出版社：Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition
摘要：The literature on public writing and community literacy has generally focused
on how to get students to go public in effective and ethical ways. This article instead
addresses a prior concern, the problem of why to go public. I argue that students (and
Americans generally) are immersed within a cultural ecology of civic disengagement that
manifests itself through powerful rhetorics of adaptation. These rhetorics encourage
people’s adaptation to unjust societal conditions rather than activism to change these
conditions. Hence, before helping students determine what kind of difference they
should make, civically engaged writing teachers must help students see that they can
make a difference. I call on engaged teachers to facilitate opportunities for students to
confront, analyze, and challenge rhetorics of adaptation, and in turn, to maladjust
creatively to the anti-civic surround by invoking counterhegemonic rhetorics of activism.
