Institutional Critique: A Rhetorical Methodology for Change Institutional Critique: A Rhetorical Methodology for Change

We offer institutional critique as an activist methodology for changing institutions. Since institutions are rhetorical entities, rhetoric can be deployed to change them. In its effort to counter oppressive institutional structures, the field of rhetoric and com-position has focused its attention chiefly on the composition classroom, on the de-partment of English, and on disciplinary forms of critique. Our focus shifts the scene of action and argument to professional writing and to public discourse, using spatial methods adapted from postmodern geography and critical theory.

ous products are designed, tested, and developed and also serving as a g standard for all projects.Inserting a usability process into the product opment model was, on one level, a simple textual change, nothing mor graphic revision.But on another level, it was an important political m tablishing users and user testing as a more integral part of the softwar opment process in a company that is the world's leading developer of op system software (Windows), Internet web browsers, and business softw erally.Dieli also hired as usability designers people with degrees in rhet professional writing, as well as with backgrounds in qualitative method In general, her administrative efforts opened a space in a globally influe dustry to establish as a value and a procedural norm two key rhetorica (1) awareness of audience matters, and (2) research on audience is an i tant stage of the writing (or production) process.
Has this seemingly minor change actually effected any large-scale c at Microsoft (which has now replaced the Soviet Union as a new, postca Evil Empire)?If Bill Gates' behavior is any indication, we think probably n At the same time we see such rhetorical action as the means by which tions can be changed.We hope that institutions can be sensitized to u people, systemically from within and that this sensitizing can potent change the way an entire industry perceives its relationship to the pub Our viewpoint is cautiously hopeful-though realistic, we think-abou possibility of changing institutions.2Our basic claim is this: Though ins are certainly powerful, they are not monoliths; they are rhetorically cons human designs (whose power is reinforced by buildings, laws, tradition knowledge-making practices) and so are changeable.In other words, w em, we can fix 'em.Institutions R Us.
Further, for those of you who think such optimism is politically naive and hopelessly liberal and romantic, we believe At the same time we see such rhetorical acti the means by which institutions can be cha that we (and you, too) have to commit to this hypothesis anyway, the alte political despair-being worse.3 Our interest in foregrounding institutional critique as an activity of oric and composition is aimed at change.4We aim to change the practic stitutional representatives and to improve the conditions of those affe and served by institutions: especially, within our own field, writers, s part-time composition teachers, workers, local communities, and tho traditionally served by the university (e.g., the economically disadvanta We begin this article by briefly articulating our sense of institutional critique.Then we move to acknowledge some ways rhetoric and composition as a field already implements forms of institutional action, and we then express our dissatisfaction with the limits of those efforts.To be sure, there have been plentiful examples of related critical practices within the field: administrative critique, classroom critique, and disciplinary critique.However, for reasons we will explain, these related critical practices fall shy of what we propose as institutional critique.The heart of this article, then, is in describing and exemplifying our notion of institutional critique.As you will see, institutional critique is an unabashedly rhetorical practice mediating macro-level structures and micro-level actions rooted in a particular space and time.

Articulating institutional critique
We see institutional critique as a methodology.Our view of it as a methodology arose out of our needs as writers and directors of dissertations, out of our frustration with established methodologies within the field, and out of our desire to humanize research practices.A number of rhetoric/composition Ph.D. students at Purdue University wanted to bridge empirical and theoretical work.Several wanted to work across the usually separate, often antagonistic areas of cultural studies and professional writing.Some were interested in studying specific organizational and technological structures-such as online writing labs, networked computer classrooms, corporate web sites, community literacy centers, and textbook publishing houses.
From one standpoint, these projects could have been framed as workplace studies or workplace ethnographies, as defined in the field of professional writing.But that frame did not have enough critical edge to it; its advocacy position seemed problematic.As we worked through several projects-Jeff's and Stuart's and Libby's among them-we felt a dissonance.The existing category systems and methodologies in the field-especially the binary that still divides theoretical from empirical research-were unsatisfactory.We weren't conducting classroom critique, as our inquiries extended beyond the borders of the university.Most forms of disciplinary critique we examined lacked material punch.We had to construct a somewhat new methodology to enable certain forms of research action to emerge and take shape.
And so collaboratively we articulated a pragmatic mechanism for change that extends the power of our field beyond the composition classroom-and 612 This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termseven beyond the university itself.We call this mechanism "institution tique,"'5 a method that insists that institutions, as unchangeable as the seem (and, indeed, often are), do contain spaces for reflection, resistance, revision, and productive action.This method insists that We think that critique needs an action pl sometimes individuals (writing teachers, researchers, writers, students zens) can rewrite institutions through rhetorical action.We see institu critique as a way to supplement the field's current efforts and to extend th into broader interrogations of discourse in society.
Institutional critique is by no means new.Theorists such as Vin Leitch,Henry Giroux,Michael Berub6,and Jim Sosnoski invoke a type of tutional critique.We would say that Foucault invented it, if anybody did.B have a particular spin on institutional critique.Our spin is more locally ated, more spatial, and more empirical than most theoretical discussions stitutions.Ultimately, we are looking for a rhetorical methodology that wi to change and restructuring of institutions.We are not interested in sim porting how evil institutions are; we think that critique needs an action But institutional action in our field has not been limited to local impacts.
