c a r t e r / t h e w r i t i n g c e n t e r pa r a d o x
Shannon Carter
The Writing Center Paradox: Talk about Legitimacy
and the Problem of Institutional Change
Scholarship on writing centers often relies on validation systems that reconcile tensions
between equality and plurality by privileging one over the other. According to feminist
political theorist Chantal Mouffe, neither absolute equality nor absolute plurality are
possible in any democratic system, a conflict she calls “the democratic paradox” and
insists is the essence of a “well-functioning democracy” that supports pluralistic goals.
The following article argues that a similar logic shapes writing center work and, therefore,
any attempt to promote change must likewise embrace the democratic paradox as it
manifests itself in the writing center: “the writing center paradox.”
Instead of helping students “improve” their five-paragraph
themes according to their instructors’ advice, we need to somehow voice our objections to the entire enterprise. The question is
how to do this without jeopardizing our students’ best interest as
well as our own.
—Patricia A. Dunn, “Marginal Comments on Writers’ Texts”
The university needs us, but we need the university as well.
—Timothy Donovan, “Professing Composition in the Academic Marketplace”
CCC 61:1 / september 2009
W133
Copyright © 2009 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.
W133-152-Sept09CCC.indd 133
9/14/09 5:31 PM
CCC 6 1 : 1 / s e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9
W
riting from her precarious position as a writing center director without
tenure, Patricia A. Dunn opens her essay with a tale familiar to many of us—not
only those of us in writing center work but writing program administrators and
composition instructors alike, virtually anyone trained to think of “grammar”
in more productive ways.
Recently I heard through the grapevine that I am “too soft on grammar.” It is said
that as director of the writing center I do not insist enough on the eradication of
comma splices, and that some of the peer tutors I’ve trained have occasionally
failed to recognize several of these in the drafts of students who come to us for
help. (31)
We are used to such problematic assumptions about what it means to teach
writing and the role of an instructor, a tutor, a writing center, and a writing
program in doing so. For more than forty years—at least since the publication of Research in Written Composition in 1963—we have been committed to
representing literacy (“grammar”) differently, generating countless arguments
against persistant assumptions like those likely informing the accusations
Dunn’s colleague made. Like so many teachers upholding current-traditional
representations of literacy education, this professor probably assumes that
mastery of surface features (what he calls “grammar”) is the foundation of
all academic prose and that this mastery must be demonstrated before any
other learning can take place. Such a paradigm is commonplace, pervasive,
and persuasive to those unfamiliar with composition studies, making it “the
dominant rhetoric overall,” and, therefore, “making it impossible for [teachers] to conceive of the discipline in any other way” (Berlin 9)—certainly not
without meaningful intervention. Such conversations are inevitable and, as we
know, regularly extend far beyond the circle of writing specialists reading this
journal. In fact, “there are few academic areas—excepting perhaps mathematics—in which the necessity to work with individuals outside one’s own field is
so manifest” (Donovan 173).
Despite this inevitability, however, writing specialists disagree about what
the focus of conversations like these should be (Smit). The many informed by
the process movement, for example, may argue that any conversation Dunn has
with her colleague should focus on the pedagogical issues such a claim violates.
Rather than critiquing this man’s pedagogy, however, those of us shaped by
New Literacy Studies (see James Paul Gee and Brian V. Street, among others)
and critical pedagogy (see Paulo Friere, Henry Giroux, Lil Brannon, and C. H.
W134
W133-152-Sept09CCC.indd 134
9/14/09 5:31 PM
c a r t e r / t h e w r i t i n g c e n t e r pa r a d o x
Knoblauch) may be more likely to encourage Dunn to focus on the political,
social, and cultural issues involved. These schools of thought teach us that
the assertion Dunn’s colleague made is merely an echo of the systematic and
institutionalized forces that oppress the powerless, the same forces that compel the marginalized to assimilate into the dominant discourses of the more
powerful. As Henry Giroux explains, arguments like these “reduce [literacy]
to the alienating rationality of the assembly line, a mastery without benefit of
comprehension or political insight” (206). We know that, as Brian V. Street asserts, “individuals, often against their own experience, come to conceptualize
literacy as a separate, reified set of ‘neutral’ competencies, autonomous of social
context” (114). And we are painfully aware that this conceptualization—what
Street calls the “autonomous model of literacy”—is ubiquitous. We are committed to social justice and we know that to remain silent about comments
like those made by Dunn’s colleague is to perpetuate the injustices embedded
in his rhetoric. “Mainstream language” is, as Adrienne Rich puts it, “the oppressor’s language,” constructed and perpetuated by what bell hooks calls the
“white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (3). According to this perspective,
no conversation countering claims that we are “too soft on grammar” should
be merely pedagogical but rather, as all pedagogical issues are simultaneously
political ones, it should address the social, ethical, and political issues at stake.
Talk about Rhetoric
The five-paragraph essay, and similar creatures of academic
archives, along with the pedagogical assumptions from which
they developed, demand interdisciplinary and intergenerational
research and discussion. . . .
. . . These discussions may become lively, for they involve deepseated, fundamental beliefs about the nature of knowledge and
learning, not to mention sometimes unacknowledged assumptions about gender roles and authority. Somehow, in spite of differences in status and job security, all members of the academic
community need to find the courage and grace to discuss these
important conflicts openly.
