Deciphering Discursiveness - "Process and post-process: A discursive history"

This was an interesting historical article. Matsuda, following a deconstructionist approach to meaning in ways that would do any proponent of the theory proud, points out that the meaning of both "process" and "post-process" are constructed as rebellions against paper targets first established and defined to make it easier to knock them down.

I was at first confused in reading the article by the term L2. In hindsight, Matsuda was reasonably clear about an implied definition for the term. But it does not necessarily lend itself to immediate recognition as a symbolic way of writing "second language" or "language two" and was, I thought, an ironically confusing aspect of a paper supposedly focusing on clarifying the definitions/histories of important comp/rhet theory terms, even if doing so in a discursive, undermining fashion.

Matsuda points out the oft pointed out folly of assuming any group at any given period of history is monolithic in thought and practice. His tracing of the discursive construction of supposedly dominant or uniform pedagogies such as "current traditional," "process," and "post process," reveals the periods they describe to be as complex as any others one might study, including (gasp!) one's own. They are not reducible to the labels we place on except with a great allowance for a vast variety of understandings of said labels, or a strong generalization of thought and practice into what is necessarily a hyperbolic stereotype developed from a very general snapshot of "current thought/practice" at any given moment.

Knowing this discursive nature of the construction of these terms is helpful because it is a reminder to avoid embracing any dogmas in the teaching of writing. Being aware of the discursive nature of the history of comp/rhet theory allows the teacher of composition to draw at their leisure on what they feel are the best of the best practices without suffering from some delusion that there is some monolith against which they are rebelling, or to which they are conforming. This knowledge it would seem should create willingness to search for the best of the best practices for application in the classroom, and a greater willingness to experiment and find a combination that works for one's self and the students one has at a given moment.

At the same time it is a slightly disheartening reminder that one can never be certain that best practice won't be found to be worst practice in a few year's time, and then reinvented/re-introduced as best practice yet again a few years after that. Depressingly, this is true of all aspects of the teacher's profession that I have encountered.

While I find the merry-go-round rather infuriating (wouldn't it be nice to make some progress that wasn't immediately undermined by someone, somewhere, who is smarter than you?) it is also freeing (like the discursive development of these theoretical pedagogy labels Matsuda has shown us). One is left with the option to proceed as best they are able to determine is effective for a given set of kids in a given circumstance. Isn't that one true tenet of best practice that seems to hold on anyway?