Perhaps the most significant act of institutional action within writing program administration is a large-scale effort: the establishment of graduate programs in rhetoric and composition, a long-term and collective institutional action that has had the effect of professionalizing a field that, according to Janice A second significant institutional action has gone largely unnotic field.The field defines itselfprimarily in terms of the first-year compo room without theorizing or even highlighting the teaching of writing even though the professional writing major has grown in size and su is such a thing as a writing major-a significant institutional acknow that writing is a field of study and has a disciplinary status (Sullivan a "Remapping").But that disciplinary concession granted to writing is to the curricular imagination of the field.Why does having a writing ter?Because it invests our field with a disciplinary status that should claim equal treatment in the university when we ask for resources suc lines.Why don't we play this trump card more often?We suspect that identity is so immersed in first-year composition and graduate rhetor that it overlooks an obvious strength that could be parlayed into in capital, certainly within the university but also outside it.

Classroom critique
The reported instances of micro-institutional action and resistance often center on the classroom or curriculum level.classroom as a space where institutional forces and cultures "saturated with phallocentric knowledges, in institutional structures ruled epistemologically and procedurally by men and masculinist signifiers," can be held at bay (2).Because teaching is traditionally "women's work-a caring profession," the classroom can become a refuge from those male-constructed institutions ( 2).
Yet such moves often background and even demonize the institution because they set the struggle as against the institution and because they equate the institution with male (or masculinist) knowledge and control structures.Of course, critical feminists do not always take such a view (see Lewis, for instance, 188-89).But even when they do, their understanding of institutions in pedagogical moments smacks of travelogue description.9The institution is the geographic and historical coordinate at which the moment takes place.Thus, institutions are either a Big Brother or a backdrop for some travel snapshots, but in either case they are de-emphasized in the consideration of the main event, i.e., the classroom.10By focusing on the classroom without adequately theorizing the institution, such classroom critiques make institutions seem monolithic and beyond an individual's power for change-except in a kind of liberal, trickleup theory of change that pins political hopes on the enlightened, active individual.In Brian Street's terms, such treatments "despair" of effecting any change in institutions and so focus "in the short term on changing the 'victims"'" (215).

Disciplinary critique
So far, we have argued that some (especially WPAs) work for institutional change while the majority in rhetoric and composition seem to focus on classroom  Hansen's account illustrates the need for the spatial critique of institutions in order to understand how material and spatial factors influence daily activities.
In other words, office space matters, especially for those who don't have it.We weave spatial analysis into this talk of institutional critique for both pragmatic and analytic reasons.Pragmatically, as members of educational institutions, we have always been struck by how important space is in the writing of institutional identity.Both physical and figurative space plays into the construction of a university: status is reflected in the location, size, and relative poshness of a program's offices; control of space is power; inclusion and placement on the institution's web page, newsletters, and so on reflects institutional identity, as does organizational chart placement.Like postmodern cultural geographers, we see these spaces as offering considerable potential for the interrogation of resistance and agency in institutions.We use some of the ways that they deploy visual analysis to question and destabilize institutions, to provide an alternative route to interrogating how power circulates in particular institutions, and to complicate our construction of institutions.

Enacting institutional critique
Postmodern cultural geographers (such as Soja, Harvey, Sibley, and Rose) help us assemble an arsenal that is useful for visual examination of institutions at varying levels of particularity-from the local to the abstract, from what we call the micro to the macro institution.Most theorists in our field are accustomed to thinking about institutions at the macro level-certainly most philosophers and political theorists conceptualize institutions as The Law, The A more micro-level view of institutions (see Figure 1) operates within the We focus, then, on institutions as rhetorical systems of decision making that exercise power through the design of space (both material and discursive).
spaces and landscapes that postmodern cultural geographers construct to focus on the local and micropolitical operations of social institutions.This view focuses on institutional actions or policies of places such as the Lafayette Adult Reading Academy, the Lafayette Public Schools, and the Purdue University campus server (as opposed to Community Literacy, K-12 education, and the Internet).By conceiving of institutions as also operating locally, we better situate ourselves in visible contexts within which we conduct our lives and, again, have our lives conducted for us.We can begin to locate agency more so in the micro conception.
We believe, to be direct about it, that local institutions (and local manifestations of national or international ones) are important locations for written activity, and furthermore, we believe that constructing institutions as local and discursive spaces makes them more visible and dynamic and therefore more changeable.12It may be difficult, however, to visualize the relationships between institutions and critique that we are suggesting.Figure 1   the relationships depicted playing against the ones unvoiced.Yes, this type of approach emphasizes how space is both constructed and inhabited, designed to achieve certain purposes (and not others).Because there is not one, holy map that captures the relationships inherent to the understanding of an institution, all of these relationships exist simultaneously in the lived-actual, material-space of an institution.Further, it is in the differences that we find in this lived space that the keenest opportunities for institutional change reside.His identification process points to tics and processes involved in the exclusion, and maintenance of boundaries for a culture (or, in our case, an institution).
As we uncover and probe the zones of ambiguity present in a system, we can articulate the power moves used to maintain or even extend control over boundaries.It is just the type of examination that can lead to institutional critique.
Boundary interrogation can operate in micro-or macro-level analyses.
Take the exclusion of the marginalized from the current system of boundarymaking and maintenance, the set of (non)relationships that actually motivates Sibley's Geographies ofExclusion.We can talk about the marginalized in sweeping terms that lead to large-scale issue-making: The powerless have little or no ability to wield boundary power; they are normally excluded or marginalized from the process of boundary construction and maintenance.Further, we can acknowledge that the issues for the powerless, more often than not, are formulated by those in power and are based on how the empowered view the powerless and their "plight."In a discussion of the voiceless, those with little or no power have limited or no input into the construction and maintenance of the borders of those cultures.Thus, if people seek to include their issues in boundary interrogation, questions might be posed about them using language that traditionally is used to characterize them: How is the institutional (or disciplinary) culture classed?Raced?Gendered?Aged?And so on.Certainly, those are the very questions asked in composition studies.