—Patricia A. Dunn, “Marginal Comments on Writers’ Texts”
Regardless of whether we choose to focus on the political rather than the pedagogical or vice versa, any conversation about writing instruction with those
unfamiliar with scholarship in composition studies entails a certain amount
W135
W133-152-Sept09CCC.indd 135
9/14/09 5:31 PM
CCC 6 1 : 1 / s e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9
of risk. Inasmuch as we expect Dunn to address the oppressive social forces
embedded in this professor’s claim, we must not ignore the material, political,
and ideological conditions involved in any conversation she may have with
him. “Talk” occurs in what Lorraine Code calls “rhetorical spaces,” and these
rhetorical spaces limit and shape all that can and will be “heard, understood,
[or] taken seriously.” As Code explains, rhetorical spaces are
fictive but not fanciful locations whose (tacit, rarely spoken) territorial imperatives
structure . . . and limit the kinds of utterances that can be voiced within them
with a reasonable expectation of uptake and “choral support”; an expectation of
being heard, understood, taken seriously. (ix)
The rhetorical spaces making up any possible conversation between Dunn
and her grammar-obsessed colleague are necessarily and inevitably laced with
conflicting value-sets and epistemological frameworks. For this reason, she is
unlikely to persuade him to represent literacy differently without acknowledging these inherent conflicts and negotiating—slowly, carefully, and, above all,
deliberately—the power landscape infringing on what’s possible within the
effected rhetorical spaces.
While the situation Dunn shares is no less relevant to the rhetorical
spaces in which the classroom teacher may find herself—or the writing program administrator or the WAC director, for that matter—it seems the writing
center worker is uniquely situated for investigating the power nexus involved
in acquiring new literacies. I argue that the rhetorical spaces of the writing
center provide a particularly fruitful ground for examining the power dynamics
involved in negotiating and representing academic literacies, especially given
that most work with all writers at all levels and from all disciplines. Unlike the
classroom instructor, the tutor is rarely responsible for assigning or evaluating
the projects (M. Harris); unlike the writing program administrator, the writing
center director need not generate a curriculum and evaluation system, certainly not one based on a single representation of literacy. The writing center
is made up of a series of rhetorical spaces in which tutors and students attempt
to negotiate academic projects assigned by and evaluated by individuals who
are not directly associated with/involved in the writing center’s daily activities. We represent the student, not the teacher. We represent the system, not
the student. We represent neither, and we represent both. And this is where
our conversation with Dunn’s colleague, a man I will call “Professor Grammar,”
gets most complicated.
W136
W133-152-Sept09CCC.indd 136
9/14/09 5:31 PM
c a r t e r / t h e w r i t i n g c e n t e r pa r a d o x
Talk about Constraint
Over the last few decades, scholarship in our field has devoted quite a bit of
space to legitimizing our methods and to representing literacy differently. What
we have not done is articulate the ways in which we might have this specific
conversation about literacy instruction with those insisting that we are not
doing it right, especially those who, like Dunn’s colleague, may be “a tenured
professor who sits on several powerful committees and votes on my tenure
hearing next year” (Dunn 31).
The purpose of the current article is to examine the challenges and possibilities within rhetorical spaces like the one in which Dunn finds herself in
order to develop a model for engaging in meaningful conversation that might
effect change within similar, largely institutionalized, rhetorical spaces. As
Richard E. Miller explains in As If Learning Mattered: Reforming Higher Education, nothing we do in the academy ever takes place “under conditions of
complete freedom,” as much as we’d like to believe otherwise. In fact, there are
many “material, cultural, and institutional constraints that both define and
confine all learning situations” (7). It is, therefore, crucial that we ask ourselves
how one can possibly effect change in a system so profoundly shaped by and
dependent on maintaining the status quo.
Talk about a Liberal-Democracy
Education with liberal-democratic goals—that is, a desire to create equal educational opportunities in ways that do not circumvent diversity—are irreconcilable. According to political theorists such as Jürgen Habermas, Carl Schmitt,
and Chantal Mouffe, this irreconcilability is an unavoidable consequence of the
democratic political process in general. In The Democratic Paradox, feminist
theorist Mouffe explores the inevitable tensions rooted in liberal-democratic
systems simultaneously guided by, on one hand, a democratic promise to support and protect equal rights for all citizens and, on the other hand, a liberal
promise to valorize and support diversity. Ideally, modern democratic institutions protect individual and community rights by challenging any attempts to
regulate diversity, but the democratic system itself cannot function without
some level of homogenization that constructs the “collective identity” of “the
people” whose rights will be protected by said system.
In practice, a liberal-democracy that values both plurality and equality
creates “the people” by articulating an “us” that can only exist through a simultaneous articulation of “them.” Thus the liberal-democracy functions in
W137
W133-152-Sept09CCC.indd 137
9/14/09 5:31 PM
CCC 6 1 : 1 / s e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9
ways that at once circumvent true heterogeneity and absolute equality. “The
definable feature of a liberal democracy is hegemony,” Mouffe explains, in that
the political process of endorsing and supporting democracy demands unity
and, therefore, creates inequitable relationships (36). Through the liberal logic
of this paradoxical system, those the system treats unfairly (inequitably) demand a rearticulation of “the people” who are identified through the political
process yet again. Inasmuch as any liberal-democratic system embraces the
democratic paradox, this process is unending.
According to Carl Schmitt, “every actual democracy rests on the principle that not only are equals equals but unequals will not be treated equally.
Democracy requires, therefore, first homogeneity and second—if the need
arises—elimination or eradication of heterogeneity” (qtd. in Mouffe 38). From
this, Schmitt concludes that a liberal-democracy cannot work—it is doomed as
a system due to the contradictions in its articulation. Mouffe disagrees. While
accepting Schmitt’s description of the inevitable tensions of liberal-democratic
governing systems, she defines them as the “democratic paradox” and contends
that this paradox is the very essence of a “well-functioning democracy” that
supports pluralistic goals.
Thus, like writing center scholar Stephen North, I assert that “talk” is
the “essence of tutoring,” but, unlike North, I argue that embedded in that
“talk” is the democratic paradox inasmuch as the writing center functions
as a democratic institution representing both our students and the literacy
demands of the academy, especially as we resist the autonomous model of
literacy dominating most rhetorical spaces over which we are not in control.
