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Feminism and ScientismAuthor(s): Elizabeth A. FlynnSource: College Composition and Communication, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Oct., 1995), pp. 353-368Published by: National Council of Teachers of EnglishStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/358710 .
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ElizabethA. Flynn
Feminism and Scientism
We should investigate ways of giving an identity to thesciences, to religions,and to political policies and of
situatingourselves in relation to them as subjectsin our
own right.
LuceIrigaray,"Writingas a Woman"(56)
Clearly,differentiationbetween strongand weak, powerfuland powerless, has been a central defining aspect of genderglobally, carryingwith it the assumptionthat men shouldhave greater authoritythan women, and should rule over
them. As significantand importantas this fact is, it shouldnot obscure the realitythat women can and do participatein politicsof domination, as perpetratorsas well asvictims-that we dominate, that we are dominated.
bell hooks, TalkingBack(20)
n importantheme n recentnvestigationsof composition studies is the field'sfemini-
zation. Compositionists such as Susan
Miller and Sue Ellen Holbrook discuss composition studies' feminine at-tributes and marginal status within the academy as a result of its being
comprised largely of women many of whom teach part time and have
heavy teaching loads. In TextualCarnivals,Miller describescompositionistsas victims and uses the metaphor of the sad woman in the basement, an
allusion to Gilbert and Gubar'sTheMadwomann the Attic.Miller's book is
a portrayal of the field's struggle for legitimacy within the academy and
ElizabethA.Flynn s a professorof Readingand Compositionat Michigan TechnologicalUniver-
sity. She is co-editorof thejournal
Reader, f Gender ndReadingJohns Hopkins, 1986),
and ofConstellationsHarperCollins, 1992, 1995). She has also published essays in College nglish,CCC,and elsewhere. She is president of the Women's Caucus for the Modern Languagesand chairof the CCCCCommittee on the Status of Women in the Profession. Thisessay is partof a largerexploration of relationshipsbetween feminism and reading, writing, and teaching.
CCC46.3/October 1995 353
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354 CCC46/October 1995
especially of its subjugation by its most threatening adversary,the field of
literarystudies that dominates the English departmentswithin which most
composition specialists are housed. This struggle is also beginning to berecounted in articles and books such as The Politics of Writing Instruction
edited by Richard Bullock and John Trimbur.
The concept of feminization is powerful because it suggeststhat feminist
analyses of the situation of women can be usefully applied analogously to
academic fields. If women can be abused and undervalued, fields of studycan be as well. The term needs to be problematized, though, if it is to be
useful in providinga picture of the complexities of the strugglesof compo-sition studies for legitimacyand power within the academy. One limitation
of the feminization metaphor is that it suggests an essentialized and over-
simplified conception of gender. Compositionists are seen primarily as
victims even though we are gaining power within the academy by devel-
oping graduate programsthat are successfully placing students, obtaining
large grants, developing and administering large programs in first-year
English, technical writing, and writing-across-the-curriculum,and devel-
oping and administering writing centers and computing centers. Also,
many compositionists who have gained administrative experience devel-
oping composition programsare now
movinginto
positionsof
powerand
authority within university bureaucracies.
Another limitation of the feminization metaphor is that it suggests the
field is a unified one, though this is hardly the case. Compositionists
occupy positions of varying status within the academy and often have verydifferentteaching, research, or service roles, so conflicts and power strug-
gles among compositionists-sometimes among women and feminist com-
positionists-are inevitable. The battle between Linda Brodkey and some
of her colleagues over the composition curriculum at the University of
Texas at Austin was played out in a national arena. Discussions amongcolleagues at composition conferences suggest, though, that such intra-
group struggles and tensions are widespread. In the early phases of the
field'sdevelopment, the situation of having a common adversary, iterature
specialists, may have united compositionists. As the field has matured,
however, it has tended to fragment.If compositionistshave been sad women in the basement, we have also
attempted to overcome our marginalization through identification with
more powerful fields. If we have been feminized, we have also sometimes
been "masculinized"by attemptingto increase our statusby emulating thetechniques, beliefs, and attitudes of fields more powerful than our own.
