Cinnabar and Alabaster

the problem:
556. "composition studies now struggles with two fairly distinct views of 'authority,' yet the term is treated as stable and uniform by a range of authors who otherwise appear to hold differing assumptions about the nature of language and the world. while both views assume that authority attends the negotiation of power within the context of communities, they diverge in assumptions about how communities function and, consequently, how authority is to be defined and engaged": (1) ("assimilation model") "community evolves from consensus and authority compels assimilation. that is, individuals gain discursive authority by submitting to the [community's] explicit and tacit conventions of discourse"
557. (2) ("resistance model") "assimilation is seen as uncritical accomodation of authority," & so "a properly critical stance toward authority warrants resistance to the hegemony of conventional ways of knowing." both share this limitation: "a tendency to objectify authority, to cast it as something fixed and autonomous that writers or writing can possess"; an alternate approach would be "a dialogic model of authority" emphasizing ethics & problematizing "the asymmetrical power relations that situate participants in institutional cultures such as the academy"--"feminist critiques" are already at work questioning the entrenched "notion of authority based on autonomy, individual rights, and abstract rules"; they propose to continue this by "recast[ing]" authority as "informed by an 'ethic of care'"
situating authority
558. "relations in communities are in part defined by differences in knowledge, experience, and status," & "a dialogic model of authority addresses such asymmetrical power relations by linking them to an ethical concern for the well-being of community members"; "ethics" (acc. to giroux) "illuminates the tensions between authority as enabling individual autonomy and...engendering democratic, dialogic public life"
559. the poststructuralist warning: "'objectively' questioning the epistemological assumptions of the cultures we inhabit or...the pedagogies we practice...fails...because it feigns critical distance from subjects in which it is thoroughly interested"--but ultimate failure doesn't preclude the good t be done by "the insistant questioning that can--better than reified answers--yield insight"
questioning authority
559. OED characterizes authority as both "enforc[ing]" and "influenc[ing]"--2 very different ways of theorizing a stuff that in either case acts as a "conduit" that "channels power"--and that "often materializes into discourse," which is how "discourse legitimates the enforcement of obedience and the containment of action"
560. culturally, "personal authority" is always "male-marked" because "men have traditionally held most positions of authority, and acts of asserting authority are often marked as masculine," which linking "has led to a privileging of individual rights over community relations, and to an absence of care in those relations"
561. bahktin & how "communities always contain forces contending oppositely for stasis and change" (centripetal--conservativism & centrifugal--resistance, which "is part of the 'game' of community life, and can be valued just as accommodating participation is valued")--as such, "resistance requires authority," which "in bakhtin's universe comes from what he calls 'internally persuasive discourse'"--"the constellation of voices we appropriate as we learn how to differentiate ourselves as indiividuals in a particular social setting"; "it is also possible--and much easier--to speak with authority by repeating what bakhtin calls 'authoritative' utterances: discourse the community generates over time to preserve its status quo"; "authority & gender are so closely linked that we often have trouble recognizing authoritative gesutres that arise particularly from women's experience"
authority in rhetorical theory
562. process pedagogy embodies authority already but also sets the stage to change it.
563. expressivism: "'voice' corresponds with self, 'power' with authority"; cognitivism: "the individual mind and the autonomous text become twin seats of authority, for they both 'contain' the source of authority--knowledge"; social theories: "authority is never inherent in texts or minds, but rather is negotiated and constructed in discourse by individuals who observe conventions for the representation of knowledge"--so even in this view, "authority remains strictly a function of a body, albeit a metaphorical body, a community"
feminist critiques of authority
564. one way to look at it is "on a trajectory from personal to impersonal, from visible to invisible, from the pretense of care to no care at all"--at its extremes "paternalism," which "represents 'an authority of false love'" to "'autonomy'," "'an authority without love'"; the OED also offers "a tertiary sense in which a traditional authority might treat 'kindly' its subject"
565. "care, as we understand it, connotes an asymmetrical relationship between 'one caring' and one 'cared for.' in such a relationship, the 'one-caring' experiences deep engagement with the other; he or she 'assumes a dual perspective'"--"and because authority is male-identified and care female-identified, we see potential for a critical reassessment of both terms by exploring their nexus": it's not a safe activity; "care can easily lapse into paternalism--care imposed through authoritarian acts--and so presuppose the superiority of individual subjectivity and agency"; it also "can reinforce stereotypical female roles and continue to oppress women--or men--who act in 'caring' roles." the key is to imagine it "not as nurturing" but as "an obligation to another"--so for example "there is no requirement that writing teachers like the students they care for. the teacherly obligation centers instead on taking care that the diffusion of authority in the writing classroom promotes learning for all of the competing constituencies represented there."
566. thus, "instead of authority that delineates individual, autonomous subjects, we might envision authority that 'augments' social relationships," "as a way of vohering and sustaining connectedness" (jones), which vision "enbables the formation of communities by weaving together those experiential differences that falsely make autonomy seem a 'natural' aspect of some 'universal' human condition"--realistically, then, authority "continually constitutes (and is constituted by) particular communities" (in all their particular local asymmetries)
consequences
566. "we must teach students how and when authority can be negotiated. we must help them understand--and utilize--the many forms authority can take. of course, at the same time, we need to consider how much authority college composition students can bring with them into the classroom"
567. "we are arguing for more dialogic uses of authority, for a reinvigoration of giroux's idea of 'democratic, public life.' we must, therefore, avoid displacing autonomous authority with just another monologic model of text-mediated human relations"--even though it sounds hard to deal with, we need "messy pluralism"--to "provide composition studies with multiple senses of authority that are inclusive and heterogeneous": "we must not stop at encouraging students to seize authority...[but] must also help students choose how to be subject to authority without being coerced"--"a teacher can persuade students that their 'best interests will ultimately be served' if on appropriate occasions they subject themselves to the teacher's authority" (bizzell); "such dialogic authority allows teachers to engage students in discourse that can be difficult and even painful, yet crucial to their learning"--"exercizing authority over students...does not necessarily implicate us in acts of coersion"