I call this the “writing center paradox” and contend that the problem with
articulations of value is that most attempt to reconcile this paradox by either
offering equity as the most valuable identification for writing center work or
plurality as the primary goal. Mouffe’s key argument is that the democratic
paradox is irreconcilable and any attempt to reconcile it will simply replicate
the dominant social order. Democratic political systems and, by extension,
democratic institutions must resist the impulse to reconcile contradictions and
instead keep this democratic paradox open, alive, and conflicted. As Mouffe
explains, “the tension between equity and liberty cannot be reconciled and . . .
there can only be contingent hegemonic forms of stabilization of their conflict.”
Any reconciliation of this tension circumvents “the very idea of an alternative
to the existing configuration of power [and] the very possibility of a legitimate
form of expression for the resistances against the dominant power relations”
W138
W133-152-Sept09CCC.indd 138
9/14/09 5:31 PM
c a r t e r / t h e w r i t i n g c e n t e r pa r a d o x
and, in doing so, allows “the status quo [to] become naturalized and made into
the way ‘things really are’” (5). Instead of legitimizing, in North’s terms, “The
Idea of a Writing Center” by attempting to resolve the competing logics that
generate the democratic paradox, we must heed Mouffe’s advice to “visualize
. . . the ultimate irreconcilability . . . as the locus of paradox” (9) so that we may
consciously and purposefully engage with and talk about it. Writing center
legitimacy may well rest in this paradox—of literacy, of democracy, of writing
center identity.
The problem is that much of our rhetoric in writing center studies attempts to legitimize writing center work by celebrating our ability to reconcile
this paradox. Understandably so, given our belief in the democratic potential of
writing centers and perpetual struggles against the marginalization of that important work. In the pages that follow, however, I do not defend writing centers.
I work from the assumption that writing centers are essential to literacy work,
but the current article is not itself a defense but rather a rhetorical analysis of
such defenses. In other words, I am attempting here to investigate the rhetorical
construction of writing centers as “valuable” and the consequences—and possibilities—in that construction. In the remaining pages of this essay, I examine
regularly-cited validations of the writing center to (1) define and articulate
what I call “the writing center paradox” perpetuated in this rhetoric (especially
as liberal-democratic goals inform and motivate this paradox) and (2) offer a
model that attempts to embrace and engage with the writing center paradox
rather than resolve it. After doing so, I return to Dunn’s situation and attempt
to apply this new model in ways that might effect change within the rhetorical
and material constraints embedded in it.
Talk about Equity (and Assimilation)
If the writing center is ever to prove its worth . . . it will have
to do so by describing this talk [that goes on in the writing
center]; what characterizes it, what effects it has, how it can be
enhanced.
—Stephen North, “The Idea of a Writing Center”
In “The Idea of a Writing Center,” Stephen North validates the writing center
by identifying and justifying “talk” as the “essence of tutoring” (76). “This is an
essay that began out of frustration,” he explained, boldly revealing that many
reading this College English publication were “the source of [his] frustration”
W139
W133-152-Sept09CCC.indd 139
9/14/09 5:31 PM
CCC 6 1 : 1 / s e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9
because they “understand” neither the function nor the value of the writing
center, yet they deny their “ignorance, this false sense of knowing, mak[ing] it
doubly hard to get a message through” (63–64).
Professor Grammar’s assertion that Dunn is “too soft on grammar” would
likely make North no less frustrated, as it is one he is likely to have heard time
and again. For North and the many who have followed in his rhetorical footsteps,
the value of the writing center is not as a “fix-it shop” or a dry-cleaning service,
despite the fact it is often characterized as a place where students should take
their papers to get them “fixed” or “cleaned up” before the “real” evaluation (by
the teacher) takes place. According to this line of argument, rather than measuring “success” in terms of the writing center’s ability to make changes to the
paper (“eradicate[ing] all comma splices,” as Dunn’s colleague insists it must),
we should assess it “in terms of changes in the writer” (70–71; emphasis added).
North’s “Manifesto,” as those of us in the writing center community often
call it, may not be the first public statement of our frustrated relationship with
the margins, but it is certainly the most influential justification of its kind. In
fact, nearly identical terms (change the writer, not the paper) inform the vast
majority of writing center mission statements and training and promotional
materials, despite the fact that many critics—including North himself—have
since challenged some of the ideological and philosophical grounds on which
this justification is based.
In the last decade or so, the terms of change North articulates and many
endorse have begun to lose support, especially among those writing center
critics who see literacy work in less “innocent” terms (Grimm, “Regulatory”).
As Nancy Maloney Grimm explains in her provocative study Good Intentions:
Writing Center Work for Postmodern Times, “literacy learning is really a matter
of conforming to predetermined expectations which are, for better or worse,
set by dominant white culture” (57). She warns us that the “talk” that North
describes as “everything” (North 76) may actually serve a “regulatory” rather
than a “liberatory” function,” perhaps marking difference as deficit, “normalizing” discourse, and certainly misrepresenting the complexities of diversity.
As Alice Gillam asserts, we often—unknowingly—work as both a “liberating
and normalizing agent” for student writers (128). Challenges like these often
criticize writing center work according to the “contradictions” embedded in
representations like those articulated by North. They describe these contradictions as the product of the dual allegiance to assimilation and liberation
that defines most literacy education. Marilyn Cooper, for example, exposes
the duality in Jeff Brooks’s popular declaration that “the student, not the tu-
W140
W133-152-Sept09CCC.indd 140
9/14/09 5:31 PM
c a r t e r / t h e w r i t i n g c e n t e r pa r a d o x
tor, should ‘own’ the paper” (220). In response to the contradictions rooted in
this “ownership,” Cooper asserts that “tutors can best help students become
agents of their own writing by helping them understand how and the extent to
which they are not owners of their texts” (339, emphasis in original). Elizabeth
Boquet identifies the contradictions thus: “Writing center theory and practice
is a discourse . . . perfectly at odds with itself ” (43). Grimm calls this duality, the
one likely informing the “at-odd-ness” Boquet reveals, the “paradox of literacy,”
which she defines as “the way that literacy both dominates and liberates, both
demands submission and offers the promise of agency” (Good Intentions xiii).
