An Essay on the Work of Composition: Composing English against ...

LU / AN ESSAY ON THE WORK OF COMPOSITION
Furthermore, the transition from the familiar environment of home to the new
place called the academy often involves changes in one’s country, city, or neighborhood
of residence. This can also bring about a “crisis” in one’s sense of self
and relations with competing languages, englishes, and discourses vital to one’s
life before and outside college and to one’s new life in college. This heightened
state of flux might make one more alert to the need for and interest in the
possibilities of redesigning one’s familiar language practices and the new language
practices one has explicitly come to college to acquire. The fact that
many of our students have not yet “declared” their “major” also opens up some
possibilities for their being interested in this line of work.
It is my conviction that our work can help to build a world warmed by
responsive and responsible uses of language. By all. For all. It is also my conviction
that we have no alternative but to cling onto this conviction. As Cornel
West reminds us, we are at a “crucial crossroad in the history of this nation: we
either hang together by combating these
forces that divide and degrade us or we hang It is my conviction that our work can help to
separately” (159). Since the 9/11 event, no build a world warmed by responsive and
single person in the United States is exempt responsible uses of language. By all. For all.
any longer from the rest of the world’s concern
to figure out what being responsible could possibly mean in “the catastrophe
this world has become” (Morrison 26). We are at a crossroad in the
history of the world: we either hang together by combating all forces that divide
and degrade, or we hang separately, whether by the rope or through largescale
(technologically Developed) destruction. More than ever before, we need
designing in English that is motivated by the belief that all intra- and international
jiaos in all areas of life are intricately connected. We need ways of using
English which unravel the fear that attention to dissonances between and across
standardized and peripheralized languages, englishes, and discourses and attention
to the interrelations between and across our Paid Work and our work
in other areas of life will interfere with rather than enhance our expertise as
users of English. We need designing that helps those directly or indirectly benefiting
from the logic of Fast Capitalism to add “a glance into the eyes of ” those
we claim to “serve” with our “technology” and “aids” while having the least say
in the design of the realities of their lives (Morrison 26). Designing that enables
us to acknowledge not only that those Othered by us do “look back” but
also that we have much to learn from their labor to keep English alive—making
it limn lives and serve purposes peripheralized by the englishes and discourses
in which we are invested.
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