Abstract

The difficulty of resolving the contradiction between personal and academic writing, experience and analysis, and local and global phenomena resides in deeper binary oppositions that continue to haunt us. Time and space, history and structure, are the larger frameworks in which we operate. Understanding the dialectical relationships of these coordinates illuminates the material and social processes of the production of culture, language, and history, suggesting a theoretical perspective based on a unity of opposites rather than their polarization. Through reflection on a course taught according to these principles, the author argues for a dialectical writing pedagogy.