Such emulation has been complex and has occurred on multiple sites. I
will focus in this article on the negative consequences of identificationwith
the sciences and social sciences on the part of empiricalresearchers as the
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field struggledto gain stature within the academy, a form of identification
I callscientism.n doing so, though, I do not mean to suggestthat there have
been no positive consequences. Scientifically-oriented empirical researchhas contributed substantially to the field's development and growth. I
might also have tracedscientistic tendencies in humanistic discourses such
as literary theory and rhetorical theory. Scientism is hardly limited to
empiricalresearch.Finally,I could have tracedthe considerable resistance
to scientism within the field especially on the part of compositionistsinfluenced by the work of rhetoricians such as Kenneth Burke and those
whose work derives from neo-Romantic movements such as expressivism.The scientism of empirical researchers is but one of many tendencies
identifiable as part of the emerging field of composition studies and is not
clearly separablefrom other tendencies and influences.
I argue here that recent feminist analyses of gender and power can
illuminate the situation of the profession of composition studies as it has
struggledfor legitimacy and power within the academy. Feminists from a
number of differentorientations have attempted to account for the aliena-
tion that can result when the powerless identify with more powerfulothers. I will call this alienating form of identification "masculinization,"a
termsuggestedby
JudithFetterley's
term "immasculation." usequotationmarks around "masculinization" o indicate my discomfort with its sugges-
tion of a binary conception of gender, a reductive conception of identifica-
tion, and its implication that gender can be detached from other factors
such as race, class, and ethnicity. Feminist critiquesof the sciences and the
social sciences have also made evident the dangers inherent in identifica-
tions with fields that have traditionallybeen male-dominated and valorize
epistemologies that endanger those in marginalized positions. I will also
discuss recent feminisms that have developed theories of resistance, alter-
natives to identifications that can be debilitating. My aim here is not toprovide a revisionary history of the field of composition studies. Such a
projectis fartoo ambitious for a single article.Rather,I will provide a brief
overview of scientistic tendencies within the field and foreground mo-
ments in the field's emergence as a discipline in which identification with
the sciences or social sciences has been used as a defense in the struggle
against its chief adversary, literary studies. I will then explore some alter-
native ways of gaining authority that do not necessitate "masculinized"
identifications with powerful fields.
Feminist Conceptions of "Masculinization"
Feminists, regardlessof theoretical orientation, have attempted to account
for the negative consequences that can result from identification with
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powerful individualsand powerful discourses.JudithFetterleyin her 1978
The ResistingReader,for instance, coined the term "immasculation" to
describe the alienation experienced by women who were taught to thinkas men, to identify with a male point of view, and to accept as normal and
legitimate a system of male cultural values one of whose centralprinciplesis misogyny (xx). Fetterley saw immasculation as a better term than
emasculation for the culturalreality of the power relationsbetween wom-
en and men. Often, Fetterley observed, a woman "isasked to identify with
a selfhood that defines itself in opposition to her; she is requiredto identify
against herself" (xii). Fetterley urged women readers to resist domination,to become resistingreaders.
Other feminist discussions of related ideas can enrich and problematize
Fetterley's conception of immasculation. Julia Kristeva, for instance,
speaks in "AboutChinese Women" of the namelessness of women (140),of a tendency of monotheism, paganism, and agrarian deologies to represswomen and mothers (141). Kristevasees that women have no access to
the word or to knowledge and power (142-43). If they choose identifica-
tion with the mother they remain excluded from language and culture; if
they choose identificationwith the father, they become an Electra, "frigidwith exaltation"
(152).Kristeva
recommends, instead,a middle
way.Pa-
ternal identification is necessary in order to have a voice in the chapter of
politics and history and in order to escape a "smug polymorphism." But
women need to rejectthe development of a "homologous"woman who is
capable and virile by swimming against the tide, by rebelling against the
existing relations of production and reproduction (156).