But we still need a more localized focus to effect institutional change.In the area of interactions with technology, for example, access is the first issue surfaced in relationship to a minority group; indeed it is practically the only issue that has had much discussion with regard to race/computers, and it continues to be prominent in the discussion of women/computers.spaces, and our definition of them must encompass these elements as well as our sense of spatial scales-our location of institutions at both macro and micro levels.In our case, we seek to change institutions through acts that constitute a critical rhetoric of institutional design.
Institutional critique is, fundamentally, a pragmatic effort to use rhetorical means to improve institutional systems.As a type of research, institutional critique focuses on the institutional space/structure as its principle focus of interest.Institutional critique employs a rhetorical and spatial methodology as it looks at institutions as discursively and materially constituted.That is, the materiality of institutions is constructed with the participation of rhetoric.
The focus of our interest is the localized institution (as Figure 1 suggests).
We don't like forms of cultural or institutional critique that stay at a macro level of high-theory discussion, which makes the institution a monolith-easy to criticize but impossible to change.Of course, as we have said, in rhetoric/composition there is a long-standing and vigorous tradition of disciplinary critique.
Yet we have been frustrated by how disciplinary critique and institutional ac- cate spaces for changing relations, he had to trace funding lines as they related to literacy philosophies (e.g., mission statements) and to legislative initiatives (see also Swales).He had to study employerclient relations to see how programs developed to meet particular community needs.
What he found was that literacy tends to be constructed in relation to the mandates of funding and policy interests (largely from government and industry) and to the goals articulated in large part by those interests (e.g., getting a GED, attaining "life" and/or "basic" skills, or learning "work skills" for a particular workplace).To change the meaning and values associated with literacy in a community literacy program demands changes at the institutional level-because significant decisions are made about classroom practices at those levels.
Such change necessitates a level of institutional critique-through curriculum writing, grant writing, teacher training, and public policy initiatives-that we are not used to enacting in rhetoric and composition but that are increasingly necessary to change such a community-based program.
What is apparent from Grabill's project is that institutional critique should look at bureaucratic structures-for instance, at how law and policy create "value" for sites and influence discursive relations and at how organizational roles and responsibilities, work models (e.g., management philosophies, publishing models, collaboration practices), lines of authority and communication, and alignment of and interaction between personnel all affect institutional practices.
One premise of institutional critique is that understanding the power and operation of such structures is important to developing strategies for changing them.gram does not have stable contro institutional resources.As each new monitor of departmental space questions the lab as wasted space, its use must be rejustified.This continuous rejustification process reminds us that our "rights" to space are not given or unassailable (as, say, the rights of the department's journal in literary criticism).The process also connects us to the similar battles continuously waged by writing centers-as each new literature faculty member-cum-space-monitor asks us: "Why should our space be taken for this?"The spatial example underscores the intertwining of discipline and institution inside departments of English.
As with the Microsoft example cited at the beginning of this paper, a simple spatial reordering, a micropolitical and rhetorical use of space, can constitute an effective political action.Obviously spatial action is itself only part of a larger, coordinated strategy of multiple actions by agents who had developed a relative degree of power and access within an institution.But it's important to understand our point: often, space itselfis a major factor in achieving systemic change; timely deployment and construction of space (whether it be discursive or physical) can be a key rhetorical action affecting institutional change, and once created, the space can operate independently of the sponsoring agents.
These examples point to our claim that seemingly minor rhetorical actions, especially spatial and organizational revision, can be dramatically effective ones, if they happen to hit the right kairotic institutional moment.
To sum up, institutional critique works as follows: Institutional critique examines structures from a spatial, visual, with adequate institutional writing instruction-we must rewrite our ow ciplinary and institutional frames.Institutional critique promotes this r puter interfaces, and controls (e.g., airplane instrument panels).Usability assumes that "the human factor" should be integral in product design.Usability thus aims to humanize system design, especially in the computer industry.
2. Generally, if one looks for the term "institution" while reading multidisciplinary work that touches on the production and consumption of writing (e.g., sociology, sociolinguistics), the term appears frequently.But as with Leitch's definition (cited later), institutions often appear either as an evil and unchangeable macro power or as a vague backdrop or a static system that somehow "produces" knowledge, belief, and identities.Sociologists have provided some well-known conceptualizations of institutional structures (e.g., Goffman, Giddens, and DuBois), but their accounts neglect the spatial and rhetorical aspects of institutions.Erving Goffman's notion of the "total institution" refers to a more or less isolated, cloistered, and private organization that is certainly oppressive in its practices (such as a prison) (xiii).Goffman's harsh view represents a common antagonism toward institutions, indeed toward the very word.Institutions are prisons, boarding schools, mental institutions, and convents, where individual freedoms are constrained, where lives are radically ordered by rules and regulations, and where typical human freedoms and choices are to a great extent denied.Goffman's conception oftotal institution does not offer much hope for agency or resistance and is a construct that overlooks the rhetorical and spatial nature of institutions.Anthony Giddens' "structuration theory" is an attempt to model the relationship between individuals and institutions.We find Giddens' account problematic in its treatment of individuals.Which individuals are capable of resisting or changing the institution?Giddens' level of abstraction is the problem.We think that there needs to be a distinction between rhetorical positions that afford the potential for agency and those that don't.Theory, but we are conscious of the limitations of that theor masculinist assumptions and its propensity toward theoretica sion of critical merges traditional critical theory with several provided critiques of that theory, especially the cultural and ernism of Foucault, postmodern geography, and feminist theo gards geography (e.g., Rose), methodology (e.g., Lather; Sta and ethics (e.g., Benhabib; Porter; Young).Our use of the term ward the sense of critical reflection on, challenge to, and then tion.In the case of institutional critique, the positive action w the rhetorical practices necessary to design (and redesign) Institutional critique is, as we have framed it, a kind of"postc in Lather's sense (see Sullivan and Porter).That is, it posits a has a critical reflexiveness (even irony) about its own position terial forms of production.

