MICHELLE SIDLER
RICHARD MORRIS
What is the state of the Berlinian cultural studies legacy in the field of composition today? James Berlin accomplished a great deal in the area of cultural studies and composition in a short time, but when Berlin died three years ago, he was still, as Harkin has noted, in the process of fine tuning his cultural studies heuristic and just beginningto deal with the problems involved in moving this area of composition from invention to arrangement (496).In the wake of his loss, several questions persist: While Berlin left a cultural studies and composition legacy, what has now become of both the theory and the practice he worked so hard to implement in the composition classroom? As composition instructors who are informed by his cultural studies theories and practices, where do we take this heritage, and how do we use and develop it?l
Several subsequent examinations of his pedagogy aswell asBerlin's last book have not addressed many of these issues. While attendingasession on Berlin's work at the 19974Cs in Phoenix and after reading the subsequent pub lication of the panel proceedings infA C, several of us who had studied with and been men tored by Berlin realizedthat fewpeople know about the very specific,the very concrete and productive practices that many of Berlin's "heirs"usein their classrooms. Those of us who still work from his theories and practices were startled to discover what has become a theory-practice gap:com position teachers finding themselves wondering how Berlin's pedagogy has relevance for their classroom practices. Because many writing instructors may be unaware of the ways former mentees and graduate students have been emp loying Berlin's critical-composingparadigm, the two of us feltaneed to share this work and insight.
Several of his former students are still working from his theories, expanding, honing, and developing his insights; moreover, many who studied and mentored with Berlin are moving beyond his initial cultural studies pedagogy.' Consequently, the legacy of post -Berlinian practice is rich and diverse. As teachers who trained under Berlin and expanded his practices, what we hope to do here isto begin to show some of the ways Berlin's theories have evolved into effective pedagogy. We will first give an overview of our conception of cultural studies and composition. Then, after
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reviewing the Berlinian heuristic, we will show how this new theoretical view is enacted in three areas of the cultural studies-composition classroom: in the position­ ing of the cultural studies-composition teacher, in our revamping of the Berlinian heuristic, and in our integration of arrangement asamajor issue in acultural studies­ composing process model. As we move through each section, we will contextualize our discussion of that area,explaining the theoretical departures from Berlin and their consequences for our view of acultural studies pedagogy. We acknowledge that our discussions of both theory and practice here will be limited to particular points; it is, rather, our intention and our hope to begin an extended discussion as well as to encourage others who have developed cultural studies theories and practices that have evolved from Berlin's to come forward and share them.
Cultural Studies Is a Methodological Paradigm We begin by addressing the issue of cultural studies itself. Severalcontributors to the JamesBerlin issueof WorksandDaysmention that many members of the composition comm unity view cultural studies as nothing more than another name for avague notion of multiculturalism or "pop culture" studies.3 We want to declareemphatically that cultural studies isnot merely an issueof subject matter; that is,of studying discrete topics of diverse and! or popular culture; rather, cultural studies ismethodology. It is, forus, asit was for Berlin, not just introducing film, TV, computer games, or any of the various cultural artifacts that are so commonly found in many composition classrooms these days; cultural studies is the systematic process of inquiry that examines human interactions with cultural institutions and artifacts. Moreover, it is from conceiving cultural studies asprocess and not product that we have begun to integrate it into a revised system of composition and pedagogy, to create a post­ Berlinian classroom methodology. Although grounded in Berlin's prior notion of social epistemic rhetoric, our cultural studies theory has, consequently, evolved from Berlin's in several ways.
Primarily, we believe that culture iscomposition. As we have said,culture isnot just artifact or "end-product" nor even the use of the artifact; it is all the processes of needing, conceiving, producing, consuming, and sharing acultural artifact, whether that artifact isan object, institution, relationship, belief,or idea. Theoretically, we trace this line of thought, asdid Berlin, from structuralism and its tenet that every cultural artifact is atext. Unlike Brodkey, we do not understand how atext can be separable from discourse since discourses are composed of multiple, interactive, and variable texts that are read aspeople use and live in them (492).In making the world textual, we asteachers try to givestudents the ability to identify and accessmany facetsof their diverse cultural worlds; consequently, in making their worlds textual and accessible, we can then begin to teach students to decode and understand discreet texts that arise within various discourses, which may then be examined aswell. Not surprisingly, it follows that if every cultural artifact is atext, then-drawing upon constructionist thought-every text isconstructed. And in pursuing this chain ofthought--which we admit isextremely simplified, but isneither simplistic nor arbitrary-then every text iscomposed, and every cultural artifact isthus subject to aprocess of composition.
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In the creation and maintenance of acultural artifact-whether those processes are enacted by individuals or even by national or international institutions-writers continuously invent, arrange, and style culture; our students invest culture with purpose and context (and often ignore and sometimes challenge them); all humans both create culture for an audience and consume it asaudience. But culture isnever static, and it isnever consumed without implication or consequence. Neither is it consumed consistently or orderly. Human beingsreviseculture constantly to fit their contexts and purposes. Byusing culture writers compose and recompose it endlessly and continuously to giveform and content to their lives,to address the multiple and diverse situations of their lives.
