THE WEB ESSAY: EXPLORING ARGUMENTS

SUBJECTING STUDENTS

In his book Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and the Subject of Composition, Lester Faigley argues that most teachers of writing encourage their students to adopt subject positions in their writings that rely upon modernist notions of the self as rational and unitary. The "unity" of texts students produce is both evidence of their achievement of this subject position and a validation of that position's worth. According to Faigley:

Faigley argues that electronic writing "dispute[s] this promise of authority" (229), making it harder for teachers to preserve the modern ideal of "the rational, autonomous subject" (165).


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