Critics such as Grimm, Boquet, Cooper, Gillam, Anne DiPardo, and Anis
Bawarshi and Stephanie Pelkowski assert that contradictory objects and agents
of change demand a new kind of “talk.” They reject writing center talk that
“changes” writers in favor of talk that changes the institutional systems that
often force already marginalized students to change. They challenge validation
systems such as North’s that identify “the object” of writing center work as
“making sure that writers . . . are what gets changed in instruction” (69) and
Kenneth A. Bruffee’s assertion that peer tutoring helps writers “loosen ties to
the knowledge community they currently belong to and join another” (215).
They condemn “minimalist tutoring” techniques that categorize “the central
difficulty we confront as tutors” in ways Jeff Brooks has: “we sit down with imperfect papers, but our job is to improve their writers” (219). More importantly,
they redefine the goal of “talk” in, from, and about the writing center. For Cooper, the goal is “critiquing institutions and creating knowledge about writing”
(336), talk that positions writing center workers as “agents of change in writing
pedagogy” (341). For Andrea Lunsford, writing center “talk” should “lead the
way in changing the face of higher education [by] challeng[ing] the status quo
in higher education” (98). For Grimm, the goal is to facilitate “a social future in
which literacy practices enable us to communicate across differences” because
“just as postmodernity pushes against the limits of existing modernist beliefs,
so does writing center work expose the limits of existing literacy practices in
higher education” (Good Intentions x, 2). In other words, the writing center
should not represent school literacies as monolithic, neutral, and natural but
instead challenge the artificiality of such models by representing the students
and the diverse social locations they inhabit.
I endorse these goals, and I, too, would like to see writing center “talk”
lead to changes such as those described above. I am, however, increasingly less
certain about the change agents they identify and the processes of change they
describe. Granted, the systems Grimm, Cooper, and others articulate emphasize
W141
W133-152-Sept09CCC.indd 141
9/14/09 5:31 PM
CCC 6 1 : 1 / s e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9
the political nature of literacy and the tensions inherent in any diverse social
space; however, the power dynamics experienced as I attempted to enact these
sorts of changes have forced me to rethink their applicability. I’ve come to
believe that these models may not adequately address the specific limits and
possibilities always already embedded in any democratic institution asserting
value. For this reason, they may actually perpetuate the “innocence” they set
out to challenge. Validation is an inevitably politicized process of hegemonic
articulation with which key scholarship in our field has only recently begun
to engage. Writing center identities responding to the “paradox of literacy”
acknowledge the political function of writing center work, but the democratic
paradox embedded in any articulation of value often gets pushed aside.
Attempts to convince those positioned at the “center” (like our Professor
Grammar) that the institutions relegated to the margins have been unfairly
placed and largely misunderstood must be examined as rhetorical exercises
generated by and complicated by contradictions: the democratic paradox.
Any rhetorical construction of legitimacy in rhetorical spaces that include
those not yet convinced must identify with some value-sets already considered
legitimate. Thus, many validation systems, including those serving North’s
“Idea,” make use of the cultural codes already recognized as valid academic
currency. In this system, we shape the writing center as valuable to those in
power by articulating its identity as a place where marginalized writers learn
to mimic more “legitimate” (read “more powerful”) ways of knowing by parroting the dominant cultural codes. Ironically, writing center legitimacy shaped
by claims that challenge the dominant cultural codes must also engage with
the inevitable power relations associated with them. The same system that
funds writing center work, influences tenure decisions, and otherwise forces
the marginalized writing center to cling to the “center” shapes the rhetorical
spaces that control all validation systems, even those claiming to circumvent
that system. Either validation system is necessarily political and paradoxical.
Talk about Diversity
Ohhhh! So you’re the one who’s going to teach these students
how to write. They really need your help. My students can barely
cobble a sentence together!
—colleague from another department’s response when he was introduced to me during my
first week on campus more than eight years ago
W142
W133-152-Sept09CCC.indd 142
9/14/09 5:31 PM
c a r t e r / t h e w r i t i n g c e n t e r pa r a d o x
I am committed to shaping a writing center that honors diversity, generating
a series of rhetorical spaces that promote social justice and challenge the institutionalized oppression embedded in literacy education via an autonomous
model like the one informing Professor Grammar’s perspective. In fact, as soon
as I arrived to begin my first, tenure-track position as an assistant professor
of English and director of the Writing Center (and the Basic Writing Program)
at a mid-sized, public university in a PhD-granting department, I began the
process of shifting the Center from what I perceived to be a program that
emphasized the way a writer approached his or her individual writing process
to one more invested in the way the writer approaches academic literacy as a
cultural construct. But I struggled, time and again, to figure out how to subvert
a system on which I was so completely dependent for funding and tenure. I
struggled, even as the faculty in my department—which includes many strong,
tenured, and well-respected composition scholars—continued to offer their
unwavering and enthusiastic support. I struggled, just as we all struggle, to
subvert the autonomous model of literacy when the autonomous model was
the one largely responsible for the existence of literacy support programs like
our writing center.
