Composition as a Cultural Practice

France presents a comprehensive critique of composition theory and pedagogy from a leftist perspective. He contests the notion that composition courses have no content and are only skills courses, devoid of intellectual suppositions and cultural premises. Writing instructors should therefore focus on teaching students how to retextualize contemporary cultural practices and become proficient in dissenting from as well as affirming the status quo. Each chapter extends the argument for a critical composition practice from theory into explicit, detailed narratives of composition techniques and analysis. Issues covered are the implicit ideology and curricular function of composition, the definition of a materialist rhetoric, the place of feminism in the writing classroom, the interrogation of dominant ideology in business and professional writing courses, the critique of knowledge making in the context of social-epistemic pedagogy, and the historical and rhetorical relations of religion to persuasion.

ALAN W. FRANCE is Assistant Professor of English and Director of Composition at West Chester University in Pennsylvania.