Gillman, Alice. “Collaboration, Ethics, and the Emotional A Way to Move

Gillman, Alice. “Collaboration, Ethics, and the Emotional labor of WPA’s” A Way to Move: Rhetorics of Emotion and Composition Studies. Eds. Dale Jacobs & Laura R. Micciche. Boyton/CooK: Portsmouth, NH.

“masculine agency described by Ed White in ‘Use It or Lose It: Power and the WPA’ (1991); aggressive and decisive action, tough talk, and strategic, preemptive moves” (116).

“In her groundbreaking study The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (1983), Hochschild defines emotional labor as requiring ‘one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others” (117).

Boy, howdy, isn’t that the truth!


“While most jobs require some management of feeling, Hochschild contends that if we are too successful in censoring private feelings and publicly performing contrary ones, we risk ‘losing the signal function of feeling’ (21). Drawing on Freaud’s notion that feelings perform a ‘signal’ or epistemic function in revealing inner perspectives and external realities” (118).

“First, I think that all writing program administration involves ministration or service in the name of other agencies and agendas and we ignore this or are blind to it it to our own detriment. Second, I think that over identification with an idea, principle, policy or programmatic model can lead to the kind of epistemic and ethical “lean” Barrky discusses even if the idea or principle is far more enlightened than the notion of certifiable proficiency for all. In other words, caretaking of even noble principles can be blinding and can work against self-critique.
Further, I think that women administrators may be more vulnerable to overidentification. (119).

“Despite the invaluable contribution of the WPA position statement on’Evaluating the Intellectual Work of Writing Administration’ in validating WPA work, it reifies the distinction between intellectual and emotional labor and ignores the less visible and commodifiable aspects of our work” (123).