D. Shane Combs
1 article-
Abstract
This article asks, “what in the broad and excessive definitions of composition and rhetoric keeps us from talking about personality and temperament alongside other issues of identity?” Pulling from scientists, queer theorists, and composition scholars, I explore the lived experiences of introverts and highly-sensitive people, which often spill outside the boundaries of dominant structures in composition. I consider the price paid by highly-sensitive people who may move at a different pace and find their ways of working and experiencing the world devalued in the field. Using personal narrative and a momentary high-sensing lens on the work of Donald M. Murray, I assert that there are those who thrive best in small group or one-to-one interpersonal relations, and I argue that these are issues of identity and social justice for those who find themselves on the temperamental margins in composition and in a western society that has an extrovert ideal.