Elbow v. Harris

I was initially struck by Elbow’s review of Harris’s Expressive Discourse for its Wayne C. Booth-ian qualities. Over the course of his career (and perhaps most particularly in The Rhetoric of Rhetoric) Booth sought to rehabilitate the public reputation of rhetoric, which he felt skewed towards the deceptive end of its scale.  Elbow attempts a similar move in his review, I think.  Whereas Booth fought against the influence of media rhetoric, win-rhetoric, and retrickery, Elbow looks to rescue expressivism from the pointed attacks of Harris, who refers to expressive discourse as “virtually meaningless,” “poorly defined,” and “not a real category” (933). Elbow attempts his rescue by reestablishing the core values of the label (“the idea that [expressive discourse] reveals something about the person who created it” [939]) and also by advocating for the inclusion of its pedagogies in writing classrooms (writing for an audience of self, writing about personal experience, writing with no intention of turning the product into something more structured).   

Elbow does admit that expressivism is a problematic term—a “slippery” term that “has become a site for ideological mud wrestling” (939).  He agrees with Harris that expressivism’s scope is too broadly rendered and specifically cites Kinneavy as a possible culprit (Kinneavy, we remember from his chapter, puts all discourse beneath the umbrella of expressive discourse).  However, Elbow expresses his own dismay over the extremity of Harris’s views, particularly her call to do away with all forms of expressive pedagogy in the writing classroom (937).

In my view, Elbow walks away from the encounter with Harris the clear “winner,” because his view is the more balanced one.  Harris dismisses expressive discourse as “unworthy” and “inferior” (937); Elbow reminds us that student writers should be exposed a variety of different discourses.  He avoids the binary of better/worse, inferior/superior (942).  I much prefer his balanced, let’s-be-open-to-the-spectrum approach because at the end of the day, it’s potentially more effective in the writing classroom than the Harris hardline.  

I was going to add that theoretical hardlines are always revealed as too extreme—but then I thought, what’s an example of that?  Where is a specific example of a problematic, extreme approach being completely abandoned?  Error-focused approach to writing assessment?

I also want to highlight this Elbow / Harris conflict as a way to revisit a tension I felt during my MFA coursework.  I should mention that I first encountered the work of Peter Elbow during this time;  we used Writing With Power as a text in one of my own classes, and were encouraged to use expressivist writing techniques both in and outside of class.  We were also taught to use some forms of expressivist pedagogy in our own TA training (all MFA students taught sections of first-year composition).  I wonder to what extent the conflict between a pragmatist like Harris and an expressivist like Elbow mirrors conflict between Creative Writing and Composition.  I think these two fields should talk to each other about writing pedagogy more than they do, and I’ve often feared (perhaps unreasonably) that they do not because of a potential tension related to a possible superior/inferior dynamic (composition scholarship/theory/pedagogy is serious; creative writing is not).

Questions to Consider:

1)   Pick a side: Harris or Elbow?

2)   Is Kinneavy’s definition of expressive discourse problematic in light of Elbow’s response to Harris?