I was already keenly aware of how important it is for us to “sell” our programs, especially in the beginning when we haven’t yet had the experience to
accurately read the power landscapes already in place. I intended to make myself
and the writing center I directed indispensable as quickly and emphatically as
possible by more firmly establishing our role in writing-intensive classes across
the campus. In such a climate, it made little sense for me to confront this professor who obviously wanted his students to succeed but had such a low opinion
of their current ability to do so. At least not directly or right away. It would
not do for me to lecture this Ivy League–educated man about “the dangers of
projecting [his] cultural assumptions onto students who have cultural histories
different from [his] own” (Grimm, Good Intentions 108). From my brand-new
position representing a scholarly field he never knew existed and thus seemed
unlikely to accept had much intellectual value (at least not yet), I had little
confidence that I would be able to convince him that the writing center was
not a place that “fixes” writers but one that attempts to “grant membership”
to students, “accepting them as active knowledge users, knowledge makers,
and even ‘paradigm shifters’” (Brandt, qtd. in Grimm, Good Intentions 108). I
would be hard pressed to convince this professor—at least not quickly—to
value his students as “knowledge makers” and “paradigm shifters” when he did
W143
W133-152-Sept09CCC.indd 143
9/14/09 5:31 PM
CCC 6 1 : 1 / s e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9
not even believe them to be proficient enough to “cobble a sentence together.”
Before I could even try, I absolutely had to identify and negotiate with care any
rhetorical spaces available for such a conversation.
As a democratic institutional space, the writing center must embrace the
paradox embedded in any political negotiation because “a well-functioning
democracy calls for a vibrant clash of democratic political positions” (Mouffe
104). Often, however, the validation systems we use to define the writing center
in terms of “change” ignore the social function of language and the hegemonic
order shaped by and perpetuated by any social system—even the writing center.
As Grimm explains in Good Intentions, “writing centers are places where assimilation into the discursive systems of the university is facilitated” (xvi). Inasmuch as these writers are already students in the university (though, perhaps,
only provisionally admitted), they are “citizens” of the university community
and, therefore, protected by the rules of the democratic systems governing that
community. However, as these writers write in ways the traditional system may
not value, they are not yet full citizens.
The democratic side of what Steve Sherwood has called the writing
center’s “helping personality” urges us to develop and implement strategies
designed to help writers gain citizenship in that academy by writing like—in
fact, becoming like—the other full citizens of the community. In other words,
much of the rhetoric we have used to articulate the value of writing centers
is infused with an intensely democratic spirit that advocates the rights of the
individual foremost with respect to equalizing access to all that is valued within
the current system: democratic values such as freedom, individuality, and equity.
Grimm’s “paradox of literacy” draws attention to the ironies at work in this
clearinghouse model. Traditional literacy is said to “empower writers” by helping
them find success in a given rhetorical space, but to find success in that space
these marginalized writers must learn to write in ways the academy values.
If literacy education itself is a political enterprise rather than a neutral one,
learning to manipulate the dominant cultural codes requires once marginalized
writers to become someone else—embody the dominant culture instead of their
own. Rhetoric legitimizing writing center work within a liberal-democracy via
a logic of equity perpetuates homogeneity under the guise of facilitating equal
educational opportunities for all. Such a writing center seems inappropriate
when we accept that, as James Paul Gee has argued,
Each and every Discourse makes of us, while we are in it, a certain sort of person;
each and every Discourse “calls forth” certain ways of viewing the world, ways of
W144
W133-152-Sept09CCC.indd 144
9/14/09 5:31 PM
c a r t e r / t h e w r i t i n g c e n t e r pa r a d o x
communicating to others, ways of valuing and thinking about the world and our
fellow human beings. Most of what a Discourse does with us, and most of what
we do with a Discourse, is unconscious, unreflective, uncritical. Each Discourse
protects itself by demanding from its adherents performances which act as though
its ways of being, thinking, acting, talking, writing, reading and valuing are “right”,
“natural”, “obvious”, the way “good” and “intelligent” and “normal” people behave.
In this regard, all Discourses are false—none of them is, in fact, the first or last
word on truth. (190–91)
Given this, legitimacy based on a logic of plurality seems a much more ethical
way to shape the writing center, and Grimm’s “rearticulation” of “writing center
work for postmodern times” remains appealing to me for primarily this reason.
According to North, the writing center is “one manifestation of a dialogue
about writing that is central to higher education” (64; emphasis added). In
“Rearticulating the Work of Writing Centers,” however, Grimm redefines writing centers as “sites of knowledge-making” (537) that make these institutional
spaces “essential to the pedagogical mission . . . of a university committed to
democratic ideals” (536), if only “they can position themselves as partners in
a dialogue about institutional response to difference” (593; emphasis added).
Grimm would likely argue that Dunn’s conversation with Professor Grammar
should not be about “writing” alone—despite North’s assertion that this should
be the central function of any talk in and about the writing center—but rather
“a dialogue about institutional response to difference.” I admire this goal.
Grimm’s deep engagement with paradox and democratic ideals, the “paradox
of literacy” she articulates in her later work, and her postmodern, culturallysensitive agenda develop a writing center identity that seems to embody the
politicized one I articulate here. Grimm even cites the tensions expressed in
Mouffe’s earlier work as support for the “open,” conflicted writing center identity
Grimm articulates. Based on an assumption that “[t]he work of literacy is deeply
paradoxical,” Grimm develops a writing center that she asserts will be more
attuned to the needs of a pluralistic democracy in the postmodern academy,
a writing center that will “maintain openness in discussions about literacy
and . . . address the conflicts embedded in our myths without expecting a tidy
resolution” (525). Her version of an “open,” “democratic” writing center seems to
epitomize the “democratic paradox” Mouffe celebrates, a paradox embedded in,
as Grimm puts it, “its respect for difference and its task of governing diversity”
(525) in its attempt to “maintain openness” (545) rather than “close down understanding” (543). The talk in, from, and about the writing center that Grimm
advocates “challenges . . . a wide range of relations of subordination” (Mouffe
W145
W133-152-Sept09CCC.indd 145
9/14/09 5:31 PM
CCC 6 1 : 1 / s e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9
20), and the validation systems she employs legitimize the writing center in
ways I find attractive and convincing. More than eight years ago, after finishing a dissertation in writing center politics that was profoundly influenced by
Grimm’s theoretical construct, I went on to attempt to “rearticulate” a rather
well-established writing center in ways that validated diversity and confronted
systems demanding homogeneity. It was in my attempt to translate Grimm’s
pluralistic writing center into practice, especially in my encounters with colleagues like Professor Grammar, that I found myself at odds with it.