Doing so is extremely difficult, though, and feminists are beginning to
recognize that feminisms themselves are susceptible to damaging identifi-
cations with dominant discourses. Theoristswho espouse a particularkind
of feminism sometimes identify other feminisms with repressive ideolo-gies. Postmodern feminists, for instance, often see liberal and cultural
feminists as having internalized the values of rationality and enlighten-ment thought, the very values they see as contributing to the oppressionof women. Jane Flax in "TheEnd of Innocence" focuses on the identifica-
tion of white-feminist politics with discourses that are inhospitable to
feminism. Accordingto Flax, liberal feminism and cultural feminism par-
ticipate in the very modes of thought that have resulted in the oppressionof women. She speaks of white-feminist politics as being deeply rooted in
and dependent upon Enlightenment discourses of rights, individualism,and equality (447). She sees feminist discourses such as liberal political
theory, Marxism, and empirical social science as expressing some form of
this Enlightenment dream.Forpostmodern feminists such as Flax, there is
no unitary reality against which our thoughts can be tested. Western
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philosophers create an illusory appearance of unity and stabilityby reduc-
ing the flux and heterogeneity of the human and physical worlds into
binary and supposedly natural oppositions including the oppositionmale/female. Gender is seen as a highly variable and historically contin-
gent set of human practices.It is not a stablething or a universal or unitaryrelation present in all cultures. Flax urges feminists to give up our inno-
cence, to take responsibility by firmly situating ourselves "within contin-
gent and imperfectcontexts, to acknowledge differentialprivileges of race,
gender, geographic location, and sexual identities, and to resist the delu-
sory and dangerous recurrent hope of redemption to a world not of our
ownmaking" (460).Others, however, have pointed out the limitations of postmodern femi-
nisms. In FeminismWithoutWomenTania Modleski is disturbedby liberal
feminism's emphasis on equality. Modleski is also worried, though, about
the tendency within postmodern feminism to eliminate the meaningful-ness of the category of woman altogether. If the critique of essentialist
approaches to feminism is pushed too hard, women disappear almost
completely and are replaced by men. Modleski criticizes the emphasis on
what she calls "malefeminism"in such books as Men in Feminism dited by
Alice Jardine and Paul Smith. Modleski sees that such books, insofar asthey focus on the question of male feminism as a topic for men and women
to engage, bring men back to center stage and divert feminists from tasks
more pressingthan "decidingabout the appropriatenessof the label 'femi-
nist' for men" (6). Modleski also sees that these books presume a kind of
heterosexual presumption and tacitlyassume and promote a liberal notion
of the formal equality of men and women, whose viewpoints are then
accorded equal weight. For Modleski, "feminism without women" can
mean the triumph either of a male feminist perspective that excludes
women or of a feminist anti-essentialism so radicalthat every use of theterm "woman"is disallowed (15). Modleski concludes her book by warn-
ing that the post-feminist play with gender in which differences are elided
can easily lead us back into our "pregendered"past where there was onlythe universal subject-man (163).
These different constructions of identification with more powerful oth-
ers suggest the enormity of the problem and the importance of looking at
it in its complexity rather than through the lens of a single feminist
perspective. The critique of enlightenment rationality is valuable, but it
threatens the meaningfulness of gender as a category. The critique of
patriarchaldomination is valuable, but it tends toward essentialized con-
ceptions of gender. Juxtaposing postmodern feminism and cultural femi-nism serves as a check on the excesses of each.
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Feminist Critiques of the Sciences and Social Sciences
Feminist discussions of "masculinization"are helpfulin
understandingthe
dynamic behind alienating identifications with more powerful others.
Feminist critiques of the sciences and social sciences suggest as well that
these fields may be especially inappropriate or dangerous models for
feminized fields, that is, fields in which women are disproportionately
represented.A number of feminist scholars (Rossiter,Keller,Harding)have
establishedthat the sciences have traditionallybeen a male domain. These
scholarsargue, further,that beliefs in the objectivityof the scientist and the
neutrality of scientificinvestigation serve the interests of those in positions
of authority and power, usually white males, and serve to exclude those inmarginalized positions. Identification by women or by feminized fields
with the sciences and social sciences, therefore, may necessitate association
with discourses that ignore issues of concern to those in marginalized
positions and that arise out of epistemologies antithetical to their needs
and interests.