Gregory Clark and
Stephen Doheny-Farina are perhaps the rhetoric and composition to employ the actual term "instituti scription for the disciplinary critique they articulate thro 'Anna" case ("Response").Pierre Bourdieu's work is also important to our construction of institutional critique.In Homo Academicus, he provides a postmodern example of mapping that bridges institutional and disciplinary inquiry as he traces how the members of the French academy of 1968 responded to the educational crisis of that same year in ways that fit its network of affiliations.His strategy is to map the positions, backgrounds, notoriety, and cultures of the faculty in the main Parisian institutions.
Bourdieu examines the faculty of several institutions in order to determine the state of the French academic world (Homo academicus gallicus).In this examination the specific institutions become a variable at some times (as do disciplines, publishing, schooling, organizational position, and so on).We would argue that this analytical method is an example of the use of spatial devices (e.g., postmodern mapping) to support a disciplinary critique.After all, Bourdieu is focused on the faculty mem- "complete and austere"; they are panopticons; they exert an unrelenting con bodies-he does not see institutions as innately oppressive or as necessar changeable: "No matter how terrifying a given system may be, there alway the possibilities of resistance, disobedience, and oppositional groupings.. all of these laws and institutions are capable of being turned around" (F "Space, Knowledge, Power" 245).
CCC 51:4 / JUNE 2000 also aim to include institutional research in the realm of what counts as research in rhetoric and composition by theorizing it here.
The resources for our view of institutional critique arise out of a par lar brand of postmodernism and critical action that eschews theoretica stractions in favor of a materially and spatially situated form of analys draw from the work of postmodern geographers such as Edward Soja, Sibley, Doreen Massey, Michel de Certeau, and David Harvey as well as th ical research perspective of feminist methodologists such as Patti Lath Stanley, and Patricia Sullivan.The work of Michel Foucault, Pierre Bou and Donna Haraway is important to our position, as their work employs sual and spatial methodology that is both critically shrewd and yet phy located.In other words, they are pragmatic theorists-and to us, that is t kind.Though Foucault's work is frequently cited in our field, and Bourdi casionally, most of the resources we draw on are unacknowledged within oric and composition.6Our understanding of institutional critique is also shaped by our po tionality in the field of professional writing.More so than other areas of ing studies, professional writing has acknowledged the role of the organi and the importance of visual forms of thinking and representation.Pr sional writing has in fact given us a body of research about writing in w places and through various organizational frames has engaged instituti issues (though researchers typically use the terms "organization" or "w place" rather than "institution"-see Odell and Goswami; Spilka; Blyl 613 This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsThralls; Sullivan and Dautermann; and Duin and Hansen) of institutional critique is more material and tied to spat structures than most articulations of institutional critiqu Perhaps the most significant act of institutional action within writing program administration is a large-scale effort: the establishment of graduate programs in rhetoric and composition.We open with an overview of vision in order to provide a conte discussing the work of others in ric and composition.While w tainly acknowledge the various f of institutional action that are currently practiced (administrative, classroom, disciplinary critique), we want distinguish institutional critique from them.In this way, we hope to carv space for enacting more substantive and far-reaching institutional change.Institutional action in rhetoric and compositionAdministrative critiqueMany forms of institutional action have been prominent in our field, especi in the work of writing program administrators (WPAs).As a field, we seem be particularly good at critiquing our positionality and history (especi within departments of English), and we have a strong track record for enact change (if nothing else, we now have a field where once there was none).Th of us who are WPAs contend (if not outrightfight) on a daily basis with our demic institutions for material resources, control over processes, and discip nary validity.
the existing practices of literary criticism and their rel thodoxy that promotes a Star Theorist system of mos eventually proposes a set of structural as well as attitud refocus the field's work in more productive and less sti from the reverence of (Abstract) Theory and toward an disciplinary theorizing practice.Because Sosnoski defines literary criticism as itself a finition of "institution" is much closer to what we thin course, when doing educational critique, it is particularl stitutional from disciplinary critique; the two forms of c What worries us about the work currently voiced as institutional critique is that much of it equates"institution""with"discipline."Nonetheless, we see Sosnoski's w Token Professionals as an inst disciplinary critique-that is, it cused on the research practice academic field of discourse.While these practices are of course implicated with the structural organization of departments, the alignment of faculty within such organizations, and the material conditions of support for these practices, the structural and material and spatial conditions are by and large not Sosnoski's focus.In Sosnoski's theoretical framework, institutions by definition exist to maintain orthodoxy (99).In his discussion of the graduate instructor strike at Yale University, Michael Berube also focuses on disciplines.He astutely points to the ways that influential faculty sided with the institution against the interests of their stu-618 This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsdents and their discipline and took that position into the disciplinary ar trying to defend themselves through Modern Language Association mi But B6rube stops short of offering advice about the action that might have changed the institution, focusing instead on how that institutional action might have changed the discipline.Equating institution with discipline denies important physical dimensions and limits the potential for productive action.Both Sosnoski and Berube want to change institutional structure through the reform of disciplinary practice.We like this plan, but we also think that it is necessary to change disciplinary practices through the reform of institutional structures.The simple equation, discipline = institution, blocks consideration of material, economic, and organizational factors that are key to changing institutions.We argue that equating institution with discipline denies important physical dimensions and limits the potential for productive action.Kristine Hansen hints at the importance of such dimensions when she writes about the significance of instructors' names being listed in the campus phone directory and course schedule, about their receiving parking privileges, and about how they are housed physically on a campus.In her narrative of her own experience as a WPA, Hansen claims that she slowly began to realize the ethical implications of presiding rather comfortably from my thirdfloor office, with its window looking out on a noble mountain peak, over a staff of some sixty graduate students, who were crammed three and four per cubicle in two maze-like rooms in the basement, and twenty-plus part-timers, who were distributed among four or five offices in the same windowless basement.(35) Hansen uses the relational ethics of Levinas and Nel Noddings to argue for spatial strategies that can help change conditions for part-timers.Administrators and instructors are more likely to work together productively for change, Hansen argues, if they come to know each other as individuals, which requires regular, face-to-face contact.Such relational ethics are difficult to enact if parttimers are rendered faceless by the material constraints in which they work.
