[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-seo-599581-105":3,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":80,"doc-detail-599581-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"ok",{"site_id":7,"language":8,"slug":9,"title":10,"keywords":11,"description":12,"schema_data":13,"social_meta":73,"head_meta":75,"extra_data":77,"updated_unix":79},105,"en","challenging-rhetorics-of-adaptation-cf-25-abstract-and-discussion","Challenging Rhetorics of Adaptation - CF 25 - Abstract and discussion","","The article examines civic disengagement in public writing and community literacy, shifting focus from how students “go public” effectively and ethically to why they hesitate in the first place. It argues that students are shaped by rhetorics of adaptation that encourage accommodation to unjust conditions rather than activism for change. Engaged writing teachers are urged to create opportunities for confronting, analyzing, and challenging these rhetorics, enabling creative maladjustment through counterhegemonic activism rhetoric.",{"@graph":14,"@context":72},[15,34,55],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/","Research & 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public writing and community literacy?","Question",{"text":62,"@type":63},"It addresses why students (and many Americans) fail to become civically engaged, arguing that existing scholarship has focused more on how to go public than on why they avoid it.","Answer",{"name":65,"@type":60,"acceptedAnswer":66},"What are “rhetorics of adaptation” in the article’s argument?",{"text":67,"@type":63},"They are powerful cultural discourses that encourage people to adjust to unjust societal conditions instead of pursuing activism to change them.",{"name":69,"@type":60,"acceptedAnswer":70},"What do the authors recommend for civically engaged writing teachers?",{"text":71,"@type":63},"Teachers should facilitate opportunities for students to confront, analyze, and challenge rhetorics of adaptation, helping them creatively maladjust to the anti-civic environment by using counterhegemonic rhetorics of 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[http://compositionforum.com/issue/25/](http://compositionforum.com/issue/25/)  \nChallenging Rhetorics of Adaptation through Creative Maladjustment  \n [[http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=compforum](http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=compforum)]  \nPaul Feigenbaum  \nAbstract: The literature on public writing and community literacy has generally focused on how to get students to go public in effective and ethical ways. This article instead addresses a prior concern, the problem of why to go public. I argue that students (and Americans generally) are immersed within a cultural ecology of civic disengagement that manifests itself through powerful rhetorics of adaptation. These rhetorics encourage people’s adaptation to unjust societal conditions rather than activism to change these conditions. Hence, before helping students determine what kind of difference they should make, civically engaged writing teachers must help students see that they can make a difference. I call on engaged teachers to facilitate opportunities for students to confront, analyze, and challenge rhetorics of adaptation, and in turn, to maladjust creatively to the anti-civic surround by invoking counterhegemonic rhetorics of activism.  \nIt isn’t too complicated to get the principles of equality and justice and love, but to make these things function, you have to trust that people have the capacity to live that way and to achieve that kind of society. This is hard to do, because under present day conditions many people are untrustworthy. They are untrustworthy in a temporary sense. In the potential sense they are trustworthy, so you have to posit trust in spite of the fact that the people you’re dealing with don’t, on the surface, merit that trust.  \n—Myles Horton, The Long Haul  \nPublic-writing and community-literacy scholars have addressed various challenges of asking students to engage audiences beyond the classroom, including how to access the public sphere within an increasingly privatized world and how to enable more substantive contact with audiences than writing letters to editors (Weisser; Welch, Living Room; Wells). They have also raised concerns about service learning that reinforces students’ self-conceptions as altruists to the poor rather than as equal partners in progressive social change (Green; Herzberg; Julier; Welch,“And Now”). In tackling these issues, scholars have focused mostly on the problem of how to go public effectively and ethically. I argue, however, that insufficient attention has been placed on the rhetorical forces that deter students’ civic engagement in the first place—i.e. the problem of why to go public. To help students see a purpose for being civically active after they leave our classrooms, we need to understand better why they tend tobe civically in-active before they enter our classrooms. What is holding students back?  \nElizabeth Ervin notes that “college writing classes represent many students’ introduction to the wide, wide world of ‘Issues’”(392), while Nancy Welch points out that when “students, and most of therest of us, don’t care about politics, it’s because we’ve learned that it is not our place to care”(Living Room 122); instead, there is a “select set of people who are credentialed and certified to hold views on the problems of the day, problems much too complex for most of the rest ofus to grasp”(135) . These observations are certainly part of the answer, but they are components of a broader explanation. Students’ difficulties perceiving themselves as civic agents reflect their immersion within a relentless  \n[http://compositionforum.com/issue/25/challenging-rhetorics-adaptation.php](http://compositionforum.com/issue/25/challenging-rhetorics-adaptation.php)  \nCF 25: “Challenging Rhetorics of Adaptation” by Paul Feigenbaum Page 2 of 16  \nsurround of political quietism ","cbCaif9hckCfR5MX","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaif9hckCfR5MX","pdf",75541,16,"English","# Challenging Rhetorics of Adaptation\n## The problem of why to go public\n## Rhetorics of adaptation in student discourse","[{\"question\":\"What is the article’s main concern about public writing and community literacy?\",\"answer\":\"It addresses why students (and many Americans) fail to become civically engaged, arguing that existing scholarship has focused more on how to go public than on why they avoid it.\"},{\"question\":\"What are “rhetorics of adaptation” in the article’s argument?\",\"answer\":\"They are powerful cultural discourses that encourage people to adjust to unjust societal conditions instead of pursuing activism to change them.\"},{\"question\":\"What do the authors recommend for civically engaged writing teachers?\",\"answer\":\"Teachers should facilitate opportunities for students to confront, analyze, and challenge rhetorics of adaptation, helping them creatively maladjust to the anti-civic environment by using counterhegemonic rhetorics of activism.\"}]","Challenging Rhetorics of Adaptation - CF 25 - Abstract and discussion | PDF",1792089052]