For instance, feminist scientist Ruth Berman in "FromAristotle's Dual-
ism to Materialist Dialectics: Feminist Transformationof Science and Soci-
ety" argues that dualist ideology pervadeswestern science and philosophy
and serves the interests of those in positions of power. Berman is carefulto provide a complex view of both gender and power, acknowledging that
a simple dichotomy of male/female is itself dualistic and ignoresthe specificdetails of power relationships, the contradictions within "maleness,"and
differencesamong women (241). She nevertheless sees that both Plato and
Aristotle depict mind and body as split with the mind associated with a
master class,males, and the body associated with an inferiorclass, females.
She argues that Descartes,while preservingthe eternal, supernaturalchar-
acter of the soul, transformedthe body into a machine (240). He held that
rational thought is objective and it, alone, leads to truth. The Cartesian
perspective, accordingto Berman, conceptualizes phenomena as composedof discrete, individual, elemental units, the whole consisting of an assem-
blage of these separate elements. It also assumes a linear, quantitativecause-effect relationship between phenomena (235). Berman calls for a
materialist dialectics that sees change as directionalrather than random, as
a complex process characterizedby dialecticalstruggle,tension, and turbu-
lence (244).A number of other feminists have established that research methods in
the sciences and the social sciences, while claiming to be objective and
neutral, actuallyreveal a strongmale bias.Women are often excluded from
research samples, and researchers make extraordinary claims for their
research because they do not recognize or admit that their own prejudices
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and values affect research results. Toby Jayaratne and Abigail Stewart
summarize some of the objections feminists have made to traditional
quantitativeresearchmethods in their essay, "Quantitativeand QualitativeMethods in the Social Sciences: Current Feminist Issues and Practical
Strategies."Such criticismfocuses on selection of sexist and elitist research
topics; the absence of research on questions of central importance to
women; biased researchdesigns, including selection of only male subjects;an exploitative relationshipbetween researcher and the subjectand within
research teams; the illusion of objectivity; the simplistic and superficialnature of quantitative data; improper interpretation and over-generaliza-tion of findings; and inadequate data dissemination and utilization (86).
Jayaratne and Stewart make evident that uncritical acceptance of the
epistemological underpinnings and methods of the sciences and social
sciences is risky for those in marginalized positions.
Feminist Conceptions of Resistance
Feminist critique is almost always accompanied by some conception of
resistance, some exploration of how to neutralize the power of conscious
and unconscious identificationssuch
as those described above. Ifpowerfulothers can be emulated, they can also be resisted. Feminist conceptions of
resistance are not necessarily oppositional. In Yearning,or instance, bell
hooks speaks of the "homeplace"as a site of resistance, of healing. It is a
place where the oppressedcan heal themselves in the midst of suffering,a
place of refuge that will allow them to see clearly. Resistance can also
suggest some form of new situationing so as to change the status quo.Judith Butler in Bodies hatMatter,or instance, focuses on the abjection of
lesbians and gays, and suggests that terms such as "queer" hat have been
used to subject a group can be reclaimed to enable social and politicalresignification (231).
Ernesto Laclau and Chantel Mouffe in Hegemonyand SocialistStrategy
emphasize that relations of oppression are characterizedby antagonismand awareness of inequality.Resistance becomes possiblewhen individuals
become aware that their relationshipswith others are unequal. Laclau and
Mouffe say, "Our thesis is that it is only from the moment when the
democraticdiscoursebecomes available to articulate the differentforms of
resistance to subordination that the conditions will exist to make possible
the struggle against different types of inequality" (154). Democratic dis-course, then, makes resistancepossible.
Others make a useful distinction between resistance and collective
political action. Resistancemay give rise to collective political action but is
not synonymous with it. In Henry Giroux'sterms, resistance "contains the
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possibility" of galvanizing political struggle, but is still only a state of
awareness that precedes change. In WomenTeachingorChance:Gender,Class
and Power,Kathleen Weiler draws on the work of Antonio Gramsciandothers to distinguish between counter-hegemony and resistance. Accord-
ing to Weiler,counter-hegemony implies criticaltheoretical understandingand is expressed in organized and active political opposition (54). Resis-
tance, in contrast, is usually informal, disorganized,and apolitical (54).Feminists, regardless of orientation, almost always hold out the hope
that processes of subjugation, including processes that result in alienatingidentifications with the powerful, can be countered in some way, even if
these attempts are not entirely successful. Implicit in the concept of resis-
tance is the belief that those in marginalized positions can take action to
improve their situation, can reterritorializediscoursesthat have dominated
them and with which they have consciously or unconsciously identified.