Certainly administrative and classroom critiques have been central to creating spaces for agency within educational institutions.In particular, we see 619 This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsdisciplinary critique as important to institutional critiqu essary to it.But we also contend that institutional change the material and spatial conditions of disciplinary practic institution (for instance, the kind of attention Sosnoski a their revision of journal practices, discussed later).Becau stitutions are situated physically, that theories of change situatedness, and that attention to spatiality helps one f change, we use spatial analysis of the type practiced in cu partner with disciplinary, historical, and other framewor amine institutions.11 The first, postmodern mapping, a tactic for using spatial thinking to plore social, disciplinary, and institutional relationships in composition s ies, has been discussed by two of us(Sullivan   and Porter)  elsewhere, most extensively in Opening Spaces.Showing how maps might be used to negotiate disputes arising among differing theoretical perspectives, to explain changes over time, to clarify the positions and Postmodern mapping aims to destabilize and retemporalize the map through a focus on its construction and the partialit of any one map's representation.values of various groups that relate to one another, and so on, OpeningSpac argues that postmodern mapping aims to destabilize and retemporalize th map through a focus on its construction and the partiality of any one map's r resentation and through use of multiple maps used in discussions of a so space.Whether the mapping is local or global, its discourse is always a spat relational construction of its writers and readers that aims at communication.Postmodern mapping is more local and bounded in its dreams than the modernist examples that are famous in composition.14In postmodern mapping there is always play among a number of elements: the uniqueness of a particular map playing against the global quality of the types of elements such a map normally includes; the static quality of a particular map playing against the dynamism it gains through comparison with other maps, other historical renderings, and other symbols standing for the space; the theoretical allegiances of certain mappings playing against the evidence of such relationships;

A
second tactic for interrogating how spaces are produced in institutions, boundary interrogation, is widely used by geographers in a number of venues; after all, they are in the business of establishing, monitoring, and changing cartographic representations of our worlds.David Sibley explicates this concern with boundaries in Geographies ofExclusion when he locates cultural geography's fascination with boundaries in power, namely, the ways that exclusionary practices and devices are used by groups to maintain or extend their group 623 This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termssocial identity and power.Sibley identifies "zones of am house change, difference, or a clash of values or meanin guity, according to Sibley, are locations where change As we uncover and probe the zones of ambiguity present in a system, we can articulate the power moves used to maintain or even extend control over boundaries.theboundary instability they high tion have typically operated in the field.For one thing, such critique usually focuses on a limited set of organizational spaces: the composition classroom, the first-year composition curriculum, the English department.Well, okay, that's where most of us live-but we are frustrated by the nearly exclusive focus on these organizational units to the neglect of others.We want to look at institutional writing spaces outside the university (where most composition research 625 This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsfocuses) and outside the corporate workplace (where m ing research focuses).Early examples of institutional critique Where do we find instances of institutional critique i yet-at least not fully articulated examples.What we do reveal dimensions of institutional study, where the ins if not central component of the study and where the r form of institutional revision.In his critique of adult community literacy centers, for example, Jeff Grabill found that studying classroom literacy activities alone did not shed any light on institutional structures.15To understand power and politics and to lo-To change the meaning and values associated with literacy in a community literacy program demands changes at the institutional levelbecause significant decisions are made about classroom practices at those levels.

