Dangerous writing

Outlines a political economic theory of composition. Connects pedagogical practices in writing classes to their broader political economic contexts, and argues that the analytical power of writing is prevented from reaching its potential by pressures within the academy and without, that tend to wed higher education with the aims and logics of “fast-capitalism.” Since the 1980s and the “social turn” in composition studies and other disciplines, scholars in this field have conceived writing in college as explicitly embedded in socio-rhetorical situations beyond the classroom. From this conviction develops a commitment to teach writing with an emphasis on analyzing the social and political dimensions of rhetoric. By focusing on the structures of labor and of institutions that enforce those structures, the author finds teachers and administrators are too easily swept along with the inertia of a hyper-commodified society in which students--especially working class students--are often positioned as commodities, themselves. A critique of the field of composition as much as it is a critique of capitalism. From publisher description.