Accordingly, the processesof composition arenever only and always linear and progressive. We might add from our experiences of examining students' papers (as well as from our own of producing them), it is never as orderly as teachers are sometimes ledto believe. In this postmodemist age,culture isaprocess of continuous composition, and composition isacontinuous process that never really ends with the turning in of apaper, its response from teachers, and its return to the student with a grade. Even after the discrete products of the composition classroom-student papers-have "hit the wastecan," the processes-and our students might say the "fallout "-continue. The issues and insights, modes of behavior and belief­ including both criticalthinking and composing skills-raised in the paper remain with and continue to develop in the student long after the paper is forgotten.
Our classes should not only uncover and decode these cultural processes­ acknowledging them asthe tools of understanding, of the continuous processes of making and remaking society-but teachers must also begin to recognize that composition and culture areinextricably linked and that we asteachers must dealwith such linkages ifwe are to meet the needs of our students aswell asthe needs of the society. Adhering to the sentiments of Berlin and many of his colleagues such as Aronowitz and Shor, we seeour students ascitizens, that isas"politicalagent]s]," and recognize that our classroom isasiteof democratic education (Berlin,Rhetorics112). It is in the composition classroom that teachers must addressculture ascomposition (aswell asrecomposition), aprocess of writing that can empower students asagents of social justice and democracy.
If we as composition instructors think about the composition of culture as opposed to the formal "Composition" genrescurrently taught in classrooms, we may realize that this second manifestation isbut one aspectof composition and that there are many forms or manifestations of composition. The question here should be:why arewe teaching certain types of composition instead of embracing a larger classroom definition of composition? What Composition-as aset of courses and asadiscrete field-has done is disciplinized writing, making certain types of writing the realm of Composition. We teach the accepted academic forms of writing and neglect those types that operate in the realm of our civic and professional lives. And while we study the content of culture with our students in our cultural studies classrooms, we may find ourselves still requiring them to compose for and in the academy . It is our contention that if teachers are going to engage a
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cultural studies pedagogy, we should move beyond the limitations of content­ based study and academicgenre and engagecomposition asasystem of culture, asasystem of composing. Cultural composition entailsmore than just choosing whether or not to include popular culture asapapertopicortwo; it entailsanew approach to allfacetsofwriting.
While this assertion raisesa lot of questions about what should be taught in compositionclassroomsandhow,it doesnot necessarilymeanthatwritinginstructors should disbandallparametersaround our discipline.When teachersaddressculture in composition,wedo not meanto imply that many ofthe issuesthat constitute the study ofwriting-invention, arrangement, style,rhetorical situation-will be ne­ glected. On the contrary, we hope to retool and refocusthese areasto reflect the complexsocial,political,andeconomicfactorsthat impactwriting.Neither doesthis meanthat alltextsandallwritingareequal;sometypesofwritingwillimpactstudents' experiencesmore than others . Writing teachersmust,however, engagethose texts that students encounter on aregularbasisboth in the academicworld aswell asin their social,political,andcorporate lives.When weasteacherslook atour students andtheir interactionswith theworld,our majorconcernshouldbetheirconstruction anduseofculturalprocessesandthe formsthat emergefrom thoseprocesses.When welook atour studentsandtheirwritingintheworld,theformsweshouldbeteaching and engagingarethe forms that students usein the world.
Therefore,forus,theculturalstudiesheuristic(thatwewillsubsequentlypresent) ismore than an exploration of subject matter: it is alsoacomposing theory that considers process issuesof invention, arrangement, style, revising,audience,and purpose asfunctions ofthe culturalcontext ofstudents' experiences.'Eachofthese composition stagesmerits consideration, but it often seemsthat in cultural studies discussions,invention strategiesaredealtwith the most, andwevery much want to address issuesof cultural arrangement asacomposingconcern. However, in the pedagogyofculturalcompositionthatweareenactinghere,theprocessesofinvention arethe processesofarrangement. Consequently,wewant to presentthisheuristicas the framework of a composing system, one that at least begins to implode the rhetoricaldivisionsofinvention andpost-invention,interpretation andcomposing, or "brainstorming" andorganizing.
Wesubmitthat thiscollapseofinvention-arrangement(andultimatelystyleand revising)will alsoleadto anew way of teachingstudents to look at their own texts ascultural texts, processesthat they use in their lives. In this way, the heuristic representscultural studiesasthe studyofculturalcomposing. Werealizethat aswe present this heuristic, it appearswearestartingfrom adiscretenotion of invention. Wecontend, rather, that asstudentsexamineculturethrough thismechanism,they are also fully working with the processesof arrangement and style, forming and reformulatingaudiences,contexts,andpurposes:they areengagedineveryaspectof composing. After examiningthe "inventionstage"ofculturalcomposition,wewill work from itasaspringboardto discussissuesof"arrangement,"includingrhetorical factors that connect thesetwo issuessuchasaudience,context, andpurpose.