Talk about Choice
In practice it seems Grimm’s model validates the writing center through an
uncritical celebration of “extreme pluralism,” which—according to Mouffe—has
the rather ironic consequence of actually limiting diversity rather than enabling
it. As Mouffe explains, extreme pluralism is a system “conceive[d] of exclusively
in terms of a struggle of a multiplicity of interest groups or minorities for the
assertion of other rights” (20). However, democracy always limits plurality—not
always by choice but always as a requisite condition for the existence of any
democratic institution in that the democratic process requires that a representative population serve as the “collective identity” for which such rights will
be negotiated. Though extreme pluralism seems the most culturally sensitive
way to negotiate democratic institutions, it is a position that, in practice, works
directly against pluralistic ideals.
Furthermore, this collective identity must be negotiated such that the
rights and freedoms of some members do not violate the rights and freedoms
of other members. Any limits to plurality work against the pluralistic ideal; any
limits to equality via equal rights work directly against the ideals informing the
democratic protection of individual rights. The democratic paradox must keep
these tensions, limits, and the resulting paradox alive to keep these democratic
institutions fair and equitable. Everyone has the right to cultural representation
within that current system, but if difference is not an a priori condition but a
politicized one, “everyone” simply can’t be afforded equal representation, at least
not at the same time and all the time. “Pure” plurality negates the possibility
of “pure” democracy, which disrupts pure plurality—a circular and complex
series of tensions that make up the democratic paradox and, in turn, inform
the writing center paradox.
Not only does the democratic process depend on a “collective identity,”
but the practice of developing this collective identity affects the identities of all
W146
W133-152-Sept09CCC.indd 146
9/14/09 5:31 PM
c a r t e r / t h e w r i t i n g c e n t e r pa r a d o x
individuals involved. Mouffe urges us to think of it in terms of creating “a relation of contamination . . . in the sense that once the articulation of [democracy
and liberalism] has been effectuated—even in a precarious way—each of them
changes the identity of the other” (10) and in doing so reshapes the identities of
all involved. Since diversity is not an “empirical reality” but one constructed by
the democratic process as well, the liberal-democracy that informs the writing
center not only excludes some identities in order to include others but actually
changes the collective identities of all involved.
In Good Intentions Grimm asserts that “writing centers can function more
effectively within the contrastive democratic desire to understand and negotiate difference rather than the institutional need to manage or eliminate it” (82;
emphasis added). Her decision to mark the institution as a space unshaped by
democratic processes overlooks the political reality of the democratic paradox.
No social space articulating value in terms of “change” can exist apart from the
political process through which power and legitimacy are generated—not the
writing center and certainly not the “institution.” By shaping writing centers
as capable of changing the “tacit habits of exclusion” at work in the “operations
of the academic community” (83) without acknowledging the ways that these
“tacit habits of exclusion” function in the operations of the writing center as
well (even the pluralistic writing center), her model denies the democratic
function of change agents and the political processes making social change
possible in a “well- functioning democracy.” “Managing” or “eliminating” difference is no less a democratic function of desire than the “desire to understand
and negotiate difference” can be. I do not mean that Grimm’s model ignores
the ways that the clearinghouse writing center works to regulate students and
perpetuate systematic oppression. She most certainly does not. The problem is
that the pluralistic writing center she describes may be similarly complicit. In
fact, Grimm’s assertion that writing centers can work more effectively within
the “contrastive democratic desire to understand difference rather than the
institutional need to manage or eliminate it” (82) fails to acknowledge the fact
that the true locus of paradox—the one that is the key to a “well-functioning
democracy” (Mouffe)—is embedded in the way “rather than” functions in this
dichotomy. Grimm thus reconciles the democratic paradox by drawing attention to “difference” “rather than” the democratic imperative to “manage” or
even “eliminate” difference. In that Grimm’s model engages with difference as
an “empirical reality” one can communicate to others (“represent”), it ignores
the exclusionary practices inherent in any political process of articulation and
W147
W133-152-Sept09CCC.indd 147
9/14/09 5:31 PM
CCC 6 1 : 1 / s e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9
denies the reality of identity formation as the “mutual contamination” Mouffe
tells us exists in any democratic institutional space.
In a related and, unfortunately, no less problematic rhetorical move,
Grimm’s writing center treats the student as an autonomous knower while
simultaneously denying such autonomy can exist. As she asserts in Good
Intentions, “If student writers can understand that cultural construction of
meaning exist outside themselves, they can choose not to accept positions
that undermine their individual histories and motivations” (30; emphasis
added). “Writing Center Work for Postmodern Times,” the subtitle of the above
publication, lays out some of the most complex challenges to objectivism and
individualism that I have seen in writing center scholarship and does so in
accessible prose, yet the autonomous knower persists in many of Grimm’s
arguments, even as she insists “a postmodern framework” disrupts the notion
of an “autonomous individual” (5, 20). To assert that identities “exist outside”
each individual without also conceding that such identities are not entirely a
conscious choice seems a bit counterintuitive. Either identities are constructed
politically and socially or identities exist a priori, isolated from rather than
“contaminated by” these political and social negotiations. The former, according to Mouffe, is exactly how “collective identity” is formed in any political
negotiation with liberal-democratic goals and, therefore, is how individuals
are affected in any political process. If identities are constructed through the
“cultural construction of meaning,” then this meaning must also exist inside
the individuals who construct it, not as an empirical reality but rather in the
form of their experiences leading up to this political negotiation. Indeed, the
process by which meaning is constructed may actually inform individual
identities as well. Therefore, code switching, as Gee and others have argued,
from one “cultural construction of meaning” to another is not a matter of accepting some positions and rejecting others. The actual process of switching
codes among different cultural constructs changes the individual making the
switch, a change that can only be minimized if he or she is made aware that
no single code is better (more “natural” or “correct”) than any other. Grimm
argues that we must make the “unnatural” and socially constructed nature of
academic literacies clear to tutors and students alike. In fact, that is one of her
most persuasive arguments and the one that has guided me throughout my
career thus far. However, I do not see room within her pluralistic writing center,
at least not as articulated, for making use of this awareness in conversations
with colleagues like Professor Grammar.