Scientism and Beyond
The site of composition studies as it emerged as a discipline is well-suited
to a feminist analysis of the damaging effects of scientistic tendencies on
the field and to anexploration
of alternativeways
ofachieving legitimacywithin the academy. In the field's early years, research was often synony-
mous with scientifically-oriented empirical research, and identifications
with the sciences and social sciences were clear attempts to gain authority
by association with more authoritative discourses. As composition studies
has matured, though, it has embraced the research methods and ap-
proaches of a number of different fields and as a result its associations
with scientific traditionshave become increasingly self-reflective and self-
critical.
In the early years of its development composition studies relied heavilyon research models developed in the social sciences, especially psychologyand education. A prevalent approachinvolved comparison of groups that
were given different treatments. In such an approach, the researcher
formulates a hypothesis, selects an experimental group and a control
group, administersa treatment to the experimental group, and attempts to
measure the effect of the treatment. Every attempt is made to eliminate
possible contaminating effects of the researcher's ntervention and to limit
the number of variablesbeing measured and controlled. The results of such
experiments were often granted the authority of scientific knowledge.Stephen North in TheMaking of Knowledgen Compositionays that he
assembleda list of well over 1,000experimental studies conducted between
1963 and 1985 and thinks that the total number is closer to 1,500-morestudies than that produced by all of the other research methods combined
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(142). North sees the experimentalists as the oldest and the largest com-
munity of researchers within composition studies (141), though he does
not think they have exercised anything like a proportionate influence onthe field (144).
This commitment to scientific approaches to research is evident in
Researchn WrittenComposition,dited by RichardBraddock,RichardLloyd-Jones, and Lowell Schoer and published in 1963. Braddock,Lloyd-Jones,and Schoer make clear that they only included research that employed"scientificmethods" such as controlled experimentation. They argue that
research in composition has not frequently been conducted with the
knowledge and care that one associates with the physical sciences, and
they compare research in composition to chemical research as it emergedfrom the period of alchemy (5). Of the references for further research
that they append to their study, all 504 are, in one form or another,
experimental.
By the late 1970s, however, empirically-oriented compositionists beganto recognize some limitations of the field's scientificapproachesto compo-sition research. Research nComposing:ointsofDeparture, ublished in 1978
and edited by CharlesCooperand Lee Odell, for instance, accepts compari-
son-group research as a valuable approach to the study of writing, butplaces considerably greater emphasis on the importance of theory and
cautions that research results should be seen as tentative rather than
definitive.
Lateroverviews of empiricalresearch in composition studies provide an
increasinglycriticalperspective on scientificapproachesto research. Lillian
Bridwell and Richard Beach in their 1984 New Directions n CompositionResearch, peak of the "mistakes of the past" that occurred because we
"grosslyoversimplifiedthe nature of written language and the processesby
which humans create it" (12). They emphasize the need for a more validand comprehensive theoretical base for research in composition and call
for studies that relate writing to social, political,and psychological contexts
(6). LikeCooperand Odell,they call for acknowledgment of the limitations
of research methods (9).The follow-up volume to Braddocket al.'sResearchn WrittenComposition,
published in 1986 and written by George Hillocks, is more directly critical
of experimental research.In an introduction to the volume, RichardLloydJones effectively dissociates himself from his earlier co-authored work by
claiming that he is actually a "rhetorical heorist." The material he exam-ined in 1963, he says, "forced me into empiricism" (xiv). Lloyd-Jones
applaudsthe farmore variedapproachto researchin Hillocks'study,which
includes case studies and protocols. Also, Hillocks includes in the book an
extended discussion of criticisms of experimental studies including prob-
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lems with control of variables and reporting of data. By the late 1980s,
scientisticcomposition was coming under serious attackby compositionists
with political orientations but also by researchers who had begun theircareersdoing scientificwork.