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BerlinianCulturalStudies Before we discuss the position of the teacher, move to show how several of us have changed and expanded the Berlinian heuristic, and then examine aprocess approach to cultural arrangement, we feel that it isnecessary to review Berlin's approach. In his finalbook, Rhetorics,Politics,andCulture:RefiguringCollegeEnglishStudies,Berlin began more explicitly to set forth this method, which usesstudents' experiences and interactions with texts to examine economic, political, and cultural formations. In the Berlinian composition classroom, the texts to be read and decoded may be assigned readings, institutions associated with work, aspects of education such as tracking, identity formations around such categories as gender, class, or race, architectural structures such as the layout of a college classroom or arnall, orthe relationships of the family among others. Any person, belief, institution, relation­ ship, behavior, or object isopen to cultural exploration, that is, asBerlin tells us, to "an examination of the cultural codes-the social semiotics-that work themselves out in shaping consciousness in our students and ourselves" (Berlin Rhetorics116).
Starting with the personal experiences of the students, Berlin notes that this cultural studies pedagogy's "main concern is the relation of current signifying practices to the structuring of subjectivities-of race, class, sexual orientation, age, ethnic, and gender formations" (Rhetorics116).In the classroom, students are first given readings fora unit on, for example, gender, work, or education, and then, as Berlin states, "students must locate the key terms in the discourse and situate these terms within the structure of meaning of which they form apart" (117).These key terms are repeated words or concepts in awritten text orthe most observable features of anon-written text.
Noting how finding key terms revealsthe values,beliefs,and behaviors advocated by atext, Berlin-adding aDerridean turn to this examination-also asks students to find what isnot privileged in the text. In addressing the relationship of the binary opposites (asthe excluded or invisible terms' to the key terms, Berlin maintains,
These [key] terms, of course, derive from the central preoccupations of the text, but to determine how they work to constitute experience, students must examine their functions as parts of coded structures-a semiotic system. The terms are first set in relation to their binary opposites assuggestedby the text itself....Sometimes these oppositions are indicated explicitly in the text, but more often they are not. Students must also learn that a term commonly occupies aposition in opposition to more th an one other term. (Rhetorics117)
The listing of the key terms of atext and their binary opposites reveals the roles and cultural narratives (and thus the beliefs, values, and behaviors associated with those roles and narratives) that students are involved with.
Working from this binary, oppositional activist teachers lead and prod students to find the prejudices set up in the privileging of certain roles and the devaluing and denigration of others (Berlin "Composition" 48,54). Students then come to realize that the "binaries arearranged hierarchically ,with one term privileged over the other" (Rhetorics118).From examining the binary, they can, asBerlin observes, "explore their own complicity and resistance in responding to this role" (118),particularly in regard
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Towards a Post-Berlinian Practice: Teacher, Invention, Arrangement In settingup our post-Berlinianheuristic,westillusethe frameworkofhispedagogy. We agree whole heartedly with his goal of "preparing critical citizens for a participatory democracy" (Berlin, Rhetorics97), and we think that one of our colleagues,]ohn Trimbur, saidit best:Berlinwanted to "evokeasocial-democratic citizen-workerasthesubjectofrhetoric," (Trimbur 501)what wewouldcallacitizen­ rhetor. This isour hope aswelL Many of usstillbeginour classesby teaching our students that everything isatext and that wewant to givethem the tools to decode anytext.Andweinitiateculturalanalysisbyteachingourstudentsto findthekeyterms, but, aswehavenotedpreviously,wehaveextendedandemendedandreformulatedsome ofBerlin'sapproaches-some by onlydegreesandvalences,somemore pointedly.
The Post-Berlinian Activist Teacher Berlinlongcalledfor anoppositionalpolitics-a callinwhich westillbelieveandstill heed-and had often advocated activist teachers as the center of debate and opposition in the classroomto hegemonicdiscourses("Composition" 48,54).But in seekingan"oppositional" pedagogy,heenvisionedleftistteacherswho would be insistent in leadingstudents "to problematize the ideologicalcodesinscribedintheir attitudesandbehavior"(53).AsBerlinrecordsandaswefoundinour classes,students resistedthistype of"in-your-face"confrontation (52-54).Opposition andconfronta­ tion only bred stifferopposition andresistance.The teacherbecamepolarizer, not enlightener. Furthermore, we found that, as one colleague has since recorded, students would nonetheless "negotiate the leftist" teacher by regurgitating leftist writing (Miles,"Lingering"241).When thestudentlefttheclassroomandtheteacher­ centeredenvironment, weaskedourselves,how much social-epistemiclearninghad been accomplished?Our dissatisfiedanswerwas,not much. Wefeltthat weneeded to re-examine the position of the cultural studiesteacher in the classroom aswell; consequently,wedidtwo things.
