Ecocomposition: Literacy and Ecology

Influenced by today’s readings, I define ecocomposition as a model concerned with the dynamic relationship between writing and the world (natural, imagined, constructed, etc.). It recognizes the importance of the non-human world, emphasizes the domino effect relationship that writers have with ecology, and advances awareness and interaction with natural systems.

Cooper emphasizes the importance of contextualizing the writing process not only in its immediate context, but also in “socially constituted systems” with which the writer is constantly engaged (Ecology 367). The ecological model, as Cooper describes it, encompasses various systems that constitute a web. She compares the product model and the process model that utilize ecology as its main component. The product model emphasizes the finished work while the process model depicts writers engaged in the writing process, affecting their situations and environments and being affected by their environments and the systems they belong to. According to Cooper, the ecological model provides writers with a “real audience” rather than a general, imagined audience. Although she presents a valid argument, I find the concept of “real audience” problematic, since no matter what audience the teacher asks her students to imagine they are writing to, students will write to the teacher. Even while peer-reviewing each other’s essays, students are aware of the fact that the teacher will collect and grade their peer-review sheets. Although the collaboration that takes place in the classroom may seem to address the real audience of peers, the groups or the pairs are producing work to be evaluated by the teacher. Hence, they are writing to the “imagined audience.”

Stretching the boundaries of our discipline to include almost “everything” works both ways. Although this holistic vision makes our discipline more inclusive and more involved in different conversations, that vision jeopardizes the discipline’s existence and questions its validity since including everything in one field may blur the boundaries between disciplines. However, Owens sees this ambiguity as an advantage because such a setting “offers a logical working space for the promotion of sustainable pedagogies” (29).

I find it interesting how the composition class can go beyond the boundaries of its physical place to reach the local community. This localization demands that the writer shapes/ reshapes the writing based on the needs of the community. Students become more involved in their communities when they write about and explore issues related to their communities rather than viewing the university as an institution isolated from the surrounding community. Annie Merrill Ingran believes that the collaboration between the university and the community brings about benefits to both parties: the students witness the importance of writing as a means of affecting the community and the community benefits from the students’ effort to improve the community (Weisser &Dobrin 7). Also, by practicing the ecological model, we expose our students to larger themes than writing per se, such as social justice, and build an appreciation of diversity (Weisser& Dobrin 6).

When you have a diverse class (students from different cultures and backgrounds) their understanding of the environment varies depending on the culture each student belongs to. All cultures do not look at and treat the environment the same way. For example, from my experience here, I’ve noticed that my students get more irritated and annoyed when we watch a YouTube video about animal abuse than if we watch a video about children starving in Africa. Since I come from a culture that values humans more than animals, their reaction to the two videos is perplexing to me. The real challenge in implementing an ecological model is to encourage students to surface different cultural priorities rather than hide such cultural trends/beliefs that don’t conform to the priorities of the mainstream (the dominant culture). Here, Drew’s perception of the student writer as a traveler might be a good way to understand diversity and difference in a multicultural setting. Drew believes that “understanding students as traveling between and dwelling in multiple locations whose discursive pedagogies help to construct them as writers is an important component of what ecocomposition might engender” (62). Drew touches upon the metaphor of the classroom as a “contact zone,” a place where ideologies “clash and grapple with each other.”

“Life in the contact zone is by definition dynamic, heterogeneous, and volatile. Bewilderment and suffering as well as revelation and exhilaration are experienced by everyone, teacher and students, at different moments. No one is excluded, no one is safe.”

                                                                   --Mary Louise Pratt


I think that in order to better understand the politics of the classroom space, the notion of the “contact zone” should be part of this discussion. Viewing the classroom as a “contact zone” or as a “frontier” highlights the competing ideologies of the students and the teacher that underpin historical, political, and cultural struggles.