ABSTRACT
Social-constructivist rhetoric has become a major paradigm of composition theory, at least in terms of publications, if not classroom practice. A pedagogical goal for most social-constructivists is the liberation of the student. The terms of such liberation range from acculturation into a knowledge-making community for purposes of demystifying knowledge-production and power (Bruffee 1999: xii), to promoting dissensus, or the agreement to disagree (Trimbur 1989: 615), to preparation for participatory citizenship (Ohmann 1964: 22), to exposing ideological practices that dehumanize social experience (Berlin 1988: 492). This liberation is ultimately accomplished by making students aware that knowledge is a historically situated, rhetorical act. It is not something found in the mind of God, nor is it contained in the interaction of the subject and object, nor does it reside in the rational mind of the individual. In reaction to cognitivist rhetoric, social-construction denies that knowledge is a harmonious correspondence of the structure of mind and the world. In reaction to expressivist rhetoric, social-construction denies that knowledge is a product of the individual working in isolation. And in reaction to positivism, social-construction denies that knowledge is something “out there” waiting to be discovered. Rather, knowledge is socially constructed in the dialectical interaction of a discourse community and its immediate historical conditions.
