"Toward an Anti-Capitalist Composition argues that capitalism is responsible for the entangled catastrophes of the twenty-first century, and that it must accordingly become a central focus in the teaching of writing. Daniel calls for an ambitious reimagining of composition as a discipline opposed to capitalism's excesses" --
The author argues that capitalism is responsible for the catastrophes of the 21st century, including precarity, economic and racial inequality, the decline of democracy, and climate change, and outlines an anti-capitalist approach in composition that can prepare students to encounter and resist these harms. He contends that composition has connections to social and political concerns and that language is linked to social, political, and economic phenomena. He discusses the threat to democratic culture of 21st-century political nativism and how composition might resist this process by teaching collaborative writing as a political, solidaristic, and anti-capitalist endeavor, illustrating the role of collaboration in anti-capitalism; how to teach the issue of student debt; how to support students resistance to the harms of work, including exploitation, casualization, overwork, and the blurring of the professional and personal; anti-capitalist approaches to digital writing and multimedia composition; and the role of anti-capitalist writing pedagogy in higher education, particularly in relation to academic freedom and the precarity of contingent faculty. Annotation ©2022 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
In Toward an Anti-Capitalist Composition, James Rushing Daniel argues that capitalism is eminently responsible for the entangled catastrophes of the twenty-first centuryprecarity, economic and racial inequality, the decline of democratic culture, and climate changeand that it must accordingly become a central focus in the teaching of writing.
In Toward an Anti-Capitalist Composition, James Rushing Daniel argues that capitalism is eminently responsible for the entangled catastrophes of the twenty-first centuryprecarity, economic and racial inequality, the decline of democratic culture, and climate changeand that it must accordingly become a central focus in the teaching of writing. Delving into pedagogy, research, and institutional work, he calls for an ambitious reimagining of composition as a discipline opposed to capitalisms excesses.
Drawing on an array of philosophers, political theorists, and activists, Daniel outlines an anti-capitalist approach informed by the common, a concept theorized by Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval as a solidaristic response to capitalism rooted in inventive political action. Rather than relying upon claims of membership or ownership, the common supports radical, collective acts of remaking that comprehensively reject capitalist logics. Applying this approach to collaborative writing, student debt, working culture, and digital writing, Daniel demonstrates how the writing classroom may be oriented toward capitalist harms and prepare students to critique and resist them. He likewise employs the common to theorize how anti-capitalist interventions beyond the classroom could challenge institutional privatization and oppose the adjunctification of the professoriate.
Arguing that composition scholars have long neglected marketization and corporate power, Toward an Anti-Capitalist Composition extends a case for adopting a resolute anti-capitalist stance in the field and for remaking the university as a site of common work.