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This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsInaddition to examining discursive bureaucratic practices, institutiona tique focuses on the physical structures-economies, architectures, bur cies, interorganizational relations, and physical locations-supporting dis practices.For example, Stuart Blythe's study of the ways that the writing has been positioned at his current institution ("Institutional Critique") p physical maps as well as maps of departmental goals and resources as a engage the physical spaces that reinforce, reflect, and resist the community's perceptions of how the writing center fits into the university.The study provides a physical counterpoint to his dissertation ("Technologies"), which examines the ways in which the movement of writing centers to Rather, institutional critique can lead to an examination of micro practices within the macro structures of an entire industry, wh over time (and with the cooperation of oth can produce rhetorical and material chang provide online services-the move to the online writing lab, or OWL-c the fundamental operating practices of those centers.The physical realign the tutor-student dynamic into an online environment changes that dyn dramatic ways, Blythe argues, and writing centers have to be conscious of in which their fundamental relations with students (their ethical footi change in the online environment.Blythe highlights physical structures t been neglected, assigned a status secondary to theory or to verbal statem to the study of individual writers.As we have argued, the relations betw material and rhetorical is an important component of institutional critiq Institutional critique may not lead to alterations that can be felt im ately, as Libby Miles' research into composition textbook publishing su Rather, institutional critique can lead to an examination of micro pra within the macro structures of an entire industry, which over time (and w cooperation of others) can produce rhetorical and material change.He identified sites at which the publishing process for composition textbooks be open to rhetorical revision.First, she had to situate textbook publishers their own corporate and economic contexts.Second, she needed to rend ble narratives and knowledge ofprocesses that generally are invisible to ou (indeed, they circulate only orally).Ultimately, she offers an action plan w eral moments of negotiated intervention for authors, reviewers, consultant lance writers, and textbook users.For example, she shows how the fi spreadsheets guiding production decisions are rhetorically constructed editors based on a range of scenarios and containing multiple contingen itions for a book's "success."She argues that prospective authors can bec volved in the rhetorical construction of this too often "invisible" document 627 This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsFinally, Ellen Cushman's research (Struggle) on inn "Quayville" shows another form of institutional resea more on victims of institutional oppression than on ga acknowledges the key role that institutions play in def The ability to negotiate those literacy borders is critic bers, whose basic needs require the support of such inst Cushman studies, basic necessities such as food, clothi Changed practices must be incorporated into the very design of the research project.are connected integrally to their r skills.Cushman's project shows an i stage of institutional critique: an first-hand observation of instituti tices, focused particularly on client relations.The study structures both enable and discourage the progress of writers working well outside the borders of the compo their explicit mission to aid the disadvantaged, these in the clients they are supposed to be serving.This reali stage in the critique of institutional practice.Our discussion raises an important question about tween institutional action and reports of action.Can disse lications themselves be instances of institutional critiq idealized goals statements, we are suspicious of public than recommend or hopefor institutional change.To qu tique, a research project has to actually enact the prac demonstrating how the process of producing the public research enacted some form of institutional change (Su ing Spaces).This proposition is, of course, a difficult changed practices be incorporated into the very design (which is precisely our point and another reason why in to be seen as a methodology).This proposition also sugg tient in judging the effects of research practices and pub includes publication in a number of forums, not just the "count").Institutions change slowly, and the results of we mean both the results of a researcher's interactions results seen as publication-may not be visible for some The results of some actions can be seen more clearly t examples.David Downing andJim Sosnoski's work for th is a good example of theorizing-in-action. Sosnoski an structing the conventions of academic publishing to pus 628 This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsand contentious form of the conventional academic article to encourage a dialogic form of scholarly interaction.They are experimenting with the dev ment of new "protocols," or discourse conventions, that will encourage co tion, sharing, and mutual discovery.Electronic discourse plays a key part development of these new conventions.The special issue of Works and D honor of Jim Berlin (1996) offers a good example of this attempt.This is cludes transcripts of LISTSERV discussions by teachers working out the impli of cultural studies theorizing for classroom practice.In another article ("Mu lent"), Sosnoski and Downing experiment with the course diary as a form exploring connections between theory, research, and teaching.How does their work evidence institutional critique?Downing and S noski are working within the parameters of conventional modes of produ for example, the academic print journal and the academic LISTSERV lis attempting to reconstruct the protocols for those modes along differen of rhetorical interaction.They are not just talking about their agenda; th actually instantiating it in their multiple roles as editors, publishers, sch teachers, and LISTSERV facilitators.A more typical institutional action, the establishment of a university search center, offers another example of theorizing-in-action.While try garner support and respect for the professional writing program at Purdu versity, Pat Sullivan and Jim Porter expected that having a "usability lab" f program was a key factor in gaining institutional recognition outside th versity, but they also discovered that the center attracted institutional r outside the Department of English.It began to pose an interesting dile Inside the department, the attitude was, "A lab?What for?"The department viewed the lab not as an asset, but as a loss of valuable office space to an enterprise whose exact purpose was unclear if not suspect.Outside the department, however, the existence of They are not just talking about their agen they are actually instantiating it in their multiple roles as editors, publishers, schol teachers, and LISTSERV facilitators.the lab signaled that serious work was going on (in a department whose purpose was unclear if not suspect): the lab metaphor connected to the d nant scientific paradigm at Purdue, and usability was recognized as a le mate focus of technology development.The usability lab became a key argumentative lever in securing admi trative support for professional writing.Along with Johndan Johnson-Pat Sullivan andJim Porter were able to get small grants to develop the la those small grants led to larger grants supporting business writing instr 629 This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsa postdoctoral program, and a distance writing initiat Writing Usability Lab became an important rhetorical stitutional priorities in the direction of greater suppor writing at the university.But maintaining control over t tinues to be a time-consuming activity, because the pro A simple spatial reordering, a micropolitical and rhetorical use of space, can constitute an effective political action.
