It’s a carnival. Others are in.

Jenny writes regarding Trimbur’s call to study writing:

My point is NOT that critique is worthless. But I also want to be careful about making claims for what “studying� anything does.

I’ve had similar thoughts. We study to know. We study to repeat knowledge. We study to codify. We study to critique. But as I asked earlier, why critique? Latour asks as well: Why has critique run out of steam? Not entirely the same question, but it, too, is a question of why we “study.” Latour concludes by saying:

Critical theory died away long ago; can we become critical again, in the sense here offered by Turing? That is, generating more ideas than we have received, inheriting from a prestigious critical tradition but not letting it die away, or “dropping into quiescence” like a piano no longer struck. This would require that all entities, including computers, cease to be objects defined simply by their inputs and outputs, and become again things, mediating, assembling, gathering many more folds than the “united four.” If this were possible then we could let the critics come ever closer to the matters of concern we cherish, and then at last we could tell them: “Yes, please, touch them, explain them, deploy them.” Then we would have gone for good beyond iconoclasm.

To go beyond iconoclasm. “Can writing be taught?” Trimbur asks. Is that a question for the iconoclasm? The image of writing. Can we break it? Should we? Is it enough to call for a study as one also calls to write? Indeed, I’d rather call to write (though I am not against the call to study) for the reasons Latour notes. I’d rather call to write as I call for the assemblage, the gathering, the mediating. To do that is not to negate the “study” of writing, but possibly to merge its study with its production, its existence as a body that we examine with a body that continues to change. Isn’t Trimbur’s argument that writing is a practice that “pervades the curriculum”? So why do we, writing teachers, need a call to study writing? What will that do? Can’t we work with this “thing” that pervades?

The fear, as Latour worries, is that such calls to study work only to produce larger bodies of critique. And now I am back at the question which began this post. I’ve grown tired of critique. Its claim to usefulness is hardly convincing. What does critique do? That is not a question which asks us to stop critique (for, wouldn’t that be, too, a critical gesture?). No. It is a question precisely directed at the interest in “social relations” Trimbur concludes with. Where are the social relations in critique? How is critique social? Is it ever? Critique is too obsessed with the icon. The image. And images are bowed down to or they are knocked over, like Abraham kicking over the idols.
When writing is iconic, it is worshiped (and destroyed) with critique. When writing becomes relationships, it is no longer iconic. And we do not feel the need to worship. Nor to destroy.