This page was created by Collin Hardwick.
Mathieu, Tactics of Hope : The Public Turn in English Composition
Discipline/Field: English, Writing Studies, Composition, Community Writing
Year: 2005
Main Arguments & Concepts
In Tactics of Hope, Mathieu describes her work creating community-engaged writing courses, particularly evaluating her role connecting students to marginalized community member (in her case, the homeless populations). She explores how community-engaged work is fraught with complex power dynamics, and argues that successful projects are deeply rooted, responsive, and should decentralize the university. Mathieu also looks at the role of community work / service-learning in Composition and Writing Studies more broadly, arguing that, like there was a “social turn” in composition, there has been a “public turn.” Part of this public turn, Matheiu acknowledges, is a push from university administration to use community engaged projects as a marketing strategy (95). She then includes several case studies, describing projects that have been successful to projects that have gone horribly wrong (122).Tactics
Matheiu pulls the concept of “tactics” from de Certeau. Tactics, as opposed to strategies, are reactive, and flexible; the goal of tactics are to ultimately create more liberatory pedagogy. Using tactics means relinquishing a good deal of control: Matheiu acknowledges that “the outcomes of public writing are mysterious and unknowable” (49). However, being tactical, rather than strategic, will help create a pedagogy that can help respond to outcomes as they arise.
Quotes
“If scholars withing English want to define their work live to include concerns that transcend camps borders, such a desire necessitates more than good intentions or a bit of free time. It requires reworking or defying the strategic demands on our working lives in order to act on the tactical knowledge we gain in communities” (117).Notes
In Revitalizing the Commons, Bowers (LINK) argues that critical pedagogy and place-based / environmental pedagogy are at odds. This book is a good example of how community-engaged pedagogy actually bridges these two approaches. In this text, Mathieu cites both Paulo Freire and David Harvey, bridging place-based and critical pedagogies with little fanfare. There is not even acknowledgement of such divide as described by Bowers.Mathieu advocates for“project not problem orientation” (50), which is at odds with some understandings of rhetoric (like Bitzer's in "The Rhetorical Situation"). How do we spark rhetoric without problems? Can there be a problem-free exigency? Do these two things have to be mutually exclusive?
Related
Bitzer, "The Rhetorical Situation"De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life
Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Harvey, Spaces of Global Capitalism