and organizational perspective.Such investigations may focus on boundaries in order to interrogate zones of ambiguity.It may employ the investigation of lines of action (e.g., legislation and policy paths or lines of communication in an organization), maps of decision making, or maps of authority (including organizational charts) and may focus on mismatches between the official story told by public relations and other narratives and the actual practices of the institution.It may also look at 630 This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termshow practices are codified over time, attending to historical dimensions of identity and change in an institution.* Institutional critique looks for gaps or fissures, places where resistance and change are possible.Such gaps are often discursive (places where writing-e.g., policy writing-can be deployed to promote change).It is in the gaps, the ambiguities, and the mismatches that the system is flexible and open to change.This search for places where institutions can be changed weds research and action.* Institutional critique undermines the binary between theory and empirical research by engaging in situated theorizing and relating that theorizing through stories of change and attempted change.Although feminist interest in critical autobiography has spurred a number of important narratives about researchers' processes, the general relegation of storytelling in composition studies to the status of lore has downplayed the importance of the local story, even the one told critically.That move has helped to reinforce unhealthy boundaries between research and theory.Institutional critique examines institutions as rhetorical designs-mapping the conflicted frameworks in these heterogeneous and contested spac articulating the hidden and seemingly silent voices of those marginalized b the powerful, and observing how power operates within institutional space-in order to expose and interrogate possibilities for institutional change through the practice of rhetoric.We are interested not only in how research practices themselves (including publication) can em-Institutional critique is a way to theorize and validate a set of institutional actions that our fie has long respected but that others in the academy have thoughtlessly discredited or undervalued as mere service work.body institutional critique, but also in connections between research a administrative action (institutional decision making), curriculum design, pub lic policy initiatives, and other work called (and often minimized as) servic and teaching.Conclusion Institutional critique is a way to theorize and validate a set of institutional actions that our field has long respected but that others in the academy have thoughtlessly discredited or undervalued as mere service work-our administrative efforts, our 631 This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termscommunity outreach, our consulting, our editorial ac lobbying.In this respect at least, our effort joins others' the "intellectual work" of WPAs and composition teac the MLA Commission on Professional Service).But we are also urging much more.We want to reth of research to service in the fields of rhetoric and co What would happen if we reconceived ourselves as"writing experts" working in the public realm instead of"composition teachers"working within the university?writing, and computers and com We want to change the relationship theory and action, using what we action-oriented yet theoretically c tool-spatial analysis.The strict between research, teaching, and se to mention the infamous theory-practice binary, do no realm of spatial analysis.(Postmodern geographers ha part because their critical efforts have seemed not to b ory-practice problem that affects many other fields, r included.)We want the field to define its institutiona than the composition classroom or the English departm search to focus more on the institution as a unit of a courage spatial critique as an analytic tool for changing It is our contention that dramatic and far-reaching change cannot occur through innovative classroom pra curricular or departmental adjustments or through un classroom certainly is one significant site for change, b happen in order to influence how the classroom is con other sites and institutions that shape the structure of about the software development industry, adult basic ed line writing centers?Law and public policy, governme rooms?Mass media, the publishing industry, the Inte Web?And what about alternate identities for ourselves we reconceived ourselves as "writing experts" working stead of "composition teachers" working within the uni fied ourselves as the field of "rhetoric and writing" i composition" or "composition studies"?Is our continued position teachers helping ensure our continued subordi To enact the kind of change our field hopes for-and institutional status so that we can begin providing wri 632 This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms bers (including himself) and on how their affiliations-and most important in those affiliations are disciplinary ones-might explain their political positioning in the 1968 educational crisis.But his view of institution is limited to the faculty: in Bourdieu's work, the faculty equal the institution; no other institutional factors are foregrounded.Further, his view of the institution equates the French academic world with key institutions in Paris, which is understandable from the position of understanding the riots in Paris but not from the position of examining all institutions in France.His examination of the political, cultural, and disciplinary valences at work in seemingly analytic academic pronouncements breathes a life into the analysis of institutions.For instance, he uses mapping procedures to situate faculty according to their disciplinary areas, economic class, and educational pedigree.In this respect, we see his work as moving toward institutional critique.His tendency to equate institution with its faculty and all of French schooling with certain Parisian institutions blinds him to precisely the types of institutional analysis that his work suggests to us.But his connection of political positions with a tissue of disciplinary, institutional, and cultural positioning affords us a lucid example of how multiple mapping can work as a form of spatial analysis.Another example of such critique is evident in Bourdieu and Passeron's Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture.Conventional sociological analysis rejoices in the "democratization" of higher education in France, based on the increasing number of students entering higher education.Bourdieu and Passeron's critical analysis maps these numbers against class variables to conclude something very different: though access to higher education rose for all classes, they rose in proportion.Thus, students from middle-and upper-class backgrounds continued to 635 This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termshold an edge in terms of access to education relative to studen working class backgrounds (Reproduction 224).The class dis more evident when one realizes that the children of farmers and manual workers tended to enroll in arts or sciences, while a higher proportion of upper-class students "took up Law or Medicine" (228).So while there may have been increased access to higher education for the working classes, that access was channeled into "the bottom of the academic hierarchy" (229).Bourdieu and Passeron's conclusion: Academic institutions are based firmly on a system of access and privilege that caters to the professional and managerial middle and upper classes; in their mode of operation academic institutions help maintain and reproduce existing class structures and differences.