By 1988, when Janice Lauer and J. William Asher published their
Composition esearch: mpiricalDesigns, here was clearly a need to defend
empiricalresearch itself and to explain it to a community of composition-ists with commitments to more humanistic approaches to scholarship.Alan Purves in his foreword speaks of the need to supplement traditions
of humanistic researchby social science research;Lauer and Asher in their
preface are also defensive. In response to those who have responded to
empirical research either by dismissing it or by accepting its conclusions
indiscriminately, they argue "that an adequate study of the complex do-
main of writing must be multidisciplinary,including empirical research"
(ix). They call for communication among composition theorists, writinginstructors, and empirical researchers and for respect for each other's
efforts (ix).In "HearingVoices in English Studies," Margaret Baker Graham and
Patricia Goubil-Gambrelltrace the field's movement away from method-
ologiesof the sciences and social sciences toward
methodologiesof the
humanities by examining recent issues of Researchn theTeachingfEnglish.
They observe that in 1978, Alan Purves, editor at the time, noted that RTE
was publishing fewer experimental studies and more qualitative studies.
By the time Judith Langerand Arthur Appleby's tenure as editors of the
journal, accordingto Graham and Goubil-Gambrell,quantitative research
was no longer the unquestioned methodology of choice in RTE.They also
see that SandraStotsky,the latest editor,has continued to shift the empha-sis away from empiricism (111).
Scientism vs. LiteraryStudies
This brief overview makes clear that empiricalresearchers within compo-sition studies have themselves become increasingly aware of the dangersof uncritical acceptance of the methods of the sciences and the social
sciences in the study of reading and writing. Emulation of scientific meth-
ods can lead to reductive conceptions of language and to unwarranted
conclusions. Also, scientifically-oriented composition research, originally
embraced, in partat least, as a defense against its nemesis, literarystudies,is losing its effectiveness as literary theorists influenced by postmodernist
critiquesof enlightenment rationalityhave begun to question the author-
ity of scientificclaims. Identifications intended to enhance the field's status
can result, ironically,in increasedvulnerability. Essays by Maxine Hairston
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and Linda Flower illustrate some ways in which scientism has been used
to gain authority and even dominance within the academy and within
English departments.Hairston's"The Winds of Change," published in 1982, was written in
the spiritof Braddock,Lloyd-Jones,and Schoer'sResearchn WrittenCompo-sition.In this essay, Hairston is enthusiastic about scientific approaches to
the study of writing. She invokes Thomas Kuhn's The Structure f ScientificRevolutions, rguing that the field of composition studies, at the time she
was writing, was undergoing a paradigm shift from a product-oriented
paradigm to a process-oriented one. The reliance on Kuhn is itself an
indication of Hairston'sacceptance of a scientific frame of reference, and
perhaps, as well, what Robert Connors in "CompositionStudies and Sci-
ence" calls a "yearning toward the power and success of the natural
sciences" (4). More importantly, though, Hairston attributes the emer-
gence of an enlightened approach to the teaching of writing to research
and experimentation. Empirical nvestigations of the composing processesof actual writers have given us the data we need to understand how
writing really is accomplished, she claims. Those in the vanguard of the
profession, Hairstontells us, are "attentively watching the researchon the
composing processin order to
extract some pedagogical principlesfrom it"(78). For the firsttime in the history of teaching writing, Hairstonsays, we
have specialistswho are doing "controlledand directed research on writ-
ers' composing processes" (85). Even graduate assistants in traditional
literary programs are getting their in-service training, according to Hair-
ston, from rhetoric and composition specialistsin their departments (87).That Hairston saw empirical research in composition as a defense
against the domination of literary studies becomes clear in "Diversity,
Ideology, and Teaching Writing"published in 1992, ten years after "The
Winds of Change."In the essay she refers back to her 1985 CCCCchair'saddressin which she warned that the field needed to establish its psychol-
ogical and intellectual independence from the literarycritics if it hoped to
flourish. She then proceeds to rail against the radical left whom she thinks
are attempting to co-opt the field (187). By 1992, though, empiricalresearch was losing its power as a defense, and Hairston'stone changesfrom the spiritedoptimism of "TheWinds of Change"to anger and frustra-
tion.
