Matsuda calls relates the historical movement of process to post process a discursive practice that involves all the reductionism and name calling of ethnic warfare. Process came into vogue by a propaganda technique of naming the powers that be “current traditional.” It formed itself as a “new” entity by ignoring the history of its own beginnings—and how those beginnings were intertwined and implicated with that current-tradition power structure.
Post process isn’t any more unified than process was a movement which shared a definable epistemology or set of practices or philosophy. Ostensibly, process was a student based philosophy. But exactly what a student was—or how or what he should taught—was not a matter of consensus. For Matsuda, post process is nominally in vogue by the same method of name calling the enemy to hid its lack of understanding itself.
It calls to my mind the same general observations were made about the movement from structuralism to post structuralism and deconstruction. Derrida tried to deny he was a member of any particular school or movement, but that didn’t help. But it seems the post process people (that is, if they accept the label) have more appreciation for the power (in the political realm of institution sponsored theory) that comes from a name.
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Since theory - of any kind - is always a construct, the only way to "create" a new Path-to-the-Truth is to forget that it connects to the paths behind. And, because eveything is political, the only way to validate a new construct is to invalidate the old - at least that's what I keep running into as we study theory. I think one of the most interesting parts of the Matsuda reading is the fact that he is taking the "history" of post-process and laying it on top of the "history" of L2 composition - thus creating his own Path-to-the-Truth.
ReplyDeleteAnd, by the way, I completely agree with your comments on Derrida!