Cain, Mary Ann. “Moved by ‘Their’ Words A Way to Move

Cain, Mary Ann. “Moved by ‘Their’ Words: Emotion and the Participant Observer.” A Way to Move: Rhetorics of Emotion and Composition Studies. Eds. Dale Jacobs & Laura R. Micciche. Boyton/CooK: Portsmouth, NH.

“In short, we need narratives that will, on one hand, make readers aware of how certain discursive practices invite one to ‘overtake’ a text and, on the other hand, offer possibilities for resisting such ‘overtakings’ in our reading practices so that alternative viewpoints may be articulated’ (45). =A

“Similarly, in Composition scholarship, we either embrace emotions acritically (as in classroom narratives and professional memoirs) as ‘powerful’ or ignore them (as in conventional research since no ‘evidence’ exists to ‘prove an interpretation of a subject’s emotions” (54). =B

“Yet when scholarly practices preclude critical engagement with the emotional, they also deny the pedagogical aspects of all discursive exchanges including those between researchers and subjects” (54). =A

“However, by reframing the personal (and, in turn, the emotional) as always/already present within social formations of control and regulation, emotion as a ‘third factor’ in both scholarship and teaching in Composition Studies can serve to make the cultural forms it takes more visible” (54). =E