Linda Flower's"Cognition,Context, and Theory Building,"published in
1989, though ostensibly an acknowledgment of the social and politicaldimensions of writing, and hence an acceptance of approachesto languageadvanced by literary theorists committed to postmodernism, is ultimatelyan argument for the superiority of scientific approaches to research over
other approaches. In this essay, Flower is indirectly responding to critics,
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no doubt including literary or cultural theorists within her own depart-ment, who challenge the idea that empiricalresearch has greaterauthority
than other forms of research.An essay by David Shumway, published several years after Flower's,
suggests the nature of the critique of her work that may have motivated
her essay. Shumway, a colleague of Flower's at CarnegieMellon, acknow-
ledges in "Science, Theory, and the Politics of Empirical Studies in the
English Department"that Flower is not a naive empiricist.He nevertheless
finds her claim that her work aims to build theory unconvincing and the
cognitive theory she employs self-reproducing (155). Shumway suggeststhat empiricalstudies such as those conductedby Flower and others should
be viewed as argumentsthat have the same epistemological statusas other
forms of discourse and that empirical data should be seen as having the
same status as other forms of evidence (156).In "Cognition,Context, and Theory Building,"Flower provides a care-
ful, well-developed defense against her challengers, though she never
explicitly acknowledges who they are or what their charges are. The goalof her essay, she says, is the development of an "integratedtheoretical
vision" that will bring together theories that explain literacy in terms of
individualcognition
and those that see social and cultural context as the
motive force in literate acts (282). Her answer is an interactive theory that
will explain how context cues cognition, and how cognition, in turn,mediates and interprets the particularworld that context provides (282).She calls for a "groundedvision" that can place cognition in its context
while celebrating the power of cognition to change that context (284).Flower claims that cognition and context interact equally and reciprocally,so there is no need to frame the question of how they can be integratedin
terms of conflict or power imbalances (287). Flower aims to eliminate rigid
boundaries and artificial distinctions, values integration and synthesis,and attempts to demonstrate that intellectual traditions are not necessar-
ily competing and agonistic. As the essay proceeds, however, it becomes
clear that she implicitly privileges empirical research over other forms of
research.
Flower takes pains to make it clear that she is not a naive positivist who
believes that knowledge can be found simply by observing external realityand recordingone's findings. She demonstrates she is aware that observa-
tion involves interpretation and argumentation when she says, "Within
the conventions of research,however, the 'results' of a given study, espe-cially those which merely show a correlation, are just one more piece of
evidence in cumulative, communally constructed argument" (300). But
while she has come a long way from the simplistic cognitive theories she
was advancing in the late 70s and early 80s, she is finally not successful in
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Flynn/Feminism and Scientism 365
overcoming her earlier commitments to cognitivism and positivism. For
one thing, she has a limited conception of context. She says that context
includes (but is apparentlynot limited to) other people, the past, and thesocial present, cultural norms, available language, intertextuality, assign-ment giving, and collaboration(287). It would thus seem here that context
includes everything other than the individual language user. It becomes
clear as the essay progresses, though, that for Flower, context means the
immediate social context within which a writer is situated, the context of
the classroom or of an immediate group of peers (287). The historicalpast,the linguistic system, intertextuality,and other factors seem to drop out of
the picture entirely.And although Flower admits that context can be either
nurturing or oppressive (289), it becomes obvious that the individualwriter she describesinhabitsa relativelybenign world where intentions are
purposeful and fully conscious. She dismisses conceptions of context that
emphasize its overdetermination and complexity and conceptions of re-
search that insist on the situatedness and partialityof the researcher.
For all of Flower's insistence that research is not a simple matter of
gathering and reporting data in a transparent way, she continues to use
language such as "Good data is assertive and intractable" (299). Such
statements suggest that the researcher is apassive
absorber ratherthan an
active agent, a view of research that is at odds with an interactional
approachto language where the writer (who is also the researcherin this
case) is seen as mediating contextual cues and as being a purposeful and
active producerof meaning. Flower'sdesire to connect seemingly disparatediscourses and to view their interaction as benign and non-conflictual,
certainly a utopian impulse, becomes a defense of the authority and value
neutrality of the empirical researcherand, implicitly, of the superiorityof
the resultsof such research over other kinds of research.Empiricismresults
in authoritative truth claims because it makes use of data that accuratelydescribereality.