W148
W133-152-Sept09CCC.indd 148
9/14/09 5:31 PM
c a r t e r / t h e w r i t i n g c e n t e r pa r a d o x
Talk about Compromise
Embracing and making use of the writing center paradox in all relevant rhetorical spaces (both within the writing center itself and beyond) leaves space
for what Mouffe calls an “adversarial agonistic contestation of shared values”
(121) and accepts that “compromises are always possibilities” in that “they
are part and parcel of politics but they should be seen as temporary respites
in an ongoing confrontation” (102). Most importantly, it keeps the democratic
paradox open and productive, which “requires providing channels through
which collective passions will be given ways to express themselves over issues
which, while allowing enough possibility for identification, will not construct
the opponent as an enemy but an adversary” (103). The model I advocate is
committed to “providing” those very “channels” by talking about them and
investigating the limits and the possibilities of this talk.
According to North, “If writing centers are going to finally be accepted,
surely they must be accepted on their own terms as places whose primary responsibility, whose only reason for being, is to talk to students” (78). When I talk
about the writing center in many rhetorical spaces beyond the writing center,
however, it seems unwise to demand legitimacy on my own terms—at least not
directly or immediately. Instead I must attempt to validate the writing center
according to the terms already considered valuable among the more powerful
members involved in the rhetorical spaces concerned. Were I to find myself in
Patricia Dunn’s specific position, my initial impulse would be to thrust a copy of
Patrick Hartwell’s “Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammars” into
Professor Grammar’s hands and tell him to come talk to me—directly—when
he actually knew what grammar was before spreading any more rumors that
I am “too soft on grammar.” I find it unlikely that much would be gained from
such a move, though I needn’t ignore the conversation altogether. I make room
for conversations like these in those rhetorical spaces where the conversation is
likely to be “hear[d], underst[ood], take[n] seriously” (Code xi). It may be that
relevant rhetorical spaces are available when it comes to folks like Professor
Grammar. However, before we embark on any such challenge, we must develop
the rhetorical dexterity (Carter) necessary to make the conversation productive and to minimize any negative consequences that it may have on our own
positions and the programs we represent.
Keep Talking
The validation systems we’ve used to legitimize writing center “talk”—at least
since North’s “Idea”—may be understood as either “moral-universalistic” or
W149
W133-152-Sept09CCC.indd 149
9/14/09 5:31 PM
CCC 6 1 : 1 / s e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9
“ethical-particularistic.” The “moral-universalistic” perspective may best describe writing centers privileging the democratic logic over the liberal, which
means they likely organize the “common-symbolic space” they are attempting
to negotiate in terms of “right” and “wrong,” “good” and “bad,” “normal” and
“deviant” (Mouffe 129). The “ethical-particularistic” validation system, on the
other hand, may guide writing centers privileging the liberal logic over the
democratic. Instead of accepting the current system as a universal standard by
which all others should be judged, the ethical-particularlistic validation system
looks to the ways in which the current hegemonic order may be unethical in
that it endorses a particular worldview and a particular literacy and excludes
all others.
But neither articulation of value can serve as a “common symbolic space”
shaped by attempts to valorize diversity and protect equality because both
attempt to reconcile this paradox, which, as I’ve argued throughout, is an impossible and unwise task. Writing centers would do better to maintain both
validation systems simultaneously, in different rhetorical spaces for different
rhetorical purposes. In other words, we may allow ourselves to articulate value
in moral-universalistic terms when we must (as we attempt to validate the
writing center in terms the current system may value), while at the same time
adhering to ethical-particularistic principles in those spaces where doing so is
possible (and profitable). The writing center that deliberately and strategically
upholds both validation systems is one that keeps the writing center paradox
productive and alive—opening it up and keeping it visible, which is only possible as long as we keep talking about it.
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to Donna Dunbar-Odom for her insightful responses to the earliest
phase of this project, to Texas A&M Commerce for the recent Faculty Development
Leave that enabled me to complete the final revisions, and to Lil Brannon and Deborah
H. Holdstein for their generous and shrewd feedback in response to a previous draft
of this manuscript. An added thanks to Lil for her suggestion regarding a new, more
appropriate subtitle. Finally, I am grateful to all the fantastic scholarship in writing
center studies that has appeared in the three years since the article appearing here
was originally accepted. So much is happening in this field. For that, and so much
else, I feel honored to remain deeply involved with writing centers.
W150
W133-152-Sept09CCC.indd 150
9/14/09 5:31 PM
c a r t e r / t h e w r i t i n g c e n t e r pa r a d o x
Works Cited
Barnett, Robert W., and Jacob S. Blumner,
eds. The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing Center Theory and Practice. Boston:
Allyn, 2001.
Bawarshi, Anis, and Stephanie Pelkowski.
“Postcolonialism and the Idea of a
Writing Center.” Writing Center Journal
(Spring/Summer 1999): 41–58.
Berlin, James A. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges,
1900–1985. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
UP, 1987.
Boquet, Elizabeth. “‘Our Little Secret’: A
History of Writing Centers, Pre- to PostOpen Admissions.” College Composition
and Communication 50.3 (1999): 463–82.
Rpt. in Barnett and Blumner 41–60.