First,wetook the questioningtools out ofthehandsofthe teacherandput them into the hands of the students. Thus, we attempted to dispel in Berlinian cultural studiesacurrent that SusanMillerhascalledthe "fatherly imperative" (498).In our classroomsstudentsteachandevenchoosethe texts,conduct the investigations,pose the questions,anddebatethe issueswith eachother-with the teacheractingasguide, sometimes devil'sadvocate, or even"traffic director." Bydirecting their cultural
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explorations, many students come to a certain degree of social and economic awareness. Most of them learn to understand the operations as well as the consequences of racism, classism,sexism, and some of them (on their own) name and indict capitalism. In this more collective, student-centered investigation, students are more open to "finding enlightenment" asopposed to "being enlightened."
Second, while we adhere to and support Berlin's leftist goals, we felt that there were better means to these ends than what sometimes felt to us like "pushing" or mandating "political correctness." Accordingly, in our classeswe decided to take a more Foucauldian turn, to focus-as Berlin himself at one point proposed-more on howcodes operate and what the consequences of upholding particular codes and narratives are (Rhetorics117). We have trusted and expected our students to "seeboth sides" of issues of privilege and, to find "what's lost, what's gained" by keeping or abandoning certain ideas,behaviors, beliefs,or positions, and we have found that by working through the heuristic and working through discussion, more students begin to come to an awareness of leftist issues and positions.
It isour firm contention that ifeducators want acitizenry to arisethat can think about and assesssociety and its culture without the direction of an authority figure, teachers must begin making our students the authorities on culture now . We felt that in givingstudents asetheuristic, teaching them to use it, and helping them to generate the questions and steer the debates, students would gradually become independent of us, both in initiating critique aswell as in effecting solutions: they would become activist-teachers themselves. We wanted students to be able to take the processes of cultural studies with them after they leftour classrooms. In givingthem the heuristic, we wanted them to be ableto continue the debate with and analysis of culture when no teacher was present to lead or steer them.
Towards a Post- Berlinian Heuristic We noticed first in our personal classroom practices and then again aswe began to teach graduate students to teach Berlinian-style cultural studies in the composition classroom that Berlin's heuristic needed more structure. Without aclearer, more concrete process, our students sometimes had difficulty decoding texts and our graduate student mentees sometimes struggled in teaching the decoding of texts. Accordingly, we devisedathree stagesystem that more readily allowsstudents to move from observing and describing the cultural world into analyzing and understanding that world and finally towards learning how to use their insights.
There arebasically three stagesof this retoo ledcritical analysisheuristic: Surface, Subsurface, and Analytic Leap; these last two stagescontain multiple tasks or steps. The first stage (which is the same asBerlin's practice) is for students to record the Surface features by finding the key terms. This stage has presented no problems in classroom practice. However, it isBerlin's next step, finding the binary opposites, that has presented problems both to students and to some 0 fBerlin's men tees. Just as several of our colleagues have observed in their classroom experiences, we also recognized that students found it difficult to deconstruct the binary, to break down and resist the privileging of the key terms, much lesscreate alternatives to the values
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set up by the binary." Students discovered that it was relatively easy to find the opposites, but they struggledwhen they moved to examinethem and when they attempted to probe the relationshipsbetween the two lists,much lessdeconstruct them. We decidedto make somechanges.
Seekingto put into placean accessibleandeffectivecultural studiesclassroom practice,weaskedourselveswhatwewantedour studentsto learnandwhat wecould givethem that would guidethem to this point ofexaminingcultural relationships. Puttingthebinaryoperationonholdforthemoment,wedecidedthatwewantedthem to "delvebelow the surfaceof the text," andwe remembered that Berlinwasvery pointedly interestedinhowtextsoperate (Rhetorics117).This ledusto establishthe stageoffindingtheSubsurface,inwhichweformulatedseveraloperationsthatwould steerstudentstoward the type ofcritiquethat Berlinenvisioned:how textswork for, with, and even againstour students aswell asother members of the society. Our formalizedstepsgivethe binarycontext,whichintum allowsstudentsto beginusing it asit wasintended: to uncover processesofprivilegeandvalue.
Subsequently,wedevisedand!or formalizedfiveoperationsthat mightbecalled subset tasks to be usedin delvinginto the Subsurface. These tasksaskstudents to interrogatethetexttheyareworkingwith infiveways,through locatingandexploring 1)Points ofView,2)Expectations,3)StereotypesandMyths,4)Cultural Positions, and 5)Alternate Terms.
1)We first askstudents to locatethe variousPoints Of View. Simply put, we want them to findthevarioussubjectpositionsthat involvecreating,interpreting,or consuming atext. The short listof interrogativeswe givethem is"to whom" isthe text aimedor given,"from whom" doesthe text come,"bywhom" isit consumed? We alwaysemphasizethat the points ofviewaremultifaceted,that there arealways many, somethat maynot bereadilyapparent.PointsofViewaremultiple:that ofthe creator of the text as well as the consumer's-but any of various re-creators, interpreters, or users.Weremind our studentsthat eveninstitutions or nationscan create and affect particular points of view. For example, IBM has particular regulations and approaches;the United Stateshasspecificpoliciesin dealingwith foreigncountries.
