Intolerable Violence

Introduction: Recognizing, Intervening, Ameliorating: Responding to Violence in the Work of Composition

“…Fraught and troubling, indeed. Despite their warnings, Evans and Carver (2017) do not argue that we should not define or examine violence, only that violence should "never be studied in an objective or unimpassioned way" (5).…”

“…As in all work on violence, the "questions proliferate, and the answers provided are provisional" (Lawrence and Karim 2007, 10). Indeed, like Evans and Carver's (2017) collection, Violence in the Work of Composition does not "ai[m] to offer definitive conclusions to the problem of violence." At the same time, the chapters here do not "blink at violence" (Lawrence and Karim 2007, 11).…”

Violence in the Work of Composition: Recognizing, Intervening, Ameliorating

“…This disciplining shapes us in profound ways, so I find it difficult to pursue other methods even though I know and feel that approaching a term like violence as I have been taught to is both a fraught and troubling process. Brad Evans and Terrell Carver (Evans and Carver 2017) go further, labeling such efforts "perilous and intellectually damaging." "Violence is all about the violation of bodies and the destruction of human lives," they write (5).…”

The Productive Violence Of Pedagogy: Argumentation and Change in the Writing Course

“…Such desire is an essential counterpart to recognizing, since by itself recognizing offers no recourse for mitigating violence's capacity to harm, raising challenging questions about the value and ethics of studying and critiquing violence. As Evans and Carver (2017) ask, "Why study violence, after all, unless more peaceful relations among people are to be imagined?" (3).…”