(A comparable, though less concretely situated, form of analysis can be found in Giroux's Theory and Resistance in Education.)7. Consider the fact that the intellectual work document envisions change within departments of English (rather than encouraging writing programs to break away from those departments).An academic department usually is not the only institutional entity involved in tenure and promotion-as Roen illustrates (46-47).Typically, such decisions must be cleared at levels beyond the department, and it's quite possible for other committees or deans to reject recommendations from departments (e.g., when the work is not accepted as satisfactory outside a department or other material and economic factors intervene).Therefore, a draft that convinces departments of English to reconceive the work of WPAs still may leave others outside the discipline unconvinced of the value of the new conception of intellectual work.8.So what does work?What forces do universities respond to?One idea: What if institutional action were nationwide, yet focused in particular ways, so that it was both global and local at the same time?An example of this is to be found in the ways that the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the NCAA handle institutional violations.The AAUP, for instance, puts university administrations under censure when they violate the rights of faculty or otherwise undermine standards of academic freedom and academic due process.In other words, they localize their global action by identifying violations in a very detailed way (i.e., they publish thorough reports of the university's violations).The NCAA of course has much more clout, as it is able to impose economic sanctions that affect the bottomline athletic budget of universities who violate standards for recruiting and for support of student athletes.What if our field published a list of universities whose administrations grievously violated the standards our field sets for responsible use of part-time faculty, for writing class size, and so on?What if our field's standards could be instituted in the way that affects university and program accreditation? 9.This problem is not unique to critical feminists.Other feminist pedagogical research displays this same filtering of the institution.Frances Maher and Mary Kay Thompson Tetreault, for instance, focus on classrooms in their book-length study 636 This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsFeminist Classrooms.They do use the words "institution" and "institutional ways that relegate the institution to an uninterrogated setting.Maher and son do not pursue extended examinations of particular institutions, nor foreground and problematize institution in a study that argues for position inist pedagogies.(One clear bit of evidence that institution is not a categ them is that there is no entry for institution/al in their extensive subject i 10.This focus on classroom critique is not unique to feminist and cultural One can find similar critiques in computers and composition and in prof writing.The 1995 and 1996 volumes of Computers and Composition, for exam veal that most studies in computers and composition focus on the classroom Though one can find hints about non-classroom influences, few studies puters and composition focus on forces outside the classroom or even on th those forces may have on classroom practice and design.11.A spatial view such as ours involves institutional culture, and cultura best addresses culture in composition theorizing.While we will not be ca the usual cultural studies sources-Grossberg, or Hall, or Berlin, or Girou advance our notions, we are invoking a number of cultural studies geograph help us articulate spatial questions we think are key to achieving institutio tique.Recently, scholars within rhetoric and composition have started to c issues of space as well.See Nedra Reynold's work for an important discu space and the identity of rhetoric and composition.12.As Vincent Leitch articulates this point, institutions are comprised of sive modes of production; they are an entire discursive system: through various discursive and technical means, institutions constitute a seminate systems of rules, conventions, and practices that condition the cr circulation, and use of resources, information, knowledge, and belief.Instit include, therefore, both material forms and mechanisms of production, di ution, and consumption and ideological norms and protocols shaping the tion, comprehension, and application of discourse.(127-28) Leitch's view derives from Foucault's.Even though Foucault's Discipline and is frequently cited in support of a determining view of institutions-institu 13.In Opening Spaces Sullivan and Porter argue for a critical methodology study of computers and writing.Addressing topics key to a critical metho 637 This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsfor the study of writing in technological settings (e.g., framing decision making during the research process, and ethical and p research projects), Opening Spaces examines how to operate w premises.Sullivan and Porter's approach is also a form of disc shows how to change disciplines through changing knowled (The spatial approach of postmodern mapping is addressed in 14.Of course diagrams are not new to rhetoric and composit rhetorical triangle, for example, has generated considerable a erations by identifying important rhetorical elements in com he asserts in A Theory of Discourse that certain genres em ments, Kinneavy's diagram cannot be seen as totally static, but assumptions that the key elements are present and have been agram and in its assumptions that an abstract diagram cove theorizing about a particular discourse.In the early 1980s L R. Hayes produced a writing process diagram that built field other diagram, this time a depiction of the writing process.T cognitive elements of the writing process, modeled after a cognitive processes in psychology, helped to articulate impo should begin the study of a text before it is finished; the stag cess are not necessarily linear; writing is a worthy subject of ernist use of their drawing by the field can be demonstrated t drawings that used elements from Flower and Hayes' work through which to view new writing research situations.Yes, t volved in some forms of mapping-but modernist ones.15.Grabill's project examines a "community literacy center,' education program.The project seeks to understand what li defined in this particular institution), who took part in liter processes, and in whose interests these decisions were made.I swer these local questions, Grabill constructed an "institut documents related to the setup and maintenance of the progr islation and requirements), the conduct of the program (e.g., assessments), and other observations and documents relate tices (e.g., pedagogical practices, interviews).16.Cushman, who identifies her work as an ethnographic stud eracy" (Struggle; see also "Critical Literacy" and "Rhetorician") city community members (mainly poor African American wo status with "institutional gatekeepers"-that is, representative stitutions such as the Department of Social Services, the De and Urban Development, and various philanthropic groups.was that the inner-city residents, far from being inadequate 638 This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsally engaged in sophisticated border-crossing literacy practices; they used ad rhetorical techniques to negotiate their status even within "asymmetrical po lations."They did not always meet with success, but their lack of success w more to the power of the institution rather than their own lack of literacy sk Works Cited Benhabib, Seyla.Situating the Self: Gender, Community, and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics.New York: Routledge, , or even unchangeable (i.e., if it urges us to see change as requiring l scale action that few people rarely have the power to enforce).If institutions But limiting our analytic gaze to macro institutions also encourages a level of ab-620 This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsstraction that can be unhelpful if it leads to a view of institutions as st glacial Those with technology power see the powerless as outside the boundaries of technology use because they do not have the needed money or education or (in the case of women) socialization to gain access to the culture-changing technology.By articulating the boundary between groups as related to access, the neutrality and about institutional status or priorities can be launched with impun This articulation of boundary issues is controlled, not by those lacking te nology, not by the marginalized, but instead by those who have abundant t nology.A focus on how issue boundaries are constructed, maintain expanded, and challenged helps us see their effects on those marginalized technology access and use.
tool-like quality of technology can be preserved at the same time as political 624 This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termscritiques sociological and organizational than it is rhetorical: langu tices are not the center of his study.
633 This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsmore by a discursive organization, a manner of configuring the m bricks and bars and mortars with the perceived need to discipline the hThe panopticon as a prison design was born out of an argument for t such a design.Postmodern geographers such as Soja appreciate this aspe Other Spaces").For example, Bentham's panopticon as an ar 634 This content downloaded from 131.128.197.126 on Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:42:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termscreated cault's work.