ABSTRACT
At the end of the last chapter we suggested that writing dominates work in the humanities. Speech plays a part in tutorials, seminars, interviews and viva voce examinations; but it is on the analysis of printed texts, on the production of essays, and (above all) on written tests, that progress (however measured) largely depends. In Chapter 2 we looked at some of the ways in which the imbalance between writing on the one hand, and reading, conversation and remembering on the other, might be redressed. Now we turn to writing itself. This might seem a paradoxical move in the light of our claim that writing has already been given too much attention, but although the written product is all-important in the contemporary humanities faculty, the productive process has been largely neglected. Not only is it assumed that undergraduates will be able to write to the necessary standard, but more importantly, the practice of writing is not thought to be very interesting, even in literary studies. Whether it is a textbook or a student essay, what counts is the finished product. The view seems to be that, so long as one can drive the car, there is no need to meddle with the engine. So on the one hand writing is fetishized, on the other ignored. This is not to say that it is not taught at all, at least in American colleges. But this teaching is often beside the point, divorced from critical reading within a specific disciplinary context.
