Article+Ideas

Writing "Center": Intersections of a Center and Post-structuralist Critique--prospective title

We were talking about the idea of a hybrid center--one that troubled dualism/binary of peer vs professional tutor and institutional vs public and voluntary vs regulatory centers. The idea of the center intersects with discussion in philosophy/literary criticism in which the center functions as a [|univocal], universal signifier. It is the perspective from which everything you do must be approached. The point of origin. So the Writing Center imposes itself as the point of origin for writing, for the institution (Writing Program), the writer, the text and all of its manifestations. By invoking the "center" the WC calls on the Western conceptions of text, textuality, author, etc. Cornell, however, is a place of nomadic orientation: it rejects the "center" and instead travels to regions where writing can be done outside the confines of the institution. Nomad can be a Deleuzian sense of "intensity, not location and the nomad avoids being associated with institutions." So Cornell conceivably stands to trouble the binaries of institutionalized writing "centers" and ultimately the notion of writing as point of origin for the writer, the institution as the point of orgin for all writing. Ricoeur could also be integrated as he discusses univocity in "Conflict of Interpretation."