First, Carmen Kynard's personally and ideologically engaged take on responding to student writing. In "'Y'all Are Killin' Me up in Here': Response Theory from a Newjack Composition Instructor/SistahGurl Meeting Her Students on the Page," Kynard offers a useful discussion of the relationship she develops with students via written feedback on drafts. A well-worn topic, to be sure, but Kynard's got some new things to say.
Kynard writes, "I am all up in students' debates, not vocally but polemically." She procedes to advocate more explicit, more argumentative, intervention in the ideological discovery that students go through during the writing process. She quotes from her students extensively, citing their drafts as they write about Bill Cosby's commentary on African-American community values, and also cites herself responding to the students. I'm fascinated by the tone of her feedback, unapologetically partisan and polemical. She writes to one bright student who critiques gangsta rap:
I feel what you're saying about rap music, really I do, but, for me, it is often used as a scapegoat because that is much easier than engaging a materialist critique of racism. We will chat more about that later in the semester so bring this up again and now you KNOW that I will call you out if you try to hide your opinions. Right now, I'll just limit myself to your comments on Bill Cosby and family values and tell you how I feel about all of that. Truth be told: I'd rather be with a brother like 50 Cent (assuming his media image is him anyway). At least he lets you know he's a womanizer. Bill Cosby really ain't doin' that much different with the ladies than 50 Cent if you ask me. He just knows how to cover it up in a kind of bourgeois Bill-and-Hillary-Clinton kind of way because the brother, married and all, done chased down more women than Jello puddin' pops.Kynard admits she wouldn't be quite so blunt with all of her students. This particular student, she writes, is especially bright and also open to verbal sparring with her. Again, the tone fascinates me, the emphasis on creating an (agonistic) agora-like space on the margins of student work. Kynard justifies this practice by talking about what a "dummy run exercise" it is to have students *imagine* opposing views.
Later on in the piece, Kynard admits to occasionally castigating a student, including one young woman who appeared in a sexually explicit music video. "I damn for sure put my best foot forward, threatened her, put the fear of God in her, and cussed her out something lovely for having her booty all up on a BET video. I guess some things you just can't nice up."
One problem (among many potential problematics) is that Kynard's approach seems to neglect the meta. I understand her justification for getting up in students' debates, but wonder if this practice leaves room for developing a meta-awareness, of process and working on a meta-cognitive vocabulary of the technologies/processes/genres/contexts of writing. I *also* intervene in the ways Kynard describes, but with less of an eye on polemics (although I certainly do challenge students' positions) and more of an eye on what I see happening with them as writers. Again, you can't neatly separate the "writing" from the "thinking" from the "existing as a politically situated member of the human family," but I feel like my contribution as the teacher of writing and rhetoric transcends a kind of "have you considered this?" mode.
Another problem, for me, is Kynard's foregrounding of argument. Why the allegiance to the thesis, to the linear polemics of the position paper, to the mythic world of argument? I'd be interested to see Kynard's article grafted onto a pedagogy of *generative analysis*, instead of a pedagogy of argument.
Again, extremely interesting article. Well worth checking out and reading alongside some of the foundational comp studies work in responding to student writing--a body of literature that Kynard herself nicely reviews.
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