultural network in which both we and student-writer-subjects are enmeshed. Networked process can function as a nuanced and complex thermometer by which to measure the state of our disciplinary identity and health, as well as a dream-catcher for imagining what might be.
1 Profiling Process and Post-Process
That writing process continues to function as a metaphor for the disciplinary identity of rhetoric and composition is nowhere more apparent than in the coinage of post-process, a contemporary movement that arguably functions not to revise process so much as to insist that any hope ever attached to it was and is as futile as charging at windmills. The problem with making such a statement, however, is that it assumes that both process and post-process discourses are monolithic. Neither is, after all, nearly so tidy. But with its naming alone, post-process clearly does mean to substantively challenge process. The question is how, to what extent, and for what purpose. At stake in these questions is nothing less than where we teach, how we teach, what we teach, and even whether we teach, along with what answers to these questions might portend for rhetoric and composition’s disciplinary identity.
All of us undoubtedly believe ourselves well versed in process theory and practice. With only a little exaggeration, it might be said that process constitutes the conceptual fabric of our disciplinary hegemony.3 The very naming of post-process, then, brings this hegemony into relief, an event we ought to consider healthy and productive. But if we uncritically discard one organizing principle for the field only to uncritically adopt another, we risk not only capitulating to similar errors in our disciplinary history but also foregoing a dialogue that might allow us to (re)see process so that we can understand the challenge of post-process within the context of some shared value. Without such a context, the risk is that adherents of both positions will cling to their positions in a posture of recalcitrant self-defense. Certainly, disillusionment with process is not sufficient reason to discard it, but neither is allegiance to process sufficient reason to dismiss post-process. Indeed, disillusionment and allegiance are tricky warrants, offering little exigence for a context in which a genuinely engaged dialogue might occur. More is needed, then, to build a context that can produce dialogue. Minimally, this involves understanding the nature of the two positions and how they differ. It also involves identifying what value the two might share and at what point that value destabilizes. Therefore, a context for genuine dialogue requires at the very least that we determine the point of stasis at which productive disagreement might begin.
My purpose in this chapter is to identify this point of stasis. To accomplish this, I first construct post-process and process profiles to determine how they differ, and what they mutually value. I devote more space to post-process, simply because it is the less well understood perspective, and I ask a variety of questions. What characterizes the post-process position? What does post-process reject of the process position? Why? What is the nature of the disciplinary identity post-process rejects and would supersede? What characterizes process? What shared value might serve as an effective starting point for a productive dialogue? To answer these questions, I begin with post-process and examine process in light of what post-process critiques in process. Then, I consider the two positions against stasis theory to identify the point at which productive dialogue might ensue.
Post-Process
Although some are calling the present time in our history “post-process,” it, “like its counterpart, postmodern,” Lynn Bloom writes, “seems vague in comparison with its referent” (35). Many, undoubtedly, would agree, and while this vagueness is attributable in great part to an unclear understanding of the post-process position, it is also influenced by other factors. One is generational.4 Many of those emerging from rhetoric and composition doctoral programs within the last decade or so may associate process with a seemingly remote watershed moment in the history of the field. Thus, they identify themselves as post-process because they perceive an evolutionary, disciplinary