Braddock, Richard, Richard Lloyd-Jones,
and Lowell Schoer. Research in Written Composition. Champaign: National
Council of Teachers of English, 1963.
Brooks, Jeff. “Minimalist Tutoring: Making
the Student Do All the Work.” Writing
Lab Newsletter 19.2 (1991): 1–4. Rpt. in
Barnett and Blumner 219–24.
Bruffee, Kenneth A. “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’”
College English 46.7 (1984): 635–52. Rpt.
in Barnett and Blumner 206–18.
Carter, Shannon. The Way Literacy Lives:
Rhetorical Dexterity and the “Basic”
Writer. Albany: SUNY P, 2008.
Code, Lorraine. Rhetorical Spaces: Essays
on Gendered Locations. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Cooper, Marilyn. “Really Useful Knowledge.
A Cultural Studies Agenda for Writing
Centers.” The Writing Center Journal 14.2
(Spring 1994): 97–111. Rpt. in Barnett
and Blumner 335–49.
DiPardo, Anne. A Kind of Passport: A
Basic Writing Adjunct Program and the
Challenge of Student Diversity. Urbana:
National Council of Teachers of English,
1993.
. “‘Whispers of Coming and Going’:
Lessons from Fannie.” The Writing Center Journal 12.2 (Spring 1992): 125–44.
Rpt. in Barnett Blumner 350–67.
Donovan, Timothy. “Professing Composition in the Academic Marketplace.” The
Politics of Writing Instruction: Postsecondary. Ed. Richard Bullock and Jim
Trimbur. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook,
1991. 171–78.
Dunn, Patricia A. “Marginal Comments on
Writers’ Texts: The Status of the Commenter as a Factor in Writing Center
Tutorials.” Stories from the Center:
Connecting Narrative and Theory in the
Writing Center. Ed. Meg Woolbright and
Lynn Craigue Briggs. Urbana: National
Council of Teachers of English, 2000.
31–40.
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th
Anniv. ed. New York: Continuum, 2000.
Gee, James Paul. Social Linguistics and
Literacies: Ideology in Discourses. 2nd ed.
London: Taylor & Francis, 1996.
Gillam, Alice. “Writing Center Ecology: A
Bakhtinian Perspective.” The Writing
Center Journal 11.2 (1991): 3–12. Rpt.
Landmark Essays on Writing Centers. Ed.
Christina Murphy and Joe Law. Davis:
Hermagoras, 1995. 127–34.
Giroux, Henry. Theory and Resistance in
Education: A Pedagogy for the Opposition. Granbury: Bergin and Garvey, 1983.
Grimm, Nancy Maloney. Good Intentions:
Writing Center Work for Postmodern
Times. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook,
1999.
W151
W133-152-Sept09CCC.indd 151
9/14/09 5:31 PM
CCC 6 1 : 1 / s e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9
. “Rearticulating the Work of the
Writing Center.” College Composition and
Communication 47.4 (Dec. 1996): 523–48.
Writing Center Journal 12.1 (Fall 1991):
3–10. Rpt. in Barnett and Blumner
92–99.
. “Redesigning Academic Identity
Kits.” Conference on College Composition and Communication. Chicago, 1998.
15 Sept. 2004 <http://www.hu.mtu.edu/
cccc/98/respond.grimm.htm>.
Miller, Richard E. As If Learning Mattered:
Reforming Higher Education. Cornell:
Cornell UP, 1998.
. “The Regulatory Role of the Writing
Center: Coming to Terms with a Loss of
Innocence.” The Writing Center Journal
17.1 (1996): 5–29.
Mouffe, Chantal. The Democratic Paradox.
New York: Verso, 2000.
North, Stephen. “The Idea of a Writing Center.” College English 46 (1984): 433–46.
Rpt. in Barnett and Blumner 63–78.
Rich, Adrienne. “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children.” 19 Aug. 2005 <http://
www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/99/
jrieffel/poetry/rich/children.html>.
Harris, Joseph. “The Idea of Community
in the Study of Writing.” CCC 40.1 (Feb.
1989): 11–22.
Harris, Muriel. “Talking in the Middle: Why
Writers Need Writing Tutors.” College
English 57.1 (1995): 27–42.
Hartwell, Patrick. “Grammar, Grammars,
and the Teaching of Grammar.” College
English 47 (1985): 105–27.
hooks, bell. Feminism Is for Everybody:
Passionate Politics. Cambridge: South
End, 2000.
Knoblauch, C. H., and Lil Brannon. Critical
Teaching and the Idea of Literacy. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 1993.
Lunsford, Andrea. “Collaboration, Control,
and the Idea of a Writing Center.” The
Sherwood, Steve. “The Dark Side of the
Helping Personality: Student Dependency and the Potential for Tutor Burnout.”
Writing Center Perspectives. Ed. Byron
L. Stay, Christina Murphy, and Eric
Hobson. Emmitsburg, MD: NWCA, 1995.
63–70.
Smit, David W. The End of Composition
Studies. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
UP, 2004.
Street, Brian V. “The Schooling of Literacy.”
Social Literacies. New York: Cambridge
UP, 1995. 106–29.
Shannon Carter
Shannon Carter is an associate professor of English and co-director of the new Converging Literacies Center (CLiC) at Texas A&M–Commerce. The author of The Way
Literacy Lives: Rhetorical Dexterity and Basic Writing Instruction (SUNY P, 2008),
Carter has published articles in College English, the Journal of Basic Writing, the
Community Literacy Journal, and elsewhere on subjects ranging from faith-based
literacies to prison literacy to basic writing and writing programs. Carter is also
interested in writing with new media, especially video, and has two articles forthcoming in Kairos (one with regular collaborator Donna Dunbar-Odom).
W152
W133-152-Sept09CCC.indd 152
9/14/09 5:31 PM