2)StudentsnextlookforExpectations.Wetellourstudentsthat everytextbrings with it expectations.If,for example,they look atthe classroomasatext,they realize that it elicitsparticularbehaviorsfromthem (and,wetellthem, fromusasteachersas well).Closelytiedto PointsofView,thissteprequiresstudentsto look atthe textand askwhat that "text"demandsofthem inorderforthemto useit. Also,theyneedto ask whatwasexpectedofthecreatorofthetext(whichcanbeanarchitect,apolicyplanner, aswellasatraditionalauthor)to developandcreateit. Thecatchphrasesomeofushave giventoourstudentsis,"whoexpeetswhatfromwhom,why,andhow?"Thesequestions delveinto the motivationsbehindtexts,includingourstudents'ownexpectations.
5)At this stagestudents find the binary opposites, but we now call these the Alternate Terms to the Key Terms. We havereplacedthe termino logyhere because our studentsoften found itconfusing.They often remarkedthat there wasmore than one possible alternative (soitwasn't atrue binary) and complained that these were not always the literal opposites. And while these terms can be literal opposites, we havesituatedthem asalternateterms (withincontext)that anauthor (orsociety)could haveused/privileged. Thesecreateanalternate,possibletext and areassignedvalues, positive or negative,according to the author' s (or society's) point of view.
We want to put asidethe heuristic for amoment and comment here. As others havenoted, we found that usingthe binary oppositesasthe startingpoint for inquiry just didn't work very well.6 It was after instituting the other four steps of the Subsurface,inbeginningto"open"andinterrogatethe textintheseparticularways,that the "binary opposites"beganto makemore senseto our students. Afterexaminingthe points ofview, expectations, stereotypes and cultural myths, and cultural positions involvedincreatingandconsumingatext, the questionsofwho andwhat isprivileged aswellashow andwhy becamemore concreteto our students. Moreover, we didnot limit finding the opposites to the binary step,but had our studentsfindthe opposites for allthe other stepsofthe Subsurfaceaswell. In thisway afullerpictureof inclusion/ exclusion,privilege/negationbeganto developforour students.
Thus, the deconstruction ofthe binary and an interrogation of rigidsystemsof privilege is a feasible goal in the classroom. We feel that the binary step-if appropriately setup and used-foregrounds regimesof privilege,demonstrates the enforcement of codes, and to leadsour students to examine the consequences of upholding (but alsoofbreaking) suchbinaries.What we alsofound isthat ifalternate setsof terms were created in doing this binary step, alternate linesof actions, beliefs, values, and even ways of livingwere created aswell. Our students have more than once pointed out that the alternatelistofterms wasmore appealingthan the original. But more than afewofour studentshavealsodeconstruetedthe listsattimes. Students haveexamined competing listsanddeclaredthat the narrative they wanted to create and liveby included some traits and values from one list and some from the other. It may be asimple form of deconstruction-and most assuredly still implicated in capitalism-but it isadeconstruction, and an alternate narrative and an alternate set ofoptions wasdeveloped. Thus for us,the contextualization ofthe binary operation
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is crucial. It has taken alot of time and practice to frame and use it to its potential, but it has worked (and continues to work) in our classrooms.
Returning to our heuristic: after our students have written out these exercises, we tell them that the information derived from using these tools must be interro­ gated-asked how and why atext ispositioned in certain ways or functions to convey power and/or privilege or take them away. What are the consequences of this text? Who benefits? Who does not? Who is held responsible? Are there conflicts or contradictions? Where and why? Moreover, we tell our students that these fivesteps should not be conducted as isolated, discrete actions, but are interactive aswell as interrelated. Students must ask, for example, how Points of View intersect and interact with Stereotypes and! or Cultural Positions; how Expectations intersect and interact with Cultural Myths and/or the Lists of Key and Alternate Terms; and so on. In this way, students become the active agents of analysis, guided by their interactions with the heuristic, not led by the teacher.
Finally, in regard to the heuristic, we asked ourselves: where were our students ultimately to go, that is,what were they to do with allthis information and insight? Consequently, we formalized a third stage that we called the Analytic Leap/ Application. This part of the heuristic contains two steps. The first callsfor an insight that may arise from situating the struggle in and with the text within a "master binary" -which we renamed Master Terms. These include such processes and concepts asinsider/outsider, man/woman, one/ other, active/passive, actual/ poten­ tial, master/slave, authoritarian/democratic, among many others. This move connects our students' "local" sets of terms or concerns to larger issues, issues that very much involve them with institutions and communities. At this step, students began to visualize their personal or specific texts aspart of a larger context.