Some Consequences and Alternatives
I have argued that scientific approachesto the study of writing have often
led to the development ofreductive conceptions of readingand writing, as
well as to limited conceptions of the role of the researcherin the research
process. Composition studies' longing for legitimacy and power within the
academy has sometimes resulted in identifications that have had unfortu-nate consequences. Though valuable in providing composition studies an
identity separate from that of literary studies early in the field's develop-ment, scientism has also provided composition studies a false sense of the
significanceand authority of its research results. But in recent years scien-
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366 CCC46/October 1995
tism has begun to lose its effectiveness as a defense against postmodernist
literarytheorists who insist that scientific truth claimsare no more authori-
tative than other kinds of truth claims.A commitment to scientism has at times limited our vision of what
should be investigated. Too often we have allowed other fields to dictate
to us, not recognizing the importance of having research questions and
methods grow out of our own problems and questions. Ellen Quandahl
points out in "TheAnthropological Sleep of Composition"that we have
focused so exclusively on the writing student as the subjectof compositionthat we have neglected to examine the work of reading and writing itself
(426). This neglect is no doubt a result of allowing other fields and
disciplines to determine what our research questions and methods will be
rather than developing our own. As Gesa Kirsch and Joy Ritchie observe
in their essay "Beyond the Personal:Theorizing a Politics of Location in
Composition Research,"strong identifications with traditionalapproachesto empirical research have also resulted in our neglecting to collaborate
with research subjects in the development of research questions, the
interpretation of data at both the descriptive and interpretive levels, and
the writing of research reports.
One especiallyserious consequence of the earlydominance of empiricistmethods and epistemologies has been that feminist and other approachesthat provide richly contextual and politicized representations of languagehave been ignored until quite recently. We have not developed strategiesof resistance that these approaches would encourage. The story NancySommers tells in "Between the Drafts"of her identification with more
powerful male theorists and the consequence of this identification, a
muting of her own voice, powerfully demonstrates the debilitatingeffects
of "masculinized"approaches to research. She speaks of being stuck in a
way of seeing, reproducing the thoughts of others, using them as herguides (28).
Composition studies needs to develop strategies for resisting those as-
pects of the fields with which it has identified that threaten its develop-ment and growth. This does not necessarily mean that scientific methods
and epistemologies need to be rejected. It does mean, though, that we
cannot rely on our associationwith more powerful fields to confer author-
ity on our work, and we have to borrow carefullyand critically est we find
ourselves asking inappropriate questions, employing inappropriatemeth-
ods, and embracing perspectives that leave us vulnerable in the face ofpersistent challenges by literarytheorists and others.
The recent embrace within composition studies of discourses of resis-
tance such as cultural studies and feminist studies is promising because it
allows for self-reflexivity about research practices and for resistance to
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Flynn/Feminism and Scientism 367
co-optation by dominant discourses. It also encourages collaboration
among literary specialists and composition specialists. But identifications
with discourses of resistance can be as dangerous, if not more dangerous,than identifications with the sciences and the social sciences, since an
ostensible commitment to the elimination of power imbalances can some-
times mask a will to power. As I have suggested, the authority of the
sciences and the social sciences has been seriously challenged by composi-tionists in recent years. But that authority can be replaced by the authorityof discourses of resistance, with the result that debilitating identifications
take new forms ratherthan being eliminated.
Some compositionists and the field itself are unquestionably gaining
power within the academy. A reasonably healthy job market in composi-tion studies and in related fields such as technical communication is an
important contributing factor to our growing strength, especially given
unhealthy markets in numerous other fields including the sciences. There
is the possibilitythat in coming to power we will merely reproduce already
existing power imbalances or create new ones. My hope, however, is that
we will use the power we are achieving to develop democratic research
practicesand administrative and pedagogical structures.
Acknowledgments:wish to thank Sharon Crowley, LisaEde, John Flynn, Glenda Gill,Debbie
Fox, Gesa Kirsch,Susan Jarrett,Jennifer Slack, Kurt Spellmeyer,Rob Wood, and an anony-mous CCCeviewer for the help they providedas I have revisedthe essay.I was also assistedbyfacultyand graduatestudents in the English Departmentat Ohio StateUniversitywho listenedto a version of the piece and provided very useful feedback.
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