Critical Expressivism- Theory and Practice in the Composition Classroom, 2014a

Leake
intersubjective, social processes in shaping reality. (1987, p.
146)
The role of language in this description adds a social element to what is
otherwise solipsistic. Language is the “shaping” and “nurturing” element of the
private vision of that deeper individual. I am not as certain as Berlin that intersubjective
and social processes are not already here in the shaping function of
language. Critical empathy offers a way to employ the personal to inform the
intersubjective and social. Indeed, the social qualities and questioning of the
personal in its assumptions and limitations is vital to the practice of critical empathy.
This is what needs to be added to an expressivism as described by Berlin:
more awareness and questioning of those social elements and an examination of
the relationships between the personal and the social in forming that not-quiteso-private
understanding of others as well as oneself.
In this chapter I use theories of perspective-taking and critical empathy to
argue for a critical expressivism that moves beyond the limited personal that
Berlin identified as common to expressionist rhetorics. Berlin’s characterizations
are useful in providing a rough map of the historical disciplinary terrain and in
providing terminology for discussing topographical differences. But an updated
understanding of both critical expressivism and empathy provides a more
accurate mapping of the epistemological and rhetorical work of the personal.
Some of these features were already inherent in the work of Elbow and others, as
Berlin notes. Critical empathy makes clearer the social and affective dimensions
of a working critical expressivism. It calls for a critical voice that questions the
circumstances of its own speaking. A critical expressivism, rooted here again
in psychology and critical empathy, offers a social critique of that otherwise
personal voice, its privileges and assumptions, while recognizing that no voice
is purely individual, just as no language is a language of one’s own. The vital
questions asked in a critical empathy concern social relations, power differences,
affective connections, and commonalities and differences. Critical expressivism
through critical empathy fosters a voice that speaks in order to simultaneously
ask these questions. It uses knowledge of oneself—and an ongoing critique of
that knowledge—to better understand and communicate with others about one
another and the world.
PERCEIVING SELF AND OTHER
I begin with theories of identification and perspective-taking as a way to
establish how processes of empathy are always concerned with the tensions and
questions of knowing about the self and others. Personal knowledge, in this
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