But we wanted to offer our students more than insight; we wanted to encourage them to action but even more so, let them know that they always had options in approaching the texts of their lives. Accordingly, we developed a second aspect of this third stage called The Line of Action, aconcrete, visible task that hails directly from Berlin. We call forthe students to explain how/why they Accept, Reject, or Negotiate the text explored. If they are not satisfied with the text and its outcome, what can they do about it? Aswe mentioned earlier, the Alternate Terms haveoffered students alternate beliefs, behaviors, and positions that may be used in resisting or reconstructing texts, but students also recognize that they always have options in enco untering texts. There may be consequences for accepting, rejecting, or negoti­ ating those texts, but there are options.
After the heuristic revealsthe composing systemsofculture asreflexive,recursive processes,we turn our students' attention to how they arecomposing their own texts. As we utilize the heuristic together, we want them to get a sense of their own connections to cultural discourse aswell asasense that the content of their culture isarranged rhetorically . We hope to leadour students to an understanding that they have to make choices about how to arrange their texts but also that arrangement is alwaysand alreadyculturally involved,that allforms ofarrangement arecontextualized and even culturally mandated.
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In usingthis approach to arrangement, students become more aware of their connection to and involvementin arrangingculture, in arrangingcomposition, and thus more consciousofthe socialandpoliticalimplicationsinmakingdecisionsabout issuessuchaspurpose, context,andaudience.They beginto considerwhat responses their decisionsmight evoke in audiencesandthe consequencesto those audiences. Studentsthink aboutwhattheywantto achieveandinwhatcontexttheywillcompose. Thus, while consciouslyinteractingwith anddecodingcultural texts, students also begin to sort and selectcertain types of technologies, mediums, styles,design,and methodsofarrangementthrough whichtheywillconstruct,exchange,anddistribute their texts. The consciousness of such an approach will (hopefully) engender a know ledgeof the cultural implicationsofthose actsof arrangement.
For example,astudent who critiquesthe lyricsofarock group might findthat she/he wants to communicate this messageto the group's fanswho haveweb sites. The student might chooseto construct aweb page0 r might decideto sendane-mail messageto siteownerswho listtheir addresses.He/ shemayevencomposelyricsand music that stand asan alternate text to the song. This decision is one of cultural arrangement-what form oftext shouldbecomposed?More embedded,however, are other decisions: selections from the available technology for each type of arrangement,choicesabout the mediumthrough which the messageisbestcommu­ nicated,decisionsabout the type of languageanddesignpossiblewith eachcultural arrangement, andchoicesabout how the messagewould most effectivelybedistrib­ uted;moreover,the studentshouldhaveanideaofthesocialandpoliticalimplications of her/his text aswell-all ofwhich arisefrom the useof the heuristic.
Beyond this levelof decision-making, students have to consider what these choicesimply about their own culturalpositions,stereotypes,andmythologiesand how those affectarrangement. Composition instructors haveto teachstudents that the texts they arrangewillbe receivedin many ways. In the processofarrangement, certain issuesaregoingto be more important to certain readersthan to others, but we can only begin to anticipate what those factors are. In this ageof web pages, listservs, and multiple e-mailings,the notion of a specific,discrete audience, for example,isseverelylimited. Advertisershavelongunderstood that their textsmust
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Moreover,wedonot expectour studentsto answerthesequestionsinanisolated, individualistic void; our students turn to their peers in raising these issuesand proposingsolutionsandinsights.Theculturalcontextsofarrangementandaudience arealwayssocialcontexts,produced,exchanged,anddistributedwithin the confines of social mandates of arrangement. Students as composers have to envision themselvesasaudiencemakersandthus perceiveandconstructaudiencesatpossibly differentlevelsandfromdifferentcontextsthrough theheuristicasthey movetoward creatingtexts.
Students also need to be givenchoicesabout the kinds of texts they want to compose basedon their personalneedsaswellasthe probable realworld use,just as they needto understandthe impactofthesedecisionson others. Allofthesedecisions help students learncomposingskillsin avarietyofcontexts,for differentpurposes, andfor multiple audiences.Alongwith theseskills,studentslearnresponsibilityfor the textsthey compose,includingthe waysthey codetheirown textsandthevalues, beliefs,and ideologiesimpliedby their arrangements. Furthermore, they beginto understandthat inconstructingtextsaswith consuming,exchanging,anddistributing them, they havethepower to accept,reject,andnegotiateparticularvalues,ideas,and actions.
For those of us who came through Berlin's mentor groups, moving from invention to arrangementwassometimesdifficultforusasteachersbut attimesalso forour students. Berlingenerallydirectedusto haveour studentswrite the academic essaysthat ourprograrn andinstitution demanded.Thus,our studentsmovedto put their insightsinto essayformats that canbestbedescribedasexpository essayswith cultural analysis,observation essayswith cultural analysis,narrative essayswith culturalanalysis,argumentativeessayswith culturalanalysis,andsoon. To anextent thisworked becauseour studentsgenerallyknewtheseformats,but therewas,forus, both a lack (that, at the time, we could not pinpoint) and an inconsistency in foregrounding the cultural codesatthe levelof invention anddropping them from consideration atthe arrangementstage.
