Introduction

This introductory chapter sets out the themes and dilemmas of the “political turn” the editors argue are necessary in a period of escalating world problems and global inequalities intensified by capitalist accumulation and dispossession, tenacious colonial legacies, and accelerating climate change. In the field of composition and rhetoric and across the disciplines, scholar/activists can participate in the struggles ahead, in and out of the classroom, by taking up critical approaches to teaching rooted in historical material analysis of reality and by allying with faculty unions, radical caucuses in professional organizations, labor struggles in other sectors, and anti-racist, anti-sexist social movements from below as they emerge in this Trumpian era of deep division, resurgent fascistic forces, and unprecedented degrees of precarity.