Abstract
The literature on public writing and community literacy has generally focused on how to get students to go public in effective and ethical ways. This article instead addresses a prior concern, the problem of why to go public. I argue that students (and Americans generally) are immersed within a cultural ecology of civic disengagement that manifests itself through powerful rhetorics of adaptation. These rhetorics encourage people’s adaptation to unjust societal conditions rather than activism to change these conditions. Hence, before helping students determine what kind of difference they should make, civically engaged writing teachers must help students see that they can make a difference . I call on engaged teachers to facilitate opportunities for students to confront, analyze, and challenge rhetorics of adaptation, and in turn, to maladjust creatively to the anti-civic surround by invoking counterhegemonic rhetorics of activism.
- Journal
- Composition Forum
- Published
- 2012
- CompPile
- Search in CompPile ↗
- Open Access
- OA PDF Gold
- Topics
- Export
- BibTeX RIS
Citation Context
Cited by in this index (0)
No articles in this index cite this work.
References (0)
No references on file for this article.
Related Articles
-
Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric Feb 2026Danielle Bacibianco
-
Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric Feb 2026Alexandra Cavallaro; Filimon Fregoso
-
Literacy in Composition Studies Feb 2026All Are Connected: From Traditional Chinese Medicine to Students’ Literacy Practices Reviewing Doing Difference Differently: Chinese International Students’ Literacy Practices and Affordances by Zhaozhe Wang ↗Carina Jiaxing Shi
-
Written Communication Feb 2026Zhaozhe Wang
-
Research in the Teaching of English Nov 2025“No Todo Lo Que Pintan Es Real”: Feminista Pláticas toward Speculative Civic Literacies in the Borderlands ↗Rita Kamani-Renedo