Feminism and Scientism

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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



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



Flynn/Feminism and Scientism 355

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




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




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.




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



Flynn/Feminismnd Scientism 359

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




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




(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-



362 CCC 6/October 995

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




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,




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




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-




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




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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Documents

Feminism and Scientism