Beforehisdeath,Berlinstartedto theorizeandimplementpedagogiesthat would emphasize the cultural coding inherent in the construction of texts. He briefly addressedthis concern in his lastbook:
As students develop material through the use of the heuristics and begin to write initial drafts of their essays, they discuss the culturally coded character of all parts of composing-from genreto patterns of organization to sentence structure. Students must learn to arrange their materials to conform to the genre codes of the form of the essaythey are writing-the personal essay or the academic essay, for example. (The production of a video news story enables an encounter with still another kind of genre code, this one visual and aural). (Rhetorics130)
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Berlin was struggling with composing methods that reflect the impact of cultural codes on students' own texts. However, he had not recorded a process for such analysis before his death. Working from this starting point, we are developing an analytical process model that reflectsthe importance of genre codes in texts, especially asboth teachers and students consider culture ascomposition. Consequently, we believe that both teachers and students must understand how genre codes structure texts, thus creating cultural arrangements that imply certain points of view ,cultural positions, and textual stereotypes.
We believethat ifculture iscomposition and that composition isthen arecursive, interconnected system, two distinct possibilities arise. First, the heuristics that students use to interpret and critique cultural texts can alsobe extended to locate and guide students in the composing process. The heuristic can and should be seen asboth an interpretive and aconstruetive model. Second, becauseculture iscomposition, our students can and should be encouraged to construct cultural genresbeyond just those texts traditionally thought of asappropriate for students to compose in acomposition course. Composition can include other types of cultural arrangements such asthose found in popular media or in avariety of academic disciplines.
Because we see this cultural studies pedagogy as a system that reformulates writing processes, we have been extending the heuristic described above to include aspectsofcomposing beyond invention. In particular, we have been lookingforways students can use this heuristic to compose their own texts in various genres. If we perceive the composing system as one which continually consumes, produces, distributes, and recreates allover again, then the product is never stable-it never conveys only one message-it is always already process. Rather than presenting a litany of set genres to students through acurriculum based on generic assignments (modes, writing activities, writing strategies, etc.), we want to show students that cultural arrangement isnot alwayspre-determined by an academicrhetorical situation and usually involves choices.
Our cultural composition paradigm and process model includes areturn to the heuristic above asa productive model for writing that recasts the list of surface and subsurface features to help students generate, organize, and contextualize their reactions. The rhetoric isin the heuristic process. While students work through the heuristic, they are thinking, composing and writing at the same time. Using the heuristics, they collect the data of their texts; they are writingtheirtexts. Key terms serve asexamples, details and specificsthat support main ideas. Subsurface activities generate the main ideasof paragraphs or images. Finally, students' own positionings­ through master terms and their analytic leap-become the focus, thesis, ortheme for texts upon which these other factors depend.
Students can employ these strategiesin their texts whether these texts arewritten, aural,orvisual. By identifying the surfaceand subsurface features from their critiques, students can examine the data they collect, and then group sets of information or organize the layout of their texts. Decisions about the layout of the text depend on the students' analytic leap,what they want to communicate, and how. Students must consider what type of text-what type of cultural arrangement-most effectively
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communicates these messages. For example, working from the heuristic, students might critique an adfrom aprinted magazine, generating critical information through which they determine their own positions in relation to the ad. Then, they have to decide what type of text they will construct: acritical essay,dialogue, or perhaps even a new ad. Students have to make decisions about what genres most effectively communicate their responses to the ads, including how each cultural arrangement represents (re-presents) the key terms and analysis students have already performed.
In working through the process of cultural arrangement, students come to realize that the genres they choose will reflect their own assumptions and codes about communication. The heuristic works at this level of recognition aswell: it allows students to question and decode their own decisions about arrangement. They can question what isprivileged and what ismarginalized by both the content and design of their texts. Students consider their own text's assumptions about point of view, expectations, cultural positions, and analytic response. In the caseof amagazine ad, students might decide to construct anew ad (and perhaps an alternate product) that expresses their position in relation to the first ad. They may decide that this cultural arrangement best allows them to display different images (ofpeople, values, beliefs, ideas, desires, etc.). Students can then re-examine this new ad, reconciling its assumptions about cultural codes, moral beliefs,or socialstereotypes. Furthermore, students use the heuristic to critique each other's ads, continuing the process of critique beyond the creation of the written product.
By usingthe post-Berlinian heuristic, students do not simply replicate capitalistic codes-in this case of advertising-but bring critique to the processes of construc­ tion-composition aswell asto the visible "end-product" and its social, economic, and political consequences Whereas Susan Miller has separated critical reading fro m writing in her review of the Berlinian heuristic, contendingthat "... [student] writing isnot positioned to enact [democratic] consciousness because they, aswriters,are not taught that they have the power to do so," we believe that democratic consciousness is a function of critical reading and writing (498).As such, in our classes, students enact their critical readings of their particular texts through critical writing.
Students can take what they learned from critiquing previous texts to determine what value systems are inherent in each type of cultural arrangement and the consequences of both process and product. They can then apply the same type of scrutiny to the generic choices they make. Thus, they learn that the arrangement of a text involves the hierarchical placement of values, beliefs, and actions. We believe that composition teachers need to proceed with this type of cultural composition, giving students the opportunity to choose from avariety of cultural arrangements in avariety of contexts-from popular cultural texts, to professional texts, to academic texts-because these are the texts our students will encounter, produce, revise, arrange, exchange, distribute, and consume in their lives.
Berlin had begun to advocate this inclusion of multiple cultural arrangements in composition, particularly genres found in popular cultural media such astelevision and periodicals (Rhetorics128). However, Berlin had only started to implement a system or model that helped students compose in these genres. Some of his former
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We emphasize this simultaneous exchangeof composing, meaning-making, arranging, and critiquing because we want to present a system that recognizes arrangementasprocessratherthan finalproduct. Thisprocessnot only includesusing the heuristicto determinehierarchies,but alsoto identifyandnegotiatethe socialand materialpreconditions necessaryto achievevariousculturalarrangementssuchasthe techno logy and the mediurn availablefor students' texts. Recognizing] ameson' s notion of cultural logic,we arguethat the processof arrangement isan exchangeof severalfactors in composing, including the availabletechnologies and media, the social influences at play, and the interpretations of the composer aameson 67-8). Studentscometo realizethat culturalarrangementsarenot necessarilyimmediately evident;composing entailsmultiple layersofdatacollection, decision-making,and critique. We believethat this post-Berlinianmethod iswellequipped to addressand employ arangeof information, genresandmediato reflectthe changingmakeup of writing in the visual,virtual, electronicage.This diversityofcultural arrangements allowsstudents to identify andnegotiatethe exchangeofmany socialpreconditions andrestraints,liketechnologyandmedia,economiclimitations,andsocialinfluences.
The Composing Citizen-Rhetor Becauseculturalarrangementsentailstudent-specificdecisions,weenvisionCompo­ sition asacoursewherestudents compose genresfrom allfacetsof society, learning and employing cultural arrangements that arethe most strategically and ethically pertinent to the communication they want or haveto make. Studentslearnthat they must continuously interpret, construct, style,andreviseaccordingto their processes of meaning-making. We further hope that we asboth teachers and theorists are providing students with the criticaltools to evaluatethe impact of socialsystemson the valueof texts. We particularly want them to perceiveand responsibly dealwith the factorsthat influencewhichtextsaremarginalizedor privileged.Inunderstanding how texts areprivileged or marginalized, we hope our students learn how human beingsthus becomeprivilegedor marginalizedaswellasthe priceofsuchoperations.
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PurdueUniversity Lafayette,Iru:li4na
Park14ndCol/ege OJampaign,IUinois
2Weparticularly wishto acknowledgeandthank severalcolleagueswith whom wehaveworked in this area:first andforemost, Nancy DeJoy, who taught usandgaveus support and advice,and also Lynn Searfoss,BruceMcComiskey,ScottMelanson,andPamSanderswith whom wecontinueto work in taking Berlinian cultural studiesinto different areas.
3See:Blitz 135,Blair 136,Miles 136-137in DavidB. Downing, james], Sosnowski, and Keith Dorwick, eds., WorksandDays27/28(1996).
4Berlinrecognizedthat social-epistemicisananalyticmethod, analternativeto other composing processes; he also acknowledged its ability to cross disciplinary and social lines ("Rhetoric U 697). However, at the time of his death, Berlin's analytic method entailed mostly a critical process for interacting with cultural forms. WhileBerlinwasformulating cultural studiesasacriticalprocess,we havecometo realizethat cultural studiesismore than acriticalprocess;it isacomposing process,one that rivalscognitiveandexpressivistrhetoricswith provisionsandmethodsfor addressingnot only the critical stageof invention, but alsoissuesof arrangement and style.
sSee also Miles, "Lingering" 240-242, 251-252, Sosnowski, 245-246, Langstraat, 259-261 in David B.Downing, JamesJ.Sosnowski, and Keith Dorwick, eds., WorksandDays27/28, (1996).
6Wewant to thank Trish Jenkins for pointing out the alternatetext asan "invisible"yet present text.
Works Cited Aronowitz,StanleyandHenry Giroux.EducationunderSiege:TbeConservative,Liberal,andRadicalDebate
overEducation.South Hadley:BerginandGarvey, 1985.
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Brodkey,Linda."RememberingWritingPedagogy."JAC:AJournalcf'CompositionTheory.17(1997): 489-93.
Harkin, Patricia. "Rhetorics, Poetics,and Cultures asan Articulation Project."JAC:A Journal0/ CompositionTheory.17(1997):494-97.
Jameson,Fredric.Postmodernism,or,theCulturalLogicofl.ateCapitalism.Durharn:DukeUP, 1991.