Writing Democracy: The Political Turn in and Beyond the Trump Era

301 Pages·2019·4.845 MB·English

by  Shannon Carter, Deborah Mutnick, Stephen Parks, Jessica Pauszek

Writing Democracy
Writing Democracy: The Political Turn in and Beyond the Trump Era
calls on the field of writing studies to take up a necessary agenda of social
and economic change in its classrooms, its scholarship, and its commu-
nities to challenge the rise of neoliberalism and right-wing nationalism.
Grown out of an extended national dialogue among public intellectu-
als, academic scholars, and writing teachers, collectively known as the
Writing Democracy Project, this book creates a strategic roadmap for
how to reclaim the progressive and political possibilities of our field in
response to the “twilight of neoliberalism” (Cox and Nilsen), ascendant
right-wing nationalism at home (Trump) and abroad (Le Pen, Golden
Dawn, UKIP), and hopeful radical uprisings (Black Lives Matter, Oc-
cupy Wall Street, Arab Spring). As such, this book tracks the emergence
of a renewed left wing in rhetoric and activism post-2008, suggests how
our work as teachers, scholars, and administrators can bring this new
progressive framework into our institutions and then moves outward to
our role in activist campaigns that are reshaping public debate.
Part history, part theory, this book will be an essential read for fac-
ulty, graduate students, and advanced undergraduate students in com-
position and rhetoric and related fields focused on progressive pedagogy,
university-community partnerships, and politics.
Shannon Carter is a professor of English at Texas A&M-Commerce,
where she teaches courses in community writing and digital storytelling.
Her publications include articles in College English, CCC, and Commu-
nity Literacy Journal, and The Way Literacy Lives: Rhetorical Dexter-
ity and the “Basic” Writer (SUNY Press, 2008). With Deborah Mutnick
in 2012, she edited a special issue of Community Literacy Journal
emerging from the first Writing Democracy conference in 2011, which
won the 2012 Best Public Intellectual Special Issue from the Council of
Editors of Learned Journals. Her current book project traces the history
of community writing alternatively designed to reify and resist racial
injustice in her conservative, relatively isolated university town, which is
also the subject of a digital humanities project funded, in part, by NEH.
Deborah Mutnick is a professor of English at Long Island University
Brooklyn and author of Writing in an Alien World: Basic Writing and
the Struggle for Equality in Higher Education. Other publications ap-
pear in a range of journals and edited collections. She is a member of the
Editorial Board of Science & Society: A Journal of Marxist Thought and
Analysis and a co-founder with Shannon Carter of Writing Democracy.
Currently, she is researching and writing about Richard Wright’s politi-
cal, intellectual, and literacy development and his enduring cultural and
political relevance.
Stephen Parks is the author of Class Politics: The Movement for the Stu-
dents, Right to Their Own Language and Gravyland: Writing Beyond
the Curriculum in the City of Brotherly Love, as well as a textbook,
Writing Communities. He is the founder of New City Community Press;
co-founder/board chair of Syrians for Truth and Justice; and the editor
of Studies in Writing and Rhetoric as well as Working and Writing for
Change, Parlor Press.
Jessica Pauszek is an assistant professor of English and Director of Writ-
ing at Texas A&M University-Commerce. Her work has appeared in
CCC, Community Literacy Journal, Literacy in Composition Studies,
and Reflections. She is the coeditor of Best of the Journals in Rhetoric
and Composition and Writing and Working for Change series. Her cur-
rent book project explores working-class community literacy practices
of the Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers as well
as examines an archival curation project alongside community members
in the context of precarity.

Routledge Research in Writing Studies
Writing Center Talk Over Time
A Mixed-Method Study
Jo Mackiewicz
Writing Support for International Graduate Students
Enhancing Transition and Success
Shyam Sharma
Rhetorical Strategies for Professional Development
Investment Mentoring in Classrooms and Workplaces
Elizabeth J. Keller
Digital Reading and Writing in Composition Studies
Edited by Mary R. Lamb and Jennifer Parrott
Writing Democracy
The Political Turn in and Beyond the Trump Era
Edited by Shannon Carter, Deborah Mutnick, Stephen Parks,
and Jessica Pauszek
Writing Democracy
The Political Turn in and Beyond the
Trump Era
Edited by
Shannon Carter, Deborah Mutnick,
Stephen Parks, and Jessica Pauszek
First published 2020
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2020 Taylor & Francis
The right of Shannon Carter, Deborah Mutnick, Stephen Parks,
Jessica Pauszek to be identified as the authors of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019944174
ISBN: 978-1-138-60310-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-46916-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
Contents
List of Images ix
List of Contributors xi
Acknowledgments xiii
1 Introduction: What Does Democracy Look Like? 1
SHANNON CARTER, DEBORAH MUTNICK, STEPHEN PARKS,
AND JESSICA PAUSZEK
PART I
Mapping the Political Turn 25
2 Composition’s Left and the Struggle for Revolutionary
Consciousness 27
JOHN TRIMBUR
3 “Organize as If It Were Possible to Create a Movement
That Will Change the World”: An Interview with Angela Davis 51
LATOYA LYDIA SAWYER AND BEN KUEBRICH
4 Marxist Ethics for Uncertain Times 60
NANCY WELCH
5 A Pedagogy for the Political Turn 82
DEBORAH MUTNICK
PART II
Variations on the Political Turn 109
6 “I’d Like to Overthrow Capitalism, But Meanwhile,
I Would Like the Nazis to be Completely Demoralized”:
An Interview with Dana L. Cloud 111
STEPHEN PARKS
viii Contents
7 Audience Addressed? Audience Invoked? Audience Organized! 123
SETH KAHN
8 Taking a Lead from Student Movements in a “Political Turn” 130
VANI KANNAN
9 Nudging Ourselves Toward a Political Turn 138
PAUL FEIGENBAUM
10 Sustainable Audiences/Renewable Products: Penn State’s
Student Farm, Business Writing, and Community Outreach 150
GEOFFREY CLEGG
11 The Political Turn and the Two-Year College: Equity-
Centered Partnerships and the Opportunities of
Democratic Reform 162
DARIN L. JENSEN
PART III
Taking the Political Turn 175
12 How Does It Feel to be a Problem at the 9/11 Museum? 177
TAMARA ISSAK
13 Dismantling the Wall: Analyzing the Rhetorics of Shock
and Writing Political Transformation 192
STEVEN ALVAREZ
14 Pass the Baton: Lessons from Historic Examples of the
Political Turn, 1967–1968 206
SHANNON CARTER
15 The Visa Border Labyrinths: 310 Colombian and U.S.
Artists and Scholars Write Their Way Through 235
TAMERA MARKO
16 Conclusion: Further Notes on the Political Turn 261
DEBORAH MUTNICK, SHANNON CARTER, STEPHEN PARKS,
JESSICA PAUSZEK
Index 273
List of Images
15.1 PBM South Fronteras 2018: art, conversations, and
research collaborations with immigrants in East Boston 235