III. The Question of Subjectivity

It has been argued, at least from Lloyd Bitzer on, that the structure or context of a situation affects a speaker/writer and hir textual output. One pedagogical example, is Charles Deemer, who in 1967 suggested that teachers "speak, not from behind a podium, but from the rear of the room or through the side window" in order to offset the authorial nature of traditional pedagogy--and by implication improve student output. In 1971, William Lutz, as one example among many, called for the composition classroom to be turned into a happening--a "structure in unstructure; a random series of ordered events; order in chaos; the logical illogicality of dreams." Another more current pedagogical application of this idea manifested itself in "circling the wagons" (as Robert Green in "Collab" calls it)--or having the students arrange the desks in a circle in order to offset the hierarchical, linear rows and the teacher's placement at the top of the structure. [%] These argument/practices fall in line with many characterizations of subject formation from Marx to Althusser and Foucault, but assumes that changing the structure changes the subject wholesale. Rather, this change is minimal, falling under the same institutional and ideological practices. The assumptions behind process pedagogy call for stepping back from structuring our students as modern subjects, but as Lester Faigley, Sharon Crowley, and Susan Miller point out, we generally fall short.