Alisa L. Russell
awood14@masonlive.gmu.edu
Phone: 662-397-2661
George Mason University
MA English (Teaching Writing and Literature) Candidate
Graduate Teaching Assistant
Feminist Standpoint Theory as a Framework for Writing Instruction
While Feminist Standpoint Theory engages political reform and knowledge construction,
the theory also provides a foundation for rhetorically and pedagogically significant practices in
the composition classroom. Standpoint Theory, strongly tied to feminist critical theory through
the work of Dorothy Smith, Donna Haraway, and Sandra Harding, contends that knowledge is
situated in physical and individual experiences as opposed to a universalism or relativism. Only
by taking every story into account, especially those outside of the dominant narrative, can we
begin to formulate a web of knowledge that is more reflective of reality and representative of the
whole. Applied to writing practices, Feminist Standpoint Theory forces us to dissolve the
binaries and singular narratives instructors can create when they attempt to standardize a
“multifaceted and fluid” (Sinor and Huston 369) practice. Composition studies have recognized
standpoints in writing practices through Post-Process Theory, but these theories must begin to
shape pedagogical practices in the composition classroom.
After a brief overview of Feminist Standpoint Theory, the presenter will establish how
the theory holds implications for the composition classroom, both in emphasizing student
standpoints and in the writing process itself. She will then explore and define two concrete
practices composition instructors can derive from standpoints to improve writing instruction and
re-emphasize rhetorical contexts: (1) switching from “teaching” writing practices to “modeling”
writing practices paired with peer collaboration and (2) integrating Krista Ratcliffe and Wayne
Booth’s ideas of rhetorical listening in the construction of questions and assignment design,
emphasized with reflective practices. The presentation will urge new and returning composition
instructors to evaluate the theories that shape their writing instruction, and it will provide
practical pedagogical strategies to fully realize student standpoints in writing, a situated practice
that requires situated instruction.
Good afternoon. I am happy to be escorting you over
the finish line for the day. In addition to my English
graduate coursework at George Mason University, I also
teach two sections of First Year Composition. Naturally, I
experience a great deal of my coursework through the
lens of a composition instructor, and a recent course,
Standpoint Theories, was no exception. Throughout the
course, I began to ask questions such as: What are the
implications of Standpoint Theory for writing instruction
and writing students? And further, what concrete
pedagogical strategies can answer these implications? In
my brief talk today, I would like to explore possible
answers to these questions. ENTER First, drawing on the
work of Sandra Harding and Donna Haraway, I will
establish the basic tenants of Standpoint Theory. Then, I
would like to illuminate two major implications for
writing instruction and writing students that arise from
this theory. Finally, after Standpoint Theory and its
relationship to writing instruction is clear, I will offer two
pedagogical strategies that can answer the shift in writing
instruction that Standpoint Theory demands.
Let’s begin with an overview of Standpoint Theory
that creates this valuable framework for writing
instruction. ENTER/ENTER Standpoint Theory first
works against the idea that knowledge can be wholly
objective, neutral, impartial, or universal. Instead, it
contends that knowledge is constantly shaped by
historical, cultural, and social values and beliefs of the
subject, the one constructing and naming knowledge.
ENTER Harding writes, “It is a delusion – and a historical
identifiable one – to think that human thought could
completely erase the fingerprints that reveal its production
process” (128). The problem with deluding oneself into
believing there can be a wholly objective and neutral
knowledge, according to Standpoint Theorists, is that this
knowledge simply reflects and reiterates dominant power
structures.
Since this “objective” knowledge, which is actually
“dominant” knowledge, isn’t really objective, Standpoint
Theory instead suggests that a more objective version of
knowledge construction lies in partial, situated truths.
ENTER Haraway writes,
I am arguing for politics and epistemologies of
location, positioning, and situating, where partiality
and not universality is the condition of being heard to
make rational knowledge claims. These are claims on
people’s lives; the view from a body, always a
complex, contradictory, structuring and structured
body, versus the view from above, from nowhere,
from simplicity. (92)
Creating a web of situated knowledge based out of
individual experiences and surroundings allows for all
lives to be involved in knowledge construction, which in
turn creates a more objective version of truth. Therefore,
Standpoint Theory contends that knowledge is neither
universalist nor relativist, but “partial and
locatable…webs of connections” (Haraway 89).
With this basic explanation of Standpoint Theory in
hand, let us turn back to the writing classroom. ENTER If
truly objective knowledge is constructed from a web of
individual standpoints, then the ENTER first implication
of Standpoint Theory in the writing classroom is the
encouragement and preservation of individual student
standpoints, their own way of viewing the world based on
their historical, cultural, and social backgrounds. Since
each life collectively creates a more objective web of
knowledge, we should seek for every voice to remain
heard and in tact, both in written content and writing
processes. Each student is coming to first year
composition with a different physical view of the world
and will go on to engage different disciplines and
rhetorical situations, so their writing instruction should
allow space for those variables instead of promoting a
single right answer or single writing process. ENTER
David W. Smit beautifully describes standpoints as they
relate to writing practices: “People compose according to
their own individual rhythms, which start and stop, ebb
and flow, according to what comes to mind as they try to
juggle what they want to say in relation to what they have
already said, their larger goal, and their accumulated
experience of how writing should be done in the situation
in which they find themselves” (66).
ENTER/ENTER The second major implication of
Standpoint Theory in the writing classroom is the situated
nature of writing itself. While certain conventions are
expected of certain genres, choices are always steeped in
the rhetorical situation, which must then be negotiated
with the author’s own standpoint. Not only are rhetorical
choices variable from project to project, student to
student, but writing as process is also a situated
knowledge. ENTER Jennifer Sinor and Michael Huston
observe,
Too often teaching writing is reduced to teaching
steps – prewriting, drafting, revising, editing,
publishing – steps that are then plastered on large
multicolored posters in secondary classrooms or
practice in first-year composition. When this
happens, something dynamic and changing – the act
of writing – is distilled into something that can be
prescribed, measured, and assessed. (370)
Therefore, to teach writing as a standardized package,
easily consumed steps, or a one-size-fits-all pattern would
be to diminish the very nature of writing, as well as
student standpoints.
Since it is clear that Standpoint Theory holds
significance as a theoretical framework for writing, we
have arrived at the real challenge: if writing instruction
cannot be standardized in content or process, then how
can it be taught in a writing classroom? ENTER While
some scholars believe this post-process thinking is merely
philosophical, I contend there are at least two pedagogical
shifts that I have made in my own writing classroom to
emphasize student standpoints and the situated nature of
writing, which can lead to transferable and rhetorically
mature learning.
ENTER The first pedagogical shift is not to teach
students content or process, but to rather model either one
or many contextual responses and processes, and then let
students choose and negotiate the best practice for their
standpoints and their rhetorical situations through peer
collaboration.
This shift to modeling is a necessity when you
increase student autonomy in their choices. For example, I
only control one aspect of a writing project and give
students the opportunity to make every other rhetorical
choice on their own. For one genre, the Rhetorical
Analysis, students can choose from four recent articles
covering a range of relevant topics that I provide. In this
way, I can still grade their analyses but they are given
choice according to their desired audience and purpose,
both of which they choose for themselves. Then, the
students have to decide which elements they will be
focusing on in their analysis and how those elements
should be organized.
It is important to note that by allowing the student to
make all of these individual choices, their own
standpoints are allowed to shape those choices, and I
cannot simply teach lessons, but I instead must model
these lessons in various ways. For example, I annotate a
sample article on the screen in front of my students, and
then I voice my thought process as I create an outline, all
the while emphasizing the many different ways my
analysis could be organized. Then, the students create
their own outlines for the sample essay and share with
other students – they see very quickly that they’ve all
chosen to organize an analysis for the same essay in
different ways.
I also use modeling and peer collaboration to
demonstrate situated writing processes. The first week of
the semester, I have students read the chapter on the
writing process in their textbook by Andrea Lunsford,
which provides a very detailed step-by-step list, and Anne
Lamott’s famous essay “Shitty First Drafts” in which she
describes the writing process as a vast mess of writing and
re-writing and hating oneself. In class, I ask students to
discuss which process they are most drawn to, and then I
have them create visual representations of hybrid
processes in groups. Each group member’s standpoint
means they bring distinct preferences that must be
recognized and negotiated. Then, throughout the rest of
the semester, I can refer to the “Lunsford” way, the
“Lamott” way, and some ways between the two for
different class activities. By emphasizing that many of the
class activities are simply based on my writing
preferences and allowing multiple options, I recognize my
own standpoint in the class’s design, and do not allow my
standpoint to silence my students’ standpoints.
ENTER My second pedagogical strategy for realizing
Standpoint Theory in the writing classroom involves not
just asserting one’s own standpoint, but dwelling in
others’ standpoints through what Krista Ratcliffe names
rhetorical listening. She defines rhetorical listening as “a
stance of openness that a person may choose to assume in
relation to any person, text, or culture” (17). Peter Elbow
would refer to this concept as the “believing game”: he
asserts that students need to better learn to “dwell in, enter
in, or experience a multiplicity of views or texts – even
views that seem uncongenial or contradictory” (394). In
Standpoint Theory’s terms, they need to learn to negotiate
the web of partial knowledge. However, rhetorical
listening does not discourage disagreements; it instead
encourages a deep understanding of another’s view, an
equal emphasis on “How can I change their minds?” and
“Does my mind need changing?” (Booth & Elbow 389).
To integrate rhetorical listening into my class, I focus
on one sample essay or article for the entirety of the
scaffolding leading up to a written assignment. For
example, for the Rhetorical Analysis, we analyze and reanalyze William F. Buckley’s “Why Don’t We
Complain” through lessons on audience, stakes, claims,
the appeals, and other rhetorical devices. By the end of
the unit, many students agree with Buckley’s ideas and
many students disagree, but every student has “dwelled”
in his ideas, considered the different angles, and practiced
both believing and doubting in one area or another.
Assignment arcs can also encourage rhetorical
listening. Early in the semester, my students write what I
call a Narrative Argument, which uses the student’s own
personal experience as the evidence to be analyzed to
support a larger argument. Later in the class, as we
construct research questions for a Researched Argument,
the students must reflect on how their own standpoints
lead to the construction of the question, and I reiterate that
their research should change what they think the answer
will be or even the question itself; in this way, they let
other standpoints shape their knowledge. Afterwards, we
compare the Narrative Argument and the Researched
Argument: how did an argument solely constructed from
their own standpoints differ from arguments that took into
account an array of standpoints? In this way, the students
are not only encouraged to dwell in another’s ideas before
making their own, but they can also see how standpoints
lead to knowledge construction, which will further
prepare them for responsible civic engagement.
In closing, these shifts in writing instruction that
grow out of Standpoint Theory, which include modeling
over teaching and emphasizing rhetorical listening, are
not exhaustive. I offer these strategies more as stimulation
for further consideration of Standpoint Theory’s
relevancy in the writing classroom and development of
your own strategies that could better reflect these
concepts in order to empower students to later engage in
crucial